Warning. Following links in this post may make you loose your dinner.

It seems like the additional photos are going to be officially released. After.. what.. a year?

Bare in mind that these are supposedly far worse that the ones already shown... they will certainly enflame the conflict. Is the pursuit of truth worth the ensueing bloodshed?

I'd say yes. Truth can not take a back-burner to political expediency. This is especially important as the invasion was so divisive. We must see the good it has done as well as the bad. We can not pick and choose to see the results of our actions.

I've been reading a blog here: http://americablog.blogspot.com/

It's very left-wing. However the pictures on it that have been filtering out... it's just sick. I havn't been able to make myself look at most of the unfiltered pics. It is simply gross.

It shows that the actions in Abu Ghraib are NOT the action of a perverted few.. it's a wide-spread thing. War isn't pretty, but this is just depraved. Soldiers swapping porn of mutilated bodies? Of fellow soldiers assaulting prisoners?

This isn't bringing a better life to Iraqi's. This is exposing them to the lowest common denomenator in humanity... just like what we were suppossed to be freeing them from. This isn't just soldiers 'high-spirits' like some people like to think.

A man tortured in (I think) Abu Ghraib has said in an interview that a soldier told him she was acting under orders. Make of that what you will. It's interesting to note that the exact same techniques have been used in various places.

And to answer the question: yes, full exposure, with the identity of the victims concealed so as not to damage them further. The argument that it will enflame the conflict and drive up recruitment for The Terrorists™ is bunk; they should have thought of that before they started torturing people.

Some of the photos are meant to be quiet horrific in content, and some are even meant to show child rape.

But at the moment this could be a mute point, due to the fact that the judge is allowing the government time to appeal before the photos are released.

My personal opinion is that they were under orders, they wanted information ...and they most probably got it.

Edit: Spelling thanks Commie

They most probably got useless information. When you've been broken under torture, you'll say anything to stop it.

But that probably didn't help. Because, you see, reports from the soldiers themselves have revealed the motives for at least some of the torture:



From here.

Sounds like a real boon to the occupation effort, there. Win the heart and minds of the Iraqis by breaking their limbs for fun!

Torture works.
However by 'work' I mean that the victim will talk.
They will say ANYTHING to stop the abuse from continuing. That is one of the reasons why torture is no longer used in 'civilised' countries, the information gained from it is completely worthless. Under torture the pope would confess to sodomising God if it meant you stopped chopping off their fingers.

And true. If they did not want to give a reason for people hating the invasion then they should not have gone out of their way to SUPPLY one. This seems to be a culture of perversion that is permeating the occupying troops, supported from the top brass as well it seems. It is not limited to only American troops, but they seem to have the vast majority.

Soldiers there are not just warriors. They are the right hand of the nation that sent them. In a way they are ambassadors. They represent the new life we are delivering to Iraqi's. From the looks of things they have swapped one regime of cruelty for another.

But it's alright because they 'arn't as bad a saddam'.

Well excuse me. I thought murder, torture, and child rape was bad enough.

As for the pics.... war isn't pretty, but neither should it present a free slide-show for all the depravity humans are capable of. The photos should be released and the purpetraters punished. They shouldn't be allowed to get away with it like this.

And if we want to get all utilitarian about it - much as I hate that philosophy - release of the photos will probably increase support for full and immediate withdrawal, which is a good thing.

I agree with Calantyr's point about people saying anything to end the torture. It's an extremely sick practice that's been going on for a long time, and it keeps popping up in situations like these. The photos ought to be released for all to see. What happened is horrible, and we need to remember and try to correct the injustices, not sweep them under the rug until most people forget. The soldiers who did this need to be punished. When someone is raped and abused in America, they go to prison or get the death penalty. I fail to see why abusing and raping people in Iraq should be punished any differently. What they did was absolutely wrong, and they should be prosecuted for it.
Even if the soldiers don't see themselves as bringers of peace and freedom, where are their morals? When they were under orders, how much did they bother to question before they went ahead and enjoyed themselves? This sort of thing gives me a dark outlook on the future of the human race.

Why do the pictures need to be released? It won't stop anything, and will only make Iraq more dangerous to my fellow americans. Yes, what they did is wrong. Yes, we should try to stop it. Yes, the public deserves to know that it happens, but we don't need the pictures, which will only elicit emotional responces, released.

Because it's becoming increasingly evident that, under the Bush administration, it takes Herculean efforts to actually hold anyone responsible for what they're supposed to be responsible for. Look at the prisoner abuses. Why, that scandal has let to convictions all the way from private to, um, staff sergeant. There needs to be a serious outcry to get somebody punished, and since the job is evidently never going to get done internally, they need to release the photos so that somebody more willing can do it.

So in your mind, it is worth it for American soldiers to be put in more danger so that we can punish someone? I am not condoning the abuses, merely questioning whether or not it is right for us to take any action which will most likely put people in mortal danger.

The best way of safeguarding American soldiers would be to take them out of Iraq - they're doing more harm than good there. The Iraqi people, moreover, have a right to know about the actions of their occupiers. There's only so much lying and concealing of the truth that our governments can do to "protect" the lives of the men and women they endangered in the first place.

... that is sickening.

And yes, I fully think that these photos should be released to the general public. I think they should be printed in every single damn newspaperm so everyone can see them. I think people are too blind, and often write things off as "boys will be boys". This is bullshit, it's disgusting, and people should realize exactly what they are a part of, if they voted for GWB.

Bah. I hate humanity.

Agreed. People forget about things easily without vivid reminders, and the pictures should show what really happened. We need emotional responses to help draw a reaction that will lead to justice. Frat house pranks are for people to *choose* to participate and join a group. This torture was cruel and completely against the prisoners' wills, and there all similarity to a frat prank ends. The soldiers are in danger from Iraqis for what they did in Iraq anyway. If releasing the pictures puts them in danger from other Americans, they are not so different from people who are in danger when people find out that they have killed someone.
I'll post something more coherent when I've had some sleep.

Emotion doesn't lead to justice, it leads to revenge. Tell people what happened, make them completely aware of the torture, and the violations of international law, but releasing the pictures doesn't do anything but provoke revenge, and make people angry.



I agree, but that doesn't mean that any action which will help keep them safer shouldn't be taken.

Why wouldn't it be enough for people to hear what happened, and be informed that way? I never saw any of the first set of pictures, but through listening to enough NPR, I was able to understand exactly what happened, and much more than any picture could have told me.

I think people need to get angry. A larger minority than anyone should be comfortable has clearly been abusive. They've put their fellow soldiers in danger, hurt America and inflicted far greater damage on their victims. They should be publically crucified for this and all we have is denial. Denial thats clearly failing to work. Our government has given us and the world little reason to have faith. If the pictures are what it takes to start fixing this, than that might be what it takes.

As to the point about this inflaming things further, we need to remember Al-Jazeera. Al-Jazeera has no ethical?/whatever policy about showing graphic pictures and has done so throughout the war. Civilian casualites and the rest have been played for the Arab world /repeatedly/. I'm sure they've had interviews or something from/about Abu Ghraib as well. I'm not saying it would help, but we're hardly introducing new information into a vacuum. The people that hate America already have had their ammo and in color. Not to mention convenient sound bytes of American denial.

I'm not sure I favor 'quick' withdrawl because of how well it worked in Afghanistan, though I think we needed to be visibly and clearly moving toward it. What we're doing now clearly isn't working either. I think we were asked to starting leaving anyway. bleh.

Because most people don't give a flying ****.

With pictures, they will be forced to realize what's happening, instead of going "Oh, that's nice, la la la." It's harder to ignore events when you have a color picture of a man on a leash in your head.

Here's another point. Over the past four years or so, both the UK and US administrations have shown a marked and disturbing tendency to lie as and when it suits them. To cover up inconvenient truths. Given this, we ought to demand as close to absolute transparency and full disclosure as is possible. I simply do not trust either government - especially Bush's - to keep information secret. They've lost the moral right to make that decision for us.

So, you don't trust the government, but you trust the pictures? I mean, photoshop is a wonderful tool..... If you think that the government is going to lie to us, then why would you assume that the pictures must be true?

As far as I know (not that I'm hugely informed on this subject), photo editing isn't yet at a sufficient level that it could fool experts. If faked photos were released, a lot of people would notice.

There are always ways to tell if a photo is faked. For example, IDENTIFYING THE PEOPLE IN THEM and investigating them. Not to mention blurring, lighting, joins, etc.

It's been show that the US and UK government have misled the public (if not outright lied) so they do not have the moral authority to tell us what we need present to be able to establish the truth.

So much bullshit has been thrown at us and so many facts covered up. This had better not be another example of it.

This is really my point. People forget things without constant reminders and imagery. If the photos are faked, then releasing them would expose that faster with more people to check, yes? There's a lot of information floating around already from both sides, much of it false. The government *has* been lying, and the soldiers deserve to be punished. People (see Calantyr's original post) have already started playing it down as no big deal, as if the whole thing was a frat prank. As I've said, people are outraged when these things happen to Americans. They call out for punishment. When Iraqis are tortured, people go to work minimizing the horror of what happened. It's easier to excuse torture of a faceless enemy that to forgive torture of someone you can see and sympathize with. Why shouldn't people be angry? This has broken the Geneva Convention, which we always start howling about when American people are mistreated in times of war. How is this any different?

People need to see these photos because an emotional reaction is really the only way we will get justice here. Justice must be unbiased, but it would be impossible not to react to this without emotion. People will play descriptions down but pictures can't be, the sheer shock of seeing them is needed to make people sit up and realise what has happened.

Also wouldn't pulling our troops out just make a volatile situation worse? I think that having invaded our governments have a duty to try and stabalise the region.

But what if that emotional reaction gets people killed? What is the price we must pay for justice?

I'm a bit split. By law they should be released, but I don't think much good would come of it.
Its somewhat similar to the debate about murder or rape crime scene photo's being released. Who looks at it? Will it change anything?
For the most part it will either be those who are already against Bush trying to get more ammo to fire at him, or sicko's looking up the pictures.
Will there be public out cry? Probably not. Most news casts are to wrapped up about hurricanes and such at the moment; and news happening to Americans trumps news happening to other people. Plus most Americans just don't want to see anymore of the war in Iraq. They've had enough of the visuals. And really I can't blame.
Will the terrorist use it as fuel? Oh probably, they did that last time. But it probably wont be the soldiers who reap that reward, but rather innocent people who decided to take jobs there.
Will it force America out? I wouldn't count on it. America still has alot to achieve before they can plausibly leave without a rather nasty civil war breaking out the next day.
So pretty much I don't think there's really a point to releasing the photos. Most people know that the torture was probably pretty bad. Bush is a jerk who will admit to doing nothing wrong and holding almost no one accountable, while maintaining the air that we're none the wiser to his actions.
And frankly I'm just tired of seeing innocent people getting the short end of the stick. It's almost to the point where my opinions going to change to, round up the terrorist and the torturers, shot the lot and the job should be a good one.

We're not doing a great job of it, though, are we? The Lancet survey for John Hopkins University reports that the risk of violent death is now fifty-eight times higher since the invasion, and that most violent deaths are caused by occupation violence. Our presence is contributing to the continuing unrest, and it seems to me that things aren't going to improve until we leave.

I never said we were good at it, just that we need to try and fix what we broke. And while an emotional responce may get people killed we still need justice, because if we prevent justice here for fear an emotional responce will be illicited and people will die then a door is opened allowing more justice to be withheld for flimsier excuses each time.