Pictures That Missed the Exhibition

Yesterday (February 16), Australia’s public broad caster, SBS, airedsome 60 unpublished photos of torture at Abu Ghraib prison on its show Datelineat 8:30 PM. The images were rapidly re-broadcast on Arab TV and other newsoutfits and have been condemned immediately as a violation of international lawby the International Red Cross. (1)

The new detainee diorama -- a world exclusive, apparently --includes pictures of bleeding and hooded prisoners bound to beds and doors, ofnaked men handcuffed together or in a pile, of corpses, of dogs snarling at thefaces of prisoners, of cigarette burns on buttocks and wounds from shotgunpellets, and of even more graphic sexual torture. And it comes on the heels of aBritish video showing British soldiers brutally assaulting unarmed Iraqi teensin Basra. No one can now question that criminal behavior was rampant amongCoalition Forces.

The Aussie torture-trove is culled from a set deemed unfit forthe tender sensibilities of the American public but shown to our no doubt muchsturdier Congress and Senate members during hearings in the summer of 2004. Thatwas shortly after the Abu Ghraib scandal first broke -- in mainstreamjournalism, that is. Of course, it was pretty much plastered all over thealternative press for at least a year before CBS 60 Minutes (on April 28, 2004)and the New Yorker got around to picking it up. Still, they never got to themost graphic pix...involving, we hear, women being forced to bare breasts andgenitals at gun point. (2)

These are -- in part -- the pictures that the government has been battling tokeep under wraps for more than a year now. Even when last year a judge gave theACLU access after a Freedom of Information Act request, the government appealed,claiming publication might fan anti-American sentiment -- and who could possiblydream of doing that?

Funny how freedom of expression -- so indispensable for the survival ofWestern Civilization when it comes to inflammatory and dangerous anti-Muslimimagery -- gets jettisoned in a hurry when it comes to exposing war crimes.

Mike Carey, the executive producer of the SBS show believes that severaljournalists also have the pictures and wonders why they were not published untilnow: "I think it’s strange, maybe they think it’s more of thesame." (3)

It was Dateline which first exposed the role of the Howard government in thetorture of Australian citizen Mamdouh Habib, illegally detained and thentortured in Egypt and at Guantanamo Bay. (4) But, here Carey sounds rathernaive. What does he think journalists today are about, anyway, if they can’tdouble as megaphones for government propaganda? Reporters who had the picturesbut didn’t publish them were only doing their bit for the war effort, like thegood little foot-soldiers they are. Or the good little intelligence/PRoperatives. Think male escort-turned White House-presstitute, Jeff Guckert-Gannon.(5)

The first time around -- in May 2004 -- when the pressure was on for thegovernment to come clean and Rumsfeld’s head looked like it might roll --another decapitation conveniently swept everything else off the stage. (6) Thatwas the videotaped beheading -- almost undoubtedly staged -- of American towerrepairman, war profiteer, and Republican operative, Nicholas Berg, a passingacquaintance, as it quaintly turned out, of Zacarias Moussaoui. (7)

Berg had a rather checkered career that took him from interviews with MichaelMoore to fixing radio towers at Abu Ghraib to partnering with an Iraqicocaine-dealer, Al-Taee, with connections to the Russian mafia. While awaitingdeportation, the multi-faceted Taee, who once shared photo space with PaulWolfowitz, also apparently managed to pick up a raft of gigs on Fox and ClearChannel where he was oppressed-freedom-fighter-in-residence and big-timecheer-leader for the Iraq war. (8)

But his spotty resume and less than savory social circle didn’t stop Bergfrom becoming the poster-boy for the Freepers and the semi-lunatic fringe ofright-wing storm-troopers, frothing at the mouth over all the wasted attentionon some naked Iraqi blokes. They got their way. By the middle of May 2004, thepressure was off. Torturing hundreds of innocent men, women -- and it looks like-- children, simply didn’t cut it next to the snuff movie of the all-AmericanBerg. Rumsfeld remained on his perch, without even a flick on the wrist from thePresident, who -- it should be said -- is also mentioned in the ACLU memos ashaving penned an incriminating executive memo. But you’d never see that in thepress. Or that heavily redacted directive -- courtesy of one Paul Wolfowitz itseems -- telling Gitmo interrogators to masquerade as FBI agents.(9)

But you have to wonder where Carey himself got his bloody little album. Andwhat sense it makes -- or doesn’t make -- for the thing to show up onAustralian TV now, more than two years after the military first noticed it had atorture problem, in the middle of a sudden hemorrhage of inflammatory imageryand news -- renditions, the cartoons, the Basra child-abuse....

A lot of fog here, all right. Is it the fog of war though?

And now can we see those pictures of Iraqi women, please?

Lila Rajiva is a free-lancejournalist and author of TheLanguage of Empire: Abu Ghraib and the American media, (Monthly ReviewPress).

(1) "Australian television to air new Abu Ghraib abuse pictures,"AFP, February 15, 2006 and "Abuse violates international law: ICRC," SydneyMorning Herald, February 16, 2006.

(2) "800 new pictures add to US disgust: Stills shown of women forced tobare breasts," Dan Glaister and Julian Borger, The Guardian, May 13, 2004and "Torture at Abu Ghraib," Seymour Hersh, New Yorker, May 10, 2004.For an analysis of how constant charges of "fraud" managed to muddythe whole question of the torture of Iraqi women, see "Iraqi Women andTorture: Part I -- Rapes and Rumors of Rapes," Lila Rajiva, DissidentVoice, July 27, 2004 and "Colonial Violence Against Women In Iraq,"Ghali Hassan, Countercurrents.org, May 31, 2004.

(3) "The Photos America Doesn’t Want Seen," Matthew Moore, TheSydney Morning Herald, February 15, 2006.

(4) "Covering Up," Editorial, The Guardian, March 16, 2005.

(5)"An Identity Crisis Unfolds in a Not-So-Elite Press Corps"Johanna Neuman, Los Angeles Times, February 25, 2005.

(6)"News Judgment Old and News Judgment New: American Nicholas BergBeheaded," Jay Rosen, PressThink.com, May 6, 2004. PressThink won a freedomof expression award from Reporters Without Borders in June 2005.

(7) "Berg's encounter with 'terrorist' revealed," CNN, May 14, 2004and "Moore interviewed Berg for ‘Fahrenheit’", Rebecca Traister,Salon, May 27, 2004.

(8) "Pro-war Iraqi figure may be deported from United States," AP,Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, April 15, 2003. See also, Liberty Forum Post1488471, June 1, 2004 referencing the once ubiquitous photo.

(9) Executive Order of the President dated May 22, 2004.