The Pictures That Lost The War

http://www.sundayherald.com/41693



The Pictures That Lost The War

Grim images of American and British soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners have not only caused disgust and revulsion in the West, but could have forever lost Bush and Blair the moral high ground that they claimed to justify the invasion of Iraq
By Investigations Editor Neil Mackay

IT’S an image that would do Saddam proud. A terrified prisoner, hooded and dressed in rags, his hands out-stretched on either side of him, electrodes attached to his fingers and genitals. He’s been forced to stand on a box about one-foot square. His captors have told him that, if he falls off the box, he’ll be electrocuted.
The torture victim was an Iraqi and his torturers were American soldiers. The picture captures the moment when members of the coalition forces, who styled themselves liberators, were exposed as torturers. The image of the wired and hooded Iraqi was one of a series of photographs, leaked by a horrified US soldier inside Saddam’s old punishment centre, Abu Ghraib – now a US PoW camp.

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According to the British soldiers, the military police have found a video of prisoners being thrown from a bridge, and a prisoner was allegedly beaten to death in custody by men from the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment. Although there is a debate about the veracity of the images, Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram said that if the pictures were real, they were “appalling”. A Downing Street spokesman said Tony Blair expected “the highest standards of conduct from our forces in Iraq”. The UK’s most senior army officer, General Mike Jackson, said that if the allegations were true then those involved were “not fit to wear the Queen’s uniform”. The Defence Ministry is in crisis over the pictures as top brass know they ruin any hope of UK forces winning Iraqi hearts and minds.
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The awful cost of these acts of barbarism by Britain and America is summed up by ex-US Marine Lieutenant Colonel Bill Cowan: “We went to Iraq to stop things like this from happening, and indeed, here they are happening under our tutelage … If we don’t tell this story, these kind of things will continue, and we’ll end up getting paid back 100 or 1000 times over.”

02 May 2004

...but feel compelled to repost the link, since it's from a man who knows this situation thoroughly:

http://www.juancole.com/

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Sunday, May 02, 2004

The US has Lost the Battle of the Photographs

My essay, "The U.S. Has Lost the Battle of the Photographs," is up through Tuesday at TomDispatch.com, veteran journalist Tom Engelhardt's site for the Nation Institute.

The war of guns is only part of any great military enterprise. It is always supplemented by a war of words and, in the modern world, a war of images. The Bush administration, despite the savvy of its spinmeisters and Hollywood-trained publicists, has lost the war of images abroad. Although it has had more success in managing war images at home, cracks have increasingly opened up on the domestic front as well. Read more.

posted by Juan Cole at 5/2/2004 03:50:26 PM

If we don’t tell this story, these kind of things will continue, and we’ll end up getting paid back 100 or 1000 times over.”

I'm afraid the story has already been told by the Iraqis first and now by others.

and won't get it, ever.

If we're lucky the "terrorists" (whoever that is) will not take revenge on New York City, Chicago or Los Angeles. Instead they will show restraint knowing the "Great Satan" has been exposed for all the world to see and allow world pressure to free the Iraqi people.

On the other hand they may well become determined to extract revenge. A MIHOP is very likely in progress.

deck of cards :(.. I would not put this past them, since the rightwingers have decided on "Frat-boy stunt" as their probably excuse.. :(bastards:(

use of the word "atrocities" in his 1971 Senate appearance? Remember the recent right-wing outrage: how dare Kerry say that any of our noble, pure-hearted American boys would commit atrocities. Well now apparently it is some of our noble, pure-hearted American boys and girls committing inhumane acts.