Ask yourself: What were the pictures for?

What was their role in this project?

I was having some trouble understanding why people would take photographs of their mis-deeds. Yes, some warped types would free-lance some photos to brag on, but mostly people don't want evidence of their sins wandering through the world.

Scenario: Someone is somewhere in Iraq trying to get "support" for the "new democracy" created by the U.S. You've got some recalcitrant locals, maybe some of these obstinate types are even in the Iraqi police. What better way to convert them to happy citizens of our "big rock candy mountain" client state than to threaten them with the most embarassing images possible. "Pssst, hey Ahmed, you know Muhamar? You know why he won't cooperate with your political group? He's a pervert! A friend of mine surprised him in prison one night. My buddy happened to have a camera and he got photos. Believe me Muhamar and his friends are sexual perverts."

a policy somewhere that includes the use of compromising photographs as political blackmail to control Iraqis who resist U.S.

threat? And that they may have been swept up in intelligence ops or during combat?

What purpose would that serve?

There was a policy to take pictures.

which, if the extent of the pics were just humiliating, would make sense. but then what purpose would the alleged rapes and confirmed deaths serve?

failure

Alleged Rape? and Murder" : There are some "sick" people in the military. This is understandable because they are often people out of disadvantaged environments = no other job options + this is a job with lots of perks including hero-worship.

Read/google the classic psychology experiments conducted by Stanley Milgram and a guy named Zimbardo: Ordinary people are capable of very strange things acting under "authority" in un-familiar circumstances.

Their conclusions make a lot of sense. However, it makes me feel good to throw "personal responsibility" back into the "personal responsibility" people's faces...Remember these are the same people who were (to use bush's freshly memorized big word) Abhorred by the desecration of our well-paid mercenaries...

things like that make their heads blow right off...it's the strangest thing.

failure.

Yep, personal responsibility must always be the most essential point, especially if you are REALLY Christian. That is the meaning of the life of Christ, who died rather than go to war. He also died because he resisted the religious "authorities" of his time. He took the responsibility for his own actions on himself rather than being told what to do.

BTW, throwing their stuff back in their face is part of what it means to "take the language back" and prevent them from "defining the terms of the debate".

it seems these particular "bad apples" didn't look upon their actions as sinful, and took those pictures out of PRIDE

Their superiors wanted to use the pictures to scare the next batch of "terrorists" (ex "You see these pictures? This is what'll happen to you if you don't cooperate")

by being more like Saddam, who used to keep Falluja and Najaf fairly well ordered. The war DOES seem to be going better since the pictures were released, despite the propaganda bonus for the insurgents. Maybe some gut reactions on the racki side are based on memories that years of therapy will never erase.

He said first of all, it's proof that the torture had the approval of those in charge. And secondly he said that the prosoners were probably told that they we're going to show the photos to people in their neighborhood to further humiliate them.

1) Trophies--the smiling faces of the soldiers looked sineristly similar to a fisher showing off his 30 lb bass.

2) Intimidation--when the next group of detainies arrived, they can be shown these pictures to loosen them up with less talking

3) Blackmail--threatening to show these pictures would humiliate these prisoners if shown in public. Since many of these photographs show faces covered, I think blackmail was the last thing on the list.

Whatever the reason the first is above and beyond the number one reason and that is what we need to focus upon. Our guards dehumanized these prisoners to such a state that the guards no longer viewed them as human. This, folks, is how Germany was able to get their people to exterminate the prisoners in the concentration camps. And these guards did not come up with this on their own--they had to be taught how to look at these people with that sort of hatred and contempt.

your number 1) reason - trophies.

Even though 1) may be primary purpose at this point, it is extremely important to recognize that the enlisted were not acting completely on their own.

There was a policy to take pictures. Q. What was the purpose of that policy? A. To create a blackmail mechanism by which to control John Doe Iraqis.

I just wasn't seeing how humiliation controls anyone; it makes them mad. They want to fight you, but to PLAN to blackmail them makes much more sense.

who went catatonic at the sight of Janet's nipple. America, hypocracy at its finest. What a schizophrenic nation we have become.

As I imagine you are on your way toward, without my saying so.

Make no mistake, most of the people responsible for this will get nothing but a slap on the wrist.

In his New Yorker article this weekend, Hersh disclosed that the pictures were part of the interrogation process. The concept was that the prisoners knew that pictures were being taken of them and the detainees were shown the pictures during the interrogation process with the threat that these pictures will be shown to the detainee's family and friends.

The poses and acts shown in the pictures were all carefully chosen to be very offensive to Arab males and designed to embarrass and humiliate these detainees. The goal was to break the detainee's will by de-humanizing them. The pictures help and the extortion threat was also part of the process.

the 911 commission is now off the front page?
I wonder if a couple of the "milder" photos were released as a distraction because they knew the Taguba report would soon be made public. Only trouble is, it didn't go away like the one line January initial report in the media, but blew up in their faces. Sort of a repeat scenario of the Valerie Plame thing - 'leaked" in July, didn't hit the fan till months later.