Those torture photos must resemble the propaganda shots al-Qaeda puts out

THEY'RE probably complete with hoods and captors brandishing their weapons over the heads of their wards. That must be why they're being withheld. They make America look just like the ones we like to call terrorists.

Richard Holbrooke, our envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, said something testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee the other day which sounded much like the last administration as they defined their view of the state of their 'war on terror'.

Holbrooke said about our efforts in Pakistan: “We are developing a strategic communications plan to counter the terror information campaign, based in part on a strategy that proved successful in Iraq . . . This is an area that has been woefully under-resourced," he said, "The strategic communications plan - including electronic media, telecom, and radio - will include options on how best to counter the propaganda that is key to the insurgency’s terror campaign.”

“Concurrent with the insurgency is an information war. We are losing that war,” he said. "We can't succeed, however you define success, if we cede the airways to people who present themselves as false messengers of a prophet," said Holbrooke. "We need to combat it."

There was another 'information war' waged from the Bush/Cheney White House which also sought to influence opinion toward their own opportunistic military advance across foreign territory. It was in December 2005 that the stories surfaced of Lincoln Group, a Washington-based public relations firm, which was being paid over $100 million by the Pentagon to plant administration propaganda in the Iraqi news media; and also of an effort to pay Iraqi journalists to write favorable stories about the occupation.

In fact, the NYT pointed out that the Government Accountability Office had found that year that, despite the legality in America of spreading propaganda outside of the U.S. "the Bush administration had violated the law by producing pseudo news reports that were later used on American television stations with no indication that they had been prepared by the government."

Then-defense chief Rumsfeld addressed public criticism in the press and elsewhere of his Iraq propaganda program in a speech, as having a "chilling effect" on the Pentagon departments which work to get their opinion into the public debate.

"In Iraq, for example, Rumsfeld said, "the U.S. military command, working closely with the Iraqi government and the U.S. embassy, has sought nontraditional means to provide accurate information to the Iraqi people in the face of aggressive campaign of disinformation. Yet this has been portrayed as inappropriate; for example, the allegations of someone in the military hiring a contractor, and the contractor allegedly paying someone to print a story—a true story—but paying to print a story. For example, the resulting explosion of critical press stories then causes everything, all activity, all initiative, to stop, just frozen. Even worse, it leads to a chilling effect for those who are asked to serve in the military public affairs field."

The "chilling effect" that Rumsfeld attributed to scrutiny of his unlawful attempts to manipulate the media coming from Iraq, was in fact, exactly what the administration wanted to hold over any independent reporting coming from and about Iraq as they dangerously characterized everything coming from U.S. government and military officials as "truth," and casting the rest of the reporting and analysis unconnected to their administration as some dangerous distortion directed by their "enemies."

The Bush administration and their Pentagon were able to carry on their propaganda enterprise with impunity, despite the "chilling" scrutiny. It was revealed by the AP that an internal memo from Dorrance Smith, assistant defense secretary for public affairs, about her new efforts to organize and manage an office within the Pentagon which would provide U.S. propaganda on Iraq 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week to coincide with the anticipated release of the Petraeus' report on their 'surge' in Iraq.

Will the information "war" which is to be waged this time around by the Obama administration (and likely still, the Pentagon) be an indirect assault on the material and opinion independent of their own manipulated reporting? In the shadow of the efforts by the Bush administration to control American's perceptions of their increasingly unpopular occupation there's a queasy feeling hearing talk again of an 'information war' to promote and defend their 'long war' in the region.

Consider Bush's initial justification for his own propaganda. He complained regularly about "images of violence" from our television screens to the degree that they would, themselves, influence Americans away from his occupations. Yet, Bush couldn't change our perceptions of the bloody tragedy of his invasion and (escalated) occupation by merely changing the subject.

What is the message then that the Obama administration is sending to the populations in the way of our grudging advance against 'al-Qaeda' or the 'Taliban'? 'Sit still while we rummage and wreck and kill wherever we choose, whenever we choose?'

'Sit still while we round-up and arbitrarily detain (and interrogate) your countryfolk by the thousands in Afghanistan and Iraq - holding them indefinitely in prison, without charges, counsel, or trial - defining everyone we engage with our military offensive as 'militants' or enemies?'





In announcing the decision to fight the release of the torture photos in court, President Obama spoke of the negative effect he believes the images would have on the perception of our country's troops in the field, while, at the same time, downplaying any speculation they might be graphic and grotesque.

"I want to emphasize that these photos that were requested in this case are not particularly sensational, especially when compared to the painful images that we remember from Abu Ghraib, but they do represent conduct that did not conform with the Army Manual," Mr. Obama said in a press appearance Wednesday.

"In fact, the most direct consequence of releasing them, I believe, would be to further inflame anti-American opinion and to put our troops in greater danger," he said.

It's interesting to hear the president and Holbrooke talk about influencing the 'opinion' of the populations of the countries we've invaded, occupied, and are bombing across their sovereign borders as if our goals were benevolent and benignly altruistic. The entire military operation in that region has been defined in military terms, with military objectives carried over from the last administration's blundering militarism.

The intent and the effect of this administration's efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan is an escalation of the military offensive against any and all who we determine to be against our military objectives. Those military objectives dominate, no matter how much money and foodstuffs we offer to the population destabilized by the self-perpetuated cycle of our attacks and reprisals.

The 'collateral' killings and destruction by our forces - and by those opposing the American's strident, opportunistic advance across their homeland - are the images which persist in the view of the besieged populations the administration is looking to influence. No amount of reparations and aid (no matter how much it's actually needed) can repair the division and resentment the recipients of our military advance associate with the U.S. involvement in their nations affairs.

These folks aren't going to change their hearts and minds about all of that just because of some staged and orchestrated images of what they've experience from American soldiers and contractors for years and years. Unless that reality changes, and until America releases their countries and their people, there will be no rapprochement. The withholding of images of our militarism won't shift 'anti-American opinion' to accommodate and welcome the U.S. and their grudging militarism across sovereign borders, but it just might keep those still in blind or willing support of the military action from reacting in horror to the realities these target nations know from memory.

That's who this reluctance to release the torture photos is really directed toward. It's not just 'anti-American' opposition the White House is worried about inflaming. It's also American, European and other supporters of their continuing militarism that they intend to keep in the dark about the extent of their recklessness and abuses associated with their occupations. The new gang in town doesn't want their militarism branded with the images of the past, but I'll bet we can put up a few images of this administration's militarism, already out there, that can rival these torture pics. Maybe that was also on the president's mind.

I apologize for my crappy reply, as I'm on a tractor on the side of a hill. With a chainsaw.


I just want to also mention the fact that photos have already been released. There were poor prisoners who had been bashed shitless, and in fact were dead. Bloody faces, etc. Now granted, Bush was still in office.

But no photos will ever eclipse what happened during that Shock and Awe attack. Some of us saw peaks at that on alternative news sources, and it was horrific. Just the injured pets wandering the streets was enough to kill my soul.

There is a point in this somewhere. Even I don't know what it is as I'm posting. But the fact that we've already seen dead prisoners means quite a lot.

I think one point behind mentioning this is that there is a problem that needs addressing before America can or will become able to make the next step toward being humane, or lawful. We're a nation of bullies and power wielding idiots, if I may say so. Not everyone, or even a majority. Combine that with the roaring silence of our Wizard of Oz media, and I have doubts that we'll ever get to the bottom of what Bush and his gangsters did. After all, we never did with the assassinations and invasions of our recent past.

Obama is all we've got. And I think we've got a lot. Just like there was a trickle down consciousness that sent a green light to everyone down the line, during Bush's reign, there is quite the opposite message being sent by Obama. We are a nation of laws. Now we need to secure that.

. . . of the horrors behind our militarism abroad, not shielded from it all. There's still too much denial and whistling past the victim's graveyards. We are a nation of bullies and power wielding idiots, as you say. If the president is to do any good at all in his attempts to mold opinion about his occupations, he'll need to put it all out there, not keep the horrors hidden to soothe the consciousness of the mostly compliant American public.

Thanks for your replying :hi:

Exactly WTF are we doing there (where there = Afghanistan and Iraq)?

. . . which are inherently political in their nature and application. That political consideration makes up the bulk of the 'pragmatism' that's been attributed to his military policies. The rest looks to be a belief by Mr. Obama (or the influence on him by the military advisers and leadership he's chosen to surround himself with) in the nebulous theory of the prospect of success through the application of more military force - the Vietnam syndrome where 60-somethings are convinced that if we had just pressed harder and persisted with even more killing and even more destruction, that whatever goal or objective will succeed or prevail.

In the present dual-occupations, the goals and objectives have been defined in nation-building terms with political goals meshed with the grudging, vengeful, paranoid military offensive against remnants and ghosts of the original 9-11 fugitive terror suspects. Fealty given by this administration to the Bushian theory of 'fighting them there' is the hook which keeps us bogged down in the ridiculous defense against anyone who stands in the way of our advance across their sovereign homeland and identifies their cause with our al-Qaeda nemesis.

The fact is, we are still 'there' because there is an institutional insecurity in disengaging from a battle where our military and government is well aware of the blowback effects from our seven-plus years of reckless, flailing militarism. It's a weakness which began with Bush's simpering saber-rattling and swaggering threats which our collective asses had no real prospect of cashing. In the perpetuation of these occupations, you can see the limits in the exercise of our stunning military force in effecting the things that sustain societies and make them grow and prosper.

Yet, our present government and military leadership is still trying to convince us (through the acquiescence to more flailing militarism) that they can overtake the counter-productive effects and consequences which have graced our nation's military offensives in the region so far. Congress wants to 'give the new administration a year'. Obey said he gave Nixon a year, and that Obama deserved the same. That's as good an illustration as any of how little distance we've come in our thinking since that era. I'm hoping for more growth and change than we're likely to get in the near future. I hope for better.

but we are.

. . . that we still can't get our government to be open and honest about the practices and extent of our militarism. This administration is still being too paternalistic in their defense of their corrupted institutions. I can't say for certain if that's from some malicious intent or from a misunderstanding of the needs, desires, and capacity of the American public for the truth __ but, we need a real change, not half-assed, patronizing compromises with criminals and traitors.