Through Arab, And American, Eyes

[dArKeR]

A picture is worth more a thousand words. Words can be twisted, interpreted. They mean different things to different people. But a picture can speak for itself, and no amount of words will erase the images from Abu Gharib prison.

Of all the depraved digital photos of prisoner abuse at the hands of their American captors, the one that has burned itself into the archives of our collective memories is the hooded, cloaked, figure of a man with cables dangling from his outstretched arms. He has become an icon of the War in Iraq - like the naked Vietnamese girl with the napalm burns running down a road, who became an icon of the War in Vietnam.

I found myself looking at the picture of the Iraqi with the outstretched arms while reading a newspaper in a bus full of Arabs on the Persian Gulf. You could hardly open a newspaper in the Arab world without seeing it. But I felt ashamed, as if I were looking at pornography. What were the other people in the bus, the non-Westerners, thinking? They had all seen the same picture in their newspapers and on their televisions.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/05/10/opinion/fenton/main616422.shtml

Where are the official US military recorded interigations? Where are the recordings of the official prison hallway cameras?