I know many people don't agree with me about this (torture pics)

[bhunt70]

but I don't feel the need to have 1000 photos come to light with videos to boot. People who side with Bush will say "they do the same to us", others will ignore it even if its shown right in their face.

I do think this story shouldn't die, and I think by talking about it and keeping it in the public it will be easier to do so. I think in this case, since it is a world issue it will be harder to kill this story than your average bushco machination. I agree with you all that this story shouldn't become back page news, the people responsible should be tried and held accountable. It is a major black eye on the US "Freedom" effort in Iraq and to our world image.

It's just that a certain amount of awareness will come from showing the pictures and I feel there is a point of diminishing returns after which I feel that it is more to feed a political machine than to actually bring justice or a better image to the world that what we are currently leaving there.

I also wonder about the actual victims of the torture. How much is too much for them, I can't answer that. I can try to speculate how a grown man who has been humiliated, imasculated, tortured and dehumanize may feel and my first thought is immediately that if something like that happened to me I would want to disconnect from the world. I wouldn't want it on all the 24 hour new stations. Perhaps you feel different about it, and thats cool with me.

I don't want to brush this fuck up under the rug but at the same time I don't want to sensationalize or make it a political statement any more than it has to be. It is a major administration fuck up and should be seen as such, the fruition of an ill advised unjust war where it literally seems the inmates (Bush, Cheney, Rove, Rummy etc) run the asylum. Even as such, I don't want to wield it as a major campaign tool because ultimately that would be using the misfortune of the detainees to our gain.

I'm not trying to start a fight with people who think all the information should be all over the news, the internet or however you might think it best to let release this information. I dont think the pictures should be destroyed. I do think they should be available for the public to see, but I worry about the venue at this time.

two anectdotes that I think of when thinking of these pictures...one is a picture that might have been taken of you when you were totally trashed doing something incredibly stupid or maybe a horrible picture of you taken as someone kicked your ass or something. It may show up in the school paper, or your friends and enemies might always refer back to it or always show it to someone who hasn't seen it before. You in all your glory, humiliated.

The second is a bit more personal...I was on a message board one time and someone had a post saying something like "check this crazy shit out" so I clicked the link. What I saw was a guy (A chechnyan) laying on the ground with a boot holding his head down, in a split second someone (a russian soldier) brought a knife down and jammed it in behind his wind pipe and started cutting. I could hear the air mixed with blood in his throat, his eyes open as he was dying on film. I felt sick as this unknow person kept cutting until they had cut this guys head off. It fucking almost makes me cry thinking about it, I've never seen shit like that before. I know it goes on, but it's now seared into my brain I can't forget any part of it. I feel dirty having ever watched it, all I could/can think about is this person who I didnt know and his family, the guy that killed him and what the fuck would make someone do that aside from war. I had witnessed a war crime on video.

Sorry so long, I've been wanting to spew all my thoughts on this for some time, I guess its a bit cathartic. I have a feeling that my view is pretty unpopular, Im not here to fight about it. I'm not a freeper, a chicken hawk or disruptor. I get 90% of my news from here & LBN, the rest from NPR on the right to and from work, and a bit from glimpses I get from the tv tuned to cnn 20 feet from me at work. I'm not leaving, Im not mad, I just felt like saying all that.

Ben

[Speck Tater]

1. The world has a right to know. If you don't want to see them,

turn the channel or close your eyes.

[whistle]

2. The pictures and videos are evidence....

...like the photographs of the holocaust. We must never let this or any other government of the United States suppress the truth from the people. I want to know that anyone who chooses to view the evidence can do so, and I sure don't want any member of congress democrat, republican or independent telling me or anyone else what we can see, or hear or read. Give us full access!

[bhunt70]

8. I'm not sure what good the evidence does in our hands though.

We don't make the decision, we don't try those on trial. What if the victims did not want it seen? The damage is done, pandoras box has been opened but at what point have we let too much out of the box at the expense of the Iraqi people? Im really not saying we should censor or hide it, but at what point do we "get the point". Kentuck said something I agree with (I think it was Kentuck), we have the evidence, we just have to do the right thing with it and not make it seem like a Democrat issue. The world expects more than us politicizing it in an election year.

[Dookus]

3. The problem

is who do you trust to tell us what we should see or not?

It's obviously in the government's interest to hide the pictures. Do we trust them to decide which pictures we should see?

More information is better than less.

[bhunt70]

10. I agree with you

I'm not qualified to answer the question though, it's a catch 22. The very people we need to make an informed decision on this are people we have come to distrust for the most part, our government.

[Walt Starr]

4. RELEASE IT ALL NOW!!!

It's all got to come out and its all got to be public.

[shraby]

5. This wasn't just a

screw up..it was crimes against humanity. The Geneva Convention was written to avoid these kinds of acts and for a very good reason. These acts lead to worse and worse depravity the likes of which were witnessed after WWII when the concentration camps were opened. It's a very short and slippery road from acts designed to humiliate people, to acts designed to torture, to acts designed to kill in a very brutal way.
The people who were responsible for creating the rules that allowed this slippery road to be embarked upon should be held accountable and swiftly. To do anything less is tantamount to a crime unto itself.

[Redbear]

6. I don't think there's much disagreement with your position.

The first batch of photos was important because it made the abuse "real." The second batch seems important because of the attempt to play off the whole thing as just the stupdity of a few soldiers.

But, at some point it's not beneficial to anyone. It's just sad.

[Oddman]

7. Release them all . . . slowly but surely

SSSSLLLLLOOOOOWWWWWLLLLLYYYYY . . .

Remember who wins the race . . .


As President Bush put it, they are an exceptional "few bad apples" whose actions "do not reflect the nature of our country."

[mike1963]

9. It is a tough call. I hear you clearly. What to do? I'm not sure either

How to deal with this is prognosticating and that's notoriously unreliable. I guess I think that exposure is the best way to stop what has been taking place but it has the inconvenient corollary of putting our own citizens and soldiers more in harm's way. Hobson's Choice?
Catch-22?

Maybe the only thing that will fix the dilemma is a 20 trillion ton asteroid landing on Kansas City...................

[Selwynn]

11. I disagree.

Made this post earlier today -

EVERY picture needs to be shown and shown and shown and shown again.

This cannot be swept under the rug. The administration would like nothing more than for there to be no more pictures because Americans have a very short term memory and tend to "downplay" the seriousness of things without visual aids.

The feelings of the victims will be best served by the truth coming out and by those responsible being held accountable. That will NOT happen unless it is shoved in everyone's face EVERY DAY until something is done. If it goes away from national attention, it will go away for good. The only way to keep it in the national spotlight is to keep making people uncomfortable with how horrible it is.

If the pictures disturb you - good. They should. They should be BURNED into the brains of every American who has ever dismissively said "that would never happen in America." The should be burned into the brains of everyone, period. And they should not go away, not at all, until there is accountability in our government and our military.

[happynewyear]

12. The pictures are the evidence to get rid of * & Co.

Images speak louder than words and you openly admit this. Indeed the pictures are sickening and horrific and also, inexcusable on all levels. However, many want to look at the pictures and cannot see them as the site www.thememoryhole.org is so busy it cannot be accessed.

Knowledge is power no matter how horrible and real it may be.

I have a problem with children being able to see these pictures. For that reason alone I wish they weren't so readily viewable. They are upsetting to look at I agree and I am sure they make certain members of society very sick and depressed. That is how I feel myself about it.

When I was in school, we had to have written permission from our parents to learn and view films about the holocaust. I can only remember how horrrified I was when I first learned about it. *shock*!

If you don't want to look at these pictures, change the channel on your television and avoid the threads on the DU and elsewhere that pertain to them. Don't feed the machine. I suppose that is about all I can say.

baldearg

[sandnsea]

13. America needs new pictures

5 a week, for 2 or 3 months before the fact that this is REAL reality and not reality tv sinks in.

[Steven_S]

14. They should stop showing them....

When the last neo-con right wing lunatic says:

"You know what, that's a pretty fucked up thing to do to another human being"

AND NOT BEFORE

[mitchtv]

15. Don't show them , and in two weeks .."never happened"

exagerations, etc etc yada yada

[soundfury]

16. If the photos donÕt come out É

some Americans wonÕt believe it, they are already making stupid excuse for what weÕve seen so far.

[troublemaker]

17. We are all wearing the Blue Dress now

Title of an entry by digsby that has stuck with me hard. Every time this topic comes up, I think "We're all wearing the blue dress now." The scandal business isn't just about one man's foibles any more... Bush has dragged us all into this.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/

[troublemaker]

18. Analysis

Releasing 1000 more pictures isn't gonna make Arabs much more pissed off than 10.

It won't make us look any worse to Europe--they already expect the worst.

The only reason for not releasing them I can see is to support Bush and/or with war as a general proposition.