What I was waiting for---WAPO picks up on new Abu Ghraib photos

Justice Is Comin

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Thu Feb-16-06 06:27 AM
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What I was waiting for---WAPO picks up on new Abu Ghraib photos

Now it will be on the networks. They can't ignore it. Once it hits the Washington Post or New York Times, they have to give it credibility. The loaf networks won't pick up anything from a non recognized paper or source. No matter how credible. They have to have it force fed down their throats.

Should be getting some airtime tonight I would think. Bravo again for The WaPo.

~clip~

y Philip Kennicott
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 16, 2006; Page C01

From the beginning of the Abu Ghraib scandal, when the first images of torture and humiliation from the Iraqi prison appeared, we knew there were more. And now, two years later, they've begun to emerge. An Australian television network has put yet more scenes of blood and savagery into circulation, circumventing both the U.S. government's efforts to keep Abu Ghraib images out of the public eye and the gatekeeping of news organizations (including this newspaper), which have not published a substantial number of photographs they are holding.

Just as certainly as they will inflame the Arab and Muslim world, they will raise the question of whether it is responsible for Western news organizations to distribute them. And for bloggers to post them. And for pundits to debate them. Do they add anything new, or only open old wounds? Do they undo the work of investigation, trial and punishment that put men like Charles Graner, one of the original perpetrators, behind bars? Or do they underscore the inadequacy of that process, both the limited scope of who has been punished, and the apparently limited deterrent effect of the scandal? Reports of abuse continue to come in, from prisons in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, and U.S. leaders, who denounce torture, have been accused of keeping the door open for abuses that are torture in all but name.

Newspapers that have held these images have been constrained, in large part, by the sheer graphic nature of them, especially the nudity. Other images are difficult to interpret and show things that are hard to identify. In the latter category is a photograph that began popping up on Web sites yesterday, of what seems to be a toilet floor covered with blood and litter, framed by a small glimpse of tiled walls. It suggests a bathroom turned into a holding cell, or perhaps a scene from a hospital or triage center, or a torture chamber. The blood on the floor instantly suggests the splatter and drip paintings of the abstract expressionists.

Newspapers have often turned to blood as a substitute for violence, showing photographs of the gore that lingers on streets long after the bodies -- too graphic to show -- have been cleared away. Here, in a photo that contains no particular information, no names, no certainty even about whether it shows what it seems to show, is the blood image in a new form. This is no substitute, no polite euphemism for what can't be shown. Blood as a substitute for death deflects horror; this blood demands answers.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/15/AR2006021502349.html :applause: