From the Telegraph, in between stories on MPs’ expenses:
At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.
Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.
Another apparently shows a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts.
Detail of the content emerged from Major General Antonio Taguba, the former army officer who conducted an inquiry into the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq.
Allegations of rape and abuse were included in his 2004 report but the fact there were photographs was never revealed. He has now confirmed their existence in an interview with the Daily Telegraph.
The graphic nature of some of the images may explain the US President’s attempts to block the release of an estimated 2,000 photographs from prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan despite an earlier promise to allow them to be published.
Maj Gen Taguba, who retired in January 2007, said he supported the President’s decision, adding: “These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency.
“I am not sure what purpose their release would serve other than a legal one and the consequence would be to imperil our troops, the only protectors of our foreign policy, when we most need them, and British troops who are trying to build security in Afghanistan…”
This phrasing, “other than a legal one”, puzzles me. First, I do not think there is no other purpose. Truth has a value all its own and so does documentation of truth. Justice has a separate value than merely “legal”. There are assuredly other reasons. Second, what is wrong with serving a legal purpose?
Second, I do not know that “the consequence would be” etc. It seems to me that a consequence might be etc. Context of presentation matters. Do you release the photos while demanding justice? While seeking truth and reconciliation? Do you do so forthrightly or reluctantly? Or are they leaked?
UPDATED to add, Nick Baumann wants to know if it’s so, why have there been no courts martial?
17 comments
May 28, 2009 at 11:05 am
saintneko
I posted an open letter to Mr. Obama on my blog. To wit:
Dear Mr. Obama,
If you do not release the prison photos from Iraq and Afghanistan, you run the risk of becoming a worse president than the one before you. If you cover up the work of a criminal, according to the American justice system, you yourself become a criminal. You are aiding and abetting. And when you have the man who wrote the report telling the world what these photographs contain, you look even worse for holding them back. Justice is not being served. You are helping cover the tracks of war criminals.
You are disappointing those who believed in you. You are becoming a liar.
You’re becoming everything you said you fought against. Even some of my die-hard republican friends voted for you, because anyone else with a chance of becoming president was vowing to continue illegal wars. Now, you yourself are vowing to continue the wars you proclaimed to oppose. And are aiding and abetting war criminals from being brought to justice, from allowing the truth of what we Americans – we who call ourselves the shining beacon of light, hope and justice in this world – what we Americans did and allowed to happen in the illegal wars we started in countries we illegally invaded.
If this does not come to light, if justice is not served… we ourselves will find out that we are the terrorists the world is uniting against. Because if justice is not served… it will happen again.
This is not the country I was taught about in school. Where we live now is a parody of that once-great nation. It can be great again, but not by hiding from our mistakes.
You must own your mistakes, or they will end up owning you. Don’t get us owned, Mr. Obama.
And before anyone says “Nothing will ever take America down,” I invite you to study the history of the greatest empires the world has ever known. Notice how that’s past-tense.
May 28, 2009 at 11:29 am
bitchphd
This is completely not a policy statement or anything other than a very personal response, but reading that description of the photos is more than enough for me. Christ almighty.
May 28, 2009 at 11:39 am
The Wrath of Oliver Khan
I concur with Dr. Bitch. I only wish I’d seen this article prior to Monday, so I would have been able to link to it when some of my Facebook friends were questioning my insufficient enthusiasm for those who wear the uniform.
May 28, 2009 at 12:05 pm
Daniel
I’m personally skeptical of how much releasing these photos would “endanger the troops” which seems to be the best argument to not release the photos. Making them public would definitely help close Gitmo and put the focus back on ending the torture. And besides, something this horrible deserves to be out in the open because it did happen —we shouldn’t act like it didn’t.
May 28, 2009 at 12:27 pm
Ralph Hitchens
Nick Bauman and others may well want to know why more people haven’t been put on trial for these egregious violations. Military Judge Advocate General’s offices are not much different from district attorneys in this regard — often there is no doubt that crimes took place but it’s difficult to put together a case that will stand up in court. Courts Martial are not “slam dunk” events for the military, based on my personal experience from having sat on many as a junior officer in the USAF. Even major atrocities like My Lai and the “Tiger Force” actions in Vietnam were difficult to prosecute for what turns out to be standard legal reasons — conflicting testimony years after the fact, deceased participants, lack of hard forensic evidence, etc. In the present situation, if there’s very little physical evidence apart from photos, I suspect that not much is going to go to trial in the age of PhotoShop.
May 28, 2009 at 12:48 pm
eric
Further, from Tara McKelvey:
May 28, 2009 at 1:39 pm
Tyler
At some point, we should concede that the people who want to “imperil our troops” already hate us as much as they possibly can, as proven by their current behavior. They have already decided to kill American troops wherever possible, as the history of the Iraq war has shown us. If they are going to try to kill us whether or not we release the pictures, then their opinion is moot.
It is very easy for the military to hide behind the excuse of providing for troop safety, since it is a laudable goal. But I think that their real motivation is avoidance of embarrassment. Gotta keep the myth of the noble citizen-soldier alive.
The administration probably has a few different motives. First of all, they don’t want a decrease in public enthusiasm for the war (a certain result of the release of the pictures) to hinder their efforts in Afghanistan. Secondly, they have already stated that they don’t want to prosecute anyone for war crimes, and the release of new evidence will make it more difficult for them to credibly keep that position.
Another concern which they probably have, and which they should have, is alienation of moderate Muslims and even Western allied nations. It is one thing to know that torture took place, and entirely another to see the pictures. Maybe terrorist groups will have a recruiting spree. Maybe Nato and EU countries will withdraw their support for the war in Afghanistan and other efforts.
But even if those concerns are realistic, do they outweigh the harm that will be done to rule of law if we let those acts go unexamined and unpunished? Won’t a precedent be set that it is ok to torture as long as nobody finds out about it? And what about the unavoidable truth that some day, those photos will somehow be released or leaked? Doesn’t that mean we should accept that the consequences of the release of the photos are inevitable? Shouldn’t we just release them then?
May 28, 2009 at 2:24 pm
Chris Gerrib
I have to agree with the “don’t release” crowd. By all means, punish the offenders, but releasing the photos will only serve to inflame a crowd.
May 28, 2009 at 4:06 pm
bitchphd
I honestly believe that Obama’s argument is sincere (which I never believed about Bush/Cheney). But I do think that it’s problematic. I guess I’m reluctantly on the “they should be released” side of the argument.
May 28, 2009 at 4:47 pm
JPool
Sincerity isn’t the question. Pictures of our soldiers engaging in sexual assault — not just sexual humiliation, but sexual assault of prisoners — probably would hurt our national security/endanger our troops, but that not a good reason not to do it. If we’re shutting down Guantanamo and trying to make a fresh start on this justice, openness, humane treatment thing, then lets make a clean breast of it now rather than leaving this material suppressed and festering in the files.
They should be released, but I don’t ever want to look at them.
May 28, 2009 at 10:25 pm
jeffbowers
This debate is far more polarized than it needs to be. Both sides have staked out narrow positions without regard for neutral ground and alternative choices that substantially meet the goal — which I share — of holding accountable those responsible for creating a culture of state-sanctioned torture in the U.S. Tyler points out some very real nuances to Obama’s predicament, but I think everyone is conflating accountability with prosecution and punishment. It doesn’t have to be so, and in fact I believe that a protracted effort to prosecute torturers and those who enable them will yield little satisfaction. The fruits of the “legal” route, as Taguba asserts, are probably not worth what is likely to be a significant anti-U.S. backlash throughout the Muslim world (not to mention the gnashing of teeth among less moderate elements in Islam such as those offended by a Mohammed cartoon). Successful prosecutions will be hard to come by, and I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that no photos of torture or rape, no matter how disgusting and dishonorable, will ever be tied directly to Bush or Cheney (or Yoo et al.).
If we insist on litigating this moral issue, then the photos may still be presented as evidence to a limited group of judges, attorneys and jurors. But just as we don’t need to show the gruesome outcome of a car accident to the public to convey tragedy and remorse, we shouldn’t have to publish these photos to convey the depraved nature of high-level perpetrators or the gravity of our complicity as a nation in the abuse of detainees, some of them innocent of any substantial wrongdoing.
It’s our complicity as Congresspeople and voters that really makes all this so complicated. The nation was more than happy to shame Nixon in the wake of Watergate, and shame is exactly the vehicle — a moral one as opposed to a legal one — for punishing the Bush administration’s key players in this debacle. And it’s arguable that we really do need the catharsis of seeing the unthinkable depicted in these images in order to activate that sense of shame. Maybe that will be true at some point, but I bet not so much at the moment. We’re in denial as a nation: we looked the other way out of fear that 9/11 could happen again, and we’re not quite ready to reckon with the morality of that collective decision.
I’m inclined to give Obama the benefit of the doubt in his moral calculation. Short-term impacts to our standing in the world and interruptions to U.S. foreign policy efforts may legitimately trump legal efforts that have only a middling chance, at best, to succeed, and which are almost certainly not going to prevent future barbarity among elected leaders. If prosecution really was a deterrent, we wouldn’t even be having this debate, now would we?
May 29, 2009 at 2:42 am
ajay
Another concern which they probably have, and which they should have, is alienation of moderate Muslims and even Western allied nations. It is one thing to know that torture took place, and entirely another to see the pictures. Maybe terrorist groups will have a recruiting spree. Maybe Nato and EU countries will withdraw their support for the war in Afghanistan and other efforts.
Maybe moderate Muslims and Western allies should be alienated from the US, if the US is doing things like this. Maybe NATO should withdraw its support in Afghanistan, if what they have effectively been doing is harvesting a steady stream of victims to keep the torturers busy.
Maybe it will make people around the world hate the US; but maybe, given these facts, the US deserves to be hated.
May 29, 2009 at 4:18 am
dave
One of the most onerous, and morally serious, duties of commanders in wartime is to actively prevent the commission of atrocities. This is the failure of the US in Iraq, it needs to be documented, publicly, to the pain and the shame of all concerned. Everyone, including the soldiers involved, needs to know that they were failed, that their chain of command failed them, and allowed them to become the monsters that war always threatens to unleash, and which the forces of a republic under the rule of law must hold in check.
May 29, 2009 at 5:40 am
Ben Alpers
If we insist on litigating this moral issue…
This is a moral issue, but it’s always, first, been a legal one. American officials violated national and international laws. They ought to be investigated and prosecuted. Handwaiving about what the consequences about following the rule of law will be for opinion about the U.S. in the Muslim world is both irrelevant and probably misplaced. Just as Germany has, over the years, justifiably won brownie points around the world for its Vergangenheitsbewaltigung, i.e. coming to terms with its Nazi past, we would score points in the long run for punishing those responsible for war crimes and owning up to them.
And not to be a dfh, but if you want to protect the troops, bring them home. Now. And don’t start other unnecessary, illegal wars.
May 29, 2009 at 7:24 am
dana
The problem, to my mind, with not releasing the photos is that it makes it very unlikely then that anyone will be punished for (jesus wept) raping prisoners. Imagine that the first set of photos had not been released; would there have been anything close to the public outcry? If it had all remained at the level of “Sources says that the Americans’ so-called interrogation techniques including stacking naked prisoners on top of each other”? The pictures couldn’t be ignored or explained away.
May 29, 2009 at 12:20 pm
Tyler
ajay:
I agree that much of the anti-Americanism in the Muslim world is our own fault. There seem to be two components to anti-Americanism: political blowback and religious extremism. The blowback is pretty much our fault. The religious extremists use it to promote their own religious agenda.
But while it seems justified to say that they *should* hate us, there is a problem with that statement if it is being used as a political justification for releasing the photos, rather than merely a moral one. If the United States experiences more political alienation because of the photos, especially from our western allies, then it isn’t only the war effort which will be derailed. Climate change, nuclear proliferation, and other such pressing issues cannot be handled unless the US is involved. If the EU or the UN are reluctant to work with the US, those problems can’t be solved.
I am in favor of releasing the photos. I think the political damage can be handled if the photos are released by the administration in a timely manner. But the longer they are covered up, the worse they will look when they are inevitably released. However, I think it is a good thing to understand that Obama’s argument against releasing the photos does have some merit.
June 1, 2009 at 3:53 am
ajay
Tyler – I think you jump slightly too far; in furtherance of common goals like preventing climate change, the EU and the UN are demonstrably willing to work even with nations with horrible human rights records (like China). I don’t think that the US would be completely shut out of negotiations. The rest of the world is quite aware of the point you make – that US involvement is essential in dealing with global problems.
If it had alienated its western allies, the US might find the negotiations do not end up quite as much in its favour as they would otherwise have done, but that’s a different question. You seem to be expressing the view that support for US goals by the rest of the western world is a good thing for the world, rather than just a good thing for the US, and I’m not sure that’s the case.