Thursday, February 16, 2006

Don't turn your face away

I'm betting most of you know that Salon has more Abu Ghraib photos. While I was brushing my teeth this morning, NPR told me they contained nothing new, but if you look for yourself you can see this isn't true. One of the pictures shows a man with his hands cuffed behind his back, apparantly sodomizing himself with a dildo. Given the way his hands are bound, however, I'm not sure he could have inserted the dildo all by himself. Also, there is blood on the sheet near his posterior, indicating that he may be bleeding from the anus. This would happen if the dildo was jammed in with great force. I believe this is the first photographic evidence of rape at Abu Ghraib.

Added: Although this story was featured prominently on Morning Edition, the New York Times, Washington Post, and CNN do not seem to be carrying it. Nor does it appear in on the Google news front page. I suppose this is an effect of the claim that there is nothing new here. It may also just be cowardice.

Added added: Body and Soul points to a odd discrepancy. Salon says they have a complete set of the Pentagon’s Abu Ghraib photos. Seymour Hersh claims that the Pentagon has video of children being raped. Was Hersh wrong? Does Salon have worse photos it is holding back? Is Salon’s set actually incomplete?
Also, the Post has a story (in the Style section!) in part about why they are not running the photos that they have, but mostly about how the blood stained walls remind the author of Jackson Pollack and our common humanity. Body and Soul comments on it. I just think its a weird to avoid horror and a call to action by intellectualizing it.

Also also, apparently over the Summer The Post released video of Charles Granger making human pyramids that I missed.

Frankly, the failure of journalists to release absolutely everything they have makes zero sense to me. None. The justification seems to be "well, if we release these photos, the US will look bad, and it won't actually undo any of the crimes." This makes about as much sense as hiding evidence of a murder because it would make the murderer look bad, without being able to bring the dead back to life. In fact, the murder analogy isn't an analogy at all. It is just a description of what is going on.

What an astonishingly shitty day.

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