Slashdot Mirror
Digital Cameras Change War Photo-Journalism
prakslash writes "Back in 1945, it took three days between the time U.S. Marines raised the flag on Iwo Jima and the famous picture of the historic moment was published in all the newspapers. In 2004, it took barely an hour before the explosive photos from an Iraqi prison were seen all over the world. This drives home a defining fact of 21st century - the pervasiveness of digital photography and the speed of the Internet are making it easier to see into dark corners previously out of reach of the mass media. As reported in
recent news, some of the most shocking Iraqi photos were not taken by photo-journalists but by soldiers and government contractors who used a digital camera, a CD burner and an internet connection to zip the photos around the world with an ease that has never existed before."
Pictures can be re-touched faster too.
I don't think the pics out of Iraq are re-touched, but the ease and power of photoshop and such is something to keep in mind...
No, you idiot! You use PKzip to zip images, not the Internet!
read the bunni comic
As a result of the near-instant publishing of "sensitive" materials, expect to see the military prohibit digital cameras shortly.
Yeah, right.
Maybe someone should "zip" them a copy of the Geneva Convention?
Maybe Bush should "zip" away and sign the Hauge treaty?
This is going to totally change the rules, when you have 5 megapixel digital cameras that will easily fit in a BDU jacket pocket and when everyone has one you're going to see a lot of pictures that the Pentagon would rather you didn't, which is probably a good thing.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
Because it provides at least a partial answer to "who guards the guards".
A crack-down on possession is almost inevitable, since our society seems to prefer hiding problems over fixing them, but IMO any such crack-down will be lamentable.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Its bad enough US troops were doing this, but why were they even taking pictures of it? How stupid can you get, really...
"Anyone who quotes me in their
The Washington Post was allowed to post the Pentagon papers because they had a million lawyers behind them.. If we go to a mostly indy media, can the government harass editors and throw them into prison
If you think this isn't possible, what's changed between now and the alien and sedition act of before?
The first prison photos to be shown on CBS were taken last year .
"Some fight for law. Some fight for justice. What will you fight for? One day, you will see."
...never made it home from the earlier conflicts? I'm sure our perceptions -- and maybe even the outcomes -- of wars-gone-by would be radically different had the public had access to images of events and incidents from those.
WTF?! From what I understand, these abuse photos were taken way back in January! That's a lot more than an hour.
What is being said about the shortening of the photojournalism cycle is still true, I just think this is a case of a bad example.
The date of the pictures is a seemingly minor detail, but I think it's very important. Little innacuracies like this perpetuate broad misunderstandings of important events.
-Matt
You are saying that it was an hour between the time the photo was shot and it was "seen all over the world"? I'm calling BS.
These pictures were taken months ago. Iwo Jima beat them them to publication by a mile.
They're not hard to find.
What's more disturbing are the details in this leaked US army report
Sadam was a evil dictator and... .. the US is supposed to be the good democracy. The whole leader of the free world bullshit.
The rest of the world just regards the photos as proof that the US miltary is a bunch of cowboys.
The Red Cross report didn't have an effect.
The complaints didn't have an effect.
The eye witness accounts didn't have an effect.
A few pictures change everything.
Most people have stronger reactions to pictures than they do to printed words. If the military is going to control the reaction, the military is going to ban cameras.
When cameras are outlawed, only outlaws will have cameras.
Was nobody paying attention when Rumsfeld, Gen. Myers and the other Pentagon brass were testifying? The pictures were apparently taken in December 2003, copies passed to Army CID mid-January 2004 and copies were first in the Pentagon around the start of February. Gen. Myers even knew CBS had the pictures long enough to request they not publish, at least for the time being - the potential suppression of the media being something both Senatorial and Congressional committees were quite concerned over. So from the pictures being taken to being front-page news took closer to five months than "barely an hour".
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
I'd categorize this as interesting and possibly related to the topic at hand. But since when did being off-topic ever stop me from making a /. post? [Yeah, I know my karma will go all negative.]
They are more controversial and shocking because we are Americans and we preach to the world that we are better than everyone else and then we go and do shit like this.
Here is a link to some. I don't know if it's all of them.
(self)censorship seems to be rampant; I can't even find the original photos. Why should we trust the media when they won't even provide access to the origianal, undoctored pictures? I mean, that's the main evidence, why not give the public acces to it so they can draw their own conculsions?
Meanwhile, many of us see movies weeks before they're even released to theatres and watch TV shows the day after they air via internet exchanges. Just the other day someone promised to post a TV program that had JUST aired "as soon as the encoding is done" which, in this case, was about four hours.
I buy and sell shit via the internet in the blink of an eye. Just the other day I bought another CD from magnatune and the only reason it took me a day to get it was because of my hideously slow dialup connection and my insistence on getting the highest practical quality (FLAC).
ALL these examples and the best you can come up with is to mention an "old guard" news source releasing months old photos only AFTER they had "cleared it with washington?" Yeesh.
In Australia, the major political parties frequently hold party meetings that are closed to the public, and to cameras. Thanks to new mobile phones that now have video recording capabilities, a brawl at a national branch meeting of the Liberal Party was caught on camera for all the world to see. I'm sure a lot of people had to think twice about the image of the Liberals as a "mature and rational" party after that, I know I sure did.
Just one detail for the freepers out there--the abuses occurred (and the photos were taken) in fall 2003. This is months before the four American contractors were killed and had their bodies burned in Fallujah.
So, if you want to put a biblical eye-for-an-eye spin on this, the Fallujah killings in March may have been revenge for the Abu Ghraib abuses, not the other way around as some folks are trying to insinuate.
Remain calm! All is well!
Could it be because they are in fucking Dubai enjoying all the nice official pictures on those plasma screens?
Or could it be because they are busy sipping drinks at some Hotel in Baghdad?
Or *gasp* could it be becasue they are [in]embedded with coalition forces?
Melius mori in libertate quam vivere in servitute.
War crimes
True, but take any pictures not reported by a reasonably credible source with a pinch of salt. There are apparently a lot of pictures circulating that have been culled from a hardcore German porn flick. As you might expect these are already circulating around Usenet and the more sensational and inflamatory websites.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
If the U.S. military bans digital cameras from personnel, it might give the impression to the world that abusive acts on prisoners can continue without being discovered. If they don't ban cameras, odds are that more humiliating images will be released, inciting further hatred from the Arab community. I am glad that I am not the Secretary of Defense right now...
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
Since the Starr Report, and perhaps before that the Oklahoma City Bombings, the internet has become one of the most important vehicles of communication in politics. 9-11 distributed information faster, more personally, and with far less repetition than the news channels. Howard Dean's campaign, while unsuccesful, nevertheless demonstrated the importance of a web presence for an aspiring politician, something that Kerry and Bush seem to have all but neglected.
This scandel again demonstrates the increasing proliferation of the net and its significance in modern politics. What we're seeing here is like TV was to the Kennedy-Nixon debates or the Army McCarthy Hearings. This is another phase in the coming of age of the net as a viable medium at least as significant as print and TV, the "old media." And this coming of age will only continue, perhaps until The Next Big Thing in 50 years. These incidents, the Starr Report to the Iraqi Prison Pictures, should serve as a warning to any politician that would overlook the power of the net as a communicative tool. Those who embrace the web, like Kennedy with the TV camera, will flourish. Those who do not, will like Nixon regret they didn't.
Yes, today's pictures can be photoshopped, but retouching war pictures or contriving them in general is hardly new. The famous Iwo Jima photo was not the actual flag raising right after the battle, but a re-enactment for the camera (God I hope I'm right about that, actually)
And when war photography first came to the fore, during the US Civil War, photography was treated like paintings, and photos were taken after the battles with soldiers set up in posed, contrived positions because of the long exposure time.
Just something to think about. The camera can be remarkable for conveying accurate truths, or for conveying convincing lies.
Yup...
Looking at the photo's EXIF info most of it was either stripped or a very old digital camera was used.
Most people don't know about EXIF so I doubt they conciously stripped out the info. Yes the data is rather banal but it could be useful to track down the make/model of equipment used to lift a finger print or narrow down suspects.
Given the fact Digital evidence is getting very dicey to track down the photographer (although in this case I doubt any investigation is really needed) I suspect that makers will begin to embed much more in EXIF and other features of the photographs that can't be masked.
Stego could be used to imprint the makers mark without the consumer ever knowing anything.
It's a reverse of how some scanners/printers/software muck with the moire patterns when you scan money.
One of the criticisms of the Bush administration is that they're a bunch of cold-war throwbacks (Cheney, Rice, Feith, Wolfowitz) left over from the Republican cabinets of 1980-92 , and they came into power in 2000 all set to pick up where they left off, with star wars, new nukes, and new air combat platforms. Never mind that in 8 years the world had moved on and the active threat to America was terrorism, requiring police vigilance and response, not nation-killing weapons.
Now the Bush administration is losing control of the media coverage in Iraq. They've done very well up to this point--embedding reporters with units makes them very sympathetic, and for whatever reason US corporate media sources simply do not give bad news from Iraq the same prominence that other english-language sources do (UK, etc.). But, they've been caught by ubiquitous digital cameras and CD burners. Word-of-mouth is deniable, but trivially copyable pictures, where every grunt can have his own collection, is just too hard to control.
Personally I'm shocked that soldiers were allowed to have cameras--what kind of operational security is that? But, just like these guys don't get the net, they didn't realize the difference between film cameras and digital cameras--digital photos propagate at T1 speeds. This means that a hot photo may be copied 1000s of times in a week, where a film photo might be handed off, but not copied.
Remain calm! All is well!
From an article in the Sydney Morning Herald,
"For two weeks before 60 Minutes in America broke the torture story, it obeyed requests from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Myers not to run it for fear it would harm American interests in Iraq. The network ran it only after learning that other journalists would tell the story if it didn't.
(see http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/05/08/10839114 61425.html)
In this case, it was relatively "instant" only once the news was ALLOWED to be let out of the bag.((U+C+I) x (10-S))/20 x A x 1/(1-sin(F/10))
Auuugh! Cameras are good! It allows the people to check on what their army is really doing. Don't want embarrasing pictures? How about not acting in a way you'd be embarrased to have the world know instead of confiscating cameras?
-- MG
it's evidence of digital computers.
The problem is the nature of the work in which they are trained professionals.
Soldiers are trained to kill.
I can think of no circumstances under which such training would encourage humanity or civic virtue.
People who undergo the psychological conditioning neccesary to kill, maim and obey orders, aquire the ability to dehumanise the "other".
Under the circumstances, systematic torture and brutality would seem to be inevitable.
Grunts don't do that shit. They see enough blood and guts.
It seems it's always the REMF's who do it.
The Geneva Conventions only cover POW's and civilians and criminals.
2 07 07-2004Apr17.html
Bush (their Commander in Chief) has SPECIFICALLY stated that some of the people we've captured are NOT covered under the Geneva Conventions, being that they are "unlawful enemy combatants".
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A
When you have the people at the very Very VERY top trying to play word games with the rights of prisoners, you don't expect the people at the bottom to behave themselves.
They were soldiers, but they were SPECIALLY TRAINED (as in Advanced Individual Training) in Military POLICE operations.
You see, every enlisted soldier has a Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) which is his/her PRIMARY mission. This can range from cook to cop to construction.
Their SECONDARY mission is killing and destruction.
These people failed in their PRIMARY mission.
Un-professional
They didn't even think what they were doing was wrong."
Bzzt. Wrong. I'm prior active duty, and currently an activated reservist.
Un-monitored? Big deal. At 19, I was managing over $15 million dollars of assets. Most military personnel KNOW and UNDERSTAND their job and do it without hesitation or prejudice. They are situationally aware and are capable of making distinct decisions. These individuals made the WRONG decision.
Un-professional? EVERY basic military trainee is drilled on the UCMJ (Uniform Code Of Military Justice). There are simple "codes of conduct" you DO NOT subject enemy combatants to. Besides being unlawful, these actions are humiliating, degrading, and outright horrible.
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
I remember the puffery on the news about Tiannamen and the great things that the internet was doing for democracy. The world after all, had a right to those images and as terrible as they were every newstation found a way to decry the brutality and praise the pictures.
Without equating the two morally, I wonder at the treatment of images leaked from Iraq by modern media and the control entrenched powers have to stifle reporting.
I think it is the supreme court steps that read Eternal Vigilance is the cost of Liberty, Thomas Jefferson. It is frightening that the atmosphere in Amerca today is so in favour of censorship. Without information we cannot be vigelant. We may not like what we see, but sometimes thats the point!
If I were someone interested in reducing the impact of these and future pictures, I'd create a bunch of outrageous-but-more-or-less-easily-detected fakes and flood the system with them. As the fakes were discovered and debunked, suspicion would arise regarding any still photograph, until Gresham's Law takes effect and the bad eliminated the good. If there were scores of "war crimes" photos released each day, soon no one would pay attention any more, and the real ones would likely be ignored or at least be strongly doubted.
In addition to that the people have had their tours extended time after time. Studies show that after about 200 or so days in combat troops fall into a zombie like state, not really caring what happens next. These produce the infamous "thousand mile stare" pictures from WWII and Vietnam. Put young 20 something soldiers in a position with a lack of training, lack of leadership, lack of planning, and no knowledge when they'll be going home and you'll be suprised what you'll end up with.
The girl in the photo with the Iraqi on a leash is just 21 years old. I think that they were told to do this by interrogators. Imagine the amount of intimidation that was being handed down (via CIA or contrators) with a huge lack of support from superiors. That coupled with the attributes above probably made positioning for the photos seem rather fun for a change. The lawlessness instilled from the interrogators coupled with the desensitisation by everyone in the military continually calling these prisioners thugs, terrorists, etc. probably put them in a state where they didn't consider the long term affects.
All the conditions were set up by the military for this to happen. The sad part is those 6 young soldiers will stand trail as scapegoats for the whole incident. Why do you think all the media suppression happened? It takes a bit of time to plan the cover up so all the higher ups can keep their jobs/commands...
The shredder is a media-created myth.
And let me see if I've got this straight. Saddam was a brutal ruler for over two decades. He gassed an ethnic minority with gas provided by the US (Reagan was President, Rumsfeld was SecDef) sprayed from US-provided helicopters. Saddam filled the infamous mass graves with Shi'a encouraged to rise up against him by George HW Bush, who left them to die when they heeded him and called on him for aid.
Now, because Saddam brutalized these people, it made it OK for the US troops to do the same thing to them? The general who submitted the report that was later leaked to the New Yorker (Taguba) pointed out that 60% of the people in there were no threat to anyone.
Go spin your wheel of justifications for war in Iraq and let me know what you hit. Remember, WMD is out, and apparently so is liberation, since you don't give a shit about those people.
This website discusses the issue of double standards.
Double Standards - http://www.doublestandards.org/
Here it is, AGAIN!
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4894001/
Let me help you with the hard parts.
"There is abundant evidence in the statements of numerous witnesses that soldiers throughout the 800th MP Brigade were not proficient in their basic MOS skills, particularly regarding internment/resettlement operations."
Get that? They did NOT "KNOW and UNDERSTAND their job". That was in the report.
"Moreover, there is no evidence that the command, although aware of these deficiencies, attempted to correct them in any systemic manner other than ad hoc training by individuals with civilian corrections experience."
Not only didn't they KNOW their job, they thought that having people with CIVILIAN training would compensate for MILITARY training.
"I find that the 800th MP Brigade was not adequately trained for a mission that included operating a prison or penal institution at Abu Ghraib Prison Complex."
Again, they were NOT trained.
"However, I found no evidence that the Command, although aware of this deficiency, ever requested specific corrections training from the Commandant of the Military Police School, the US Army Confinement Facility at Mannheim, Germany, the Provost Marshal General of the Army, or the US Army Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas."
Even though their Chain of Command KNEW they weren't trained, their Chain of Command did NOTHING to fix it (above the company level).
"Almost every witness we interviewed had no familiarity with the provisions of AR 190-8 or FM 3-19.40."
They didn't even KNOW the AR's and FM's appropriate to their mission.
"Numerous witnesses stated that the 800th MP Brigade S-1, MAJ Hinzman and S-4, MAJ Green, were essentially dysfunctional, but that despite numerous complaints, these officers were not replaced."
The word "dysfunctional" applied to officers by a GENERAL in his OFFICIAL report.
Now would you care to tell me what "EVERY basic military trainee is drilled on"?
Transparency in government means you don't have trust the people, because you can trust the process to keep them honest. In an Opaque government it's not enough to trust the Man at the Top, you've got to trust EVERYONE under that Opaque shield.
The latter has something to do with why we're in the current mess.
The same holds for business, considering the opaque bookkeeping behind some recent scandals.
The concepts of Transparency vs Opacity are slightly different terms, but should be familiar to Open Source coders when considering security.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
If you did not yet hear about or read these sites :
:
Read how a Baghdad citizen felt about the preparations and during the war Salam Pax - Where is Raed ?.
Read about an Iraqi girl who lost her job and her hope for the future Riverbend - Baghdad Burning.
Read what an Iraqi female engineer tells about what's happening in Bagdad now A Family in Baghdad.
Read what an Iraqi architect has to say Raed in the Middle.
And in a slightly related note
The Stanford Prison Experiment documents an experiment that had to be aborted after only 6 days, because of abuses.
a couple of months before this, some MP police guy in iraq was posting pictures to a message board about how they beat one of the iraqi contractors up because the intepreter said he didnt like americans.
Many people who heard of these "abuses" just shrugged them off anyways but once they saw the pictures it all changed.
It's sad to see those pics but you can also understand it when the iraqis are blowing up humvees everyday with roadside bombs. That same MP who posted pics etc posted one of his hummer after it took a hit from an rpg. I guess it's hard to restrain yourself when somebody is trying to kill you huh
did you forget to take your meds?
And, I can remember a certain 9/11 2001 where old style cameras were pointed at the WTC and I could see it crashing down in realtime. The images were guaranteed authentic in almost no time.
So, this thread is pure bullshit!
Achille Talon
Hop!
Because this is an Islamic culture in which such sexual humiliations are the legal and moral equivalent of rape. Because it speaks directly to the primal, tribal sexual fear of women exploited so ruthlessly by the Taliban.
If Rumsfeld is right, there are more, thousands more, pictures and videos out there, violent and obscene past all description.
If and when you are made to strip naked, sodomized, electrocuted, and forced to wear a dog leash, I hope you enjoy the experience, secure and comfortable in the knowledge that others have suffered far more horrible abuses.
The prisoners shown in the pictures may have committed war crimes. They may have committed criminal offenses. They may be innocent. Until and unless a duly appointed court finds them culpable of specific crimes, they should not be punished. And if a specific person were to be found guilty of such crimes, the US Constitution bars the imposition of cruel and unusual punishment. It is probable, although not certain, that when the Iraqis finally get their country back, their constitution will contain similar prohibitions, if only to impede a future regime's use of torture.
It's estimated that 60% of the prisoners there didn't do anything. They're just people who got picked up for some reason or another, and have been forgotten by the system. There's no processing of prisoners so no one knows why everyone is there.
And the abuses aren't confined to Abu Ghraib. They're happening in prisons all over Iraq.
Let's face it, the army aren't a bunch of heroes, they're a bunch of fucking simpletons who can't find gainful employment anywhere else. They are the lowest strata of a free society, and the worst possible people to arm and send overseas. They only reason that they ever are is because they are so worthless that the rest of society is willing to let them die.
A few 'soldiers' you may have heard of:
John Kerry
John McCain
George Bush
George Carlin
Prince Charles
George Bush
David Robinson
Charles Rangel
Dwight Eisenhower
Roger Staubach
Henry Fonda
Benny Hill
Steve McQueen
Sean Connery
John Glenn
Werner Heisenberg
Leonard Nimoy
Some people will never understand why someone would join the military. And that's OK, because there are people who will, to protect your right to be innocent.
All the rent-a-cops that I know of (the ones in the office building where i work) are NOT armed.
I don't think the guy patrolling the school would be armed.
But mercenaries ARE armed.
"I know it's harder to hate them if you're aware that they're just ordinary guys trying to make a living by, for the most part, just being big and looking intimidating."
The word "goon" comes to mind. Someone hired to physically intimidate someone.
The problem is that they do not fall under US law nor military law. If they shoot an Iraqi, who do they answer to?
THAT is the problem. The US government should NOT have anyone in theatre who does not have a clearly defined chain of command. But we do.
From watching the hearing, I was under the impression that the photos were taken between January and April, and evidence in a criminal investigation that was illegally leaked to the media before the proceedings were concluded.
I definitely didn't get the impression that the photos appeared in the media an hour after they were taken! Apparently there are a great many photos and several videos, only a few of which were obtained by the media, and these were actually taken weeks or months before any of us saw them.
Is this not the case? Isn't this topic an assumption or over-sensationalizing digital media? Couldn't all the photos just have easily been film? Did the photos being digital really make any practical difference in the situation at all? What am I not understanding here?
And if found guilty - their service will likewise protect their rights as their sentences are carried out - even if the guilty ones have sworn those same oaths themselves in the past - even if the guilty ones may be on the list you provided.
...
Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees;
Taguba found that between October and December of 2003 there were numerous instances of "sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses" at Abu Ghraib. Taguba's report listed some of the wrongdoing:
Punching, slapping, and kicking detainees; jumping on their naked feet;
Videotaping and photographing naked male and female detainees;
Forcibly arranging detainees in various sexually explicit positions for photographing;
Forcing detainees to remove their clothing and keeping them naked for several days at a time.
Forcing naked male detainees to wear women's underwear;
Forcing groups of male detainees to masturbate themselves while being photographed and videotaped;
Arranging naked male detainees in a pile and then jumping on them;
Positioning a naked detainee on a MRE Box, with a sandbag on his head, and attaching wires to his fingers, toes, and penis to simulate electric torture;
Writing 'I am a Rapest' (sic) on the leg of a detainee alleged to have forcibly raped a 15-year old fellow detainee, and then photographing him naked;
Placing a dog chain or strap around a naked detainee's neck and having a female Soldier pose for a picture;
A male MP guard having sex with a female detainee;
Using military working dogs (without muzzles) to intimidate and frighten detainees, and in at least one case biting and severely injuring a detainee;
Taking photographs of dead Iraqi detainees.
Threatening detainees with a charged 9mm pistol;
Pouring cold water on naked detainees;
Beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair;
Threatening male detainees with rape;
Allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell;
Sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick.
Using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.
They didn't prevent the abuse of prisoners, and you think they would have been able to communicate or enforce a no-camera policy? Have you read the Taguba Report? The whole 800th Military Police Brigade was poorly run from the commander on down. Hardly anyone knew anything about the Army Regulations, the Geneva Convention, etc. that specifically related to their job as prison staff. For example, the prisoners were not even counted as often as required. In addition, basic Army standards - such as the saluting of officers - were not enforced. The environment was ripe for such abuses to occur. I could go on, but I suggest that you read the report yourself.
I know that this story hints at the biggest issue of the last few days in a coy way, but I have to say something. Karma be damned.
One day far from now Rumsfeld will be close to meeting his Maker, reflecting on his life. At some point I hope he realizes that there was a reason that the Geneva Convention was created. He might note that it protects our troops from torture, and that torture is an ineffective tool to gain information. He might also, for one moment, actually re-evaluate the decisions he has made over the last few years and ask: why?
But perhaps not, a man who shakes hands with Saddam months after he uses chemical weapons on the Kurds obviously sleeps well at night for some twisted reason.
hah, from an anonymous coward....
must be nice to have that freedom...............
I can't help wondering: If this was the stuff they didn't feel they could get into trouble for documenting, what may have happened when they tried to hide their tracks?
You have to wonder about the brains of those soilders.
You don't need a course on the Geneva Convention to know what they did was a dirty deed, yet they did it AND LET THEMSELVES BE PHOTOGRAPNED DOING IT.
probably the number. Assuming it's only ten, but stating it as fact is most likely what happened to your karma.
note: just guessing, total WAG. I also guess the real number is way high over ten. And if you include the cute term "collateral damage" to "unfortunate close by civilians" I guess getting blown up or shredded or ventilated or whatnot in a normal way in war might count as torture. Also, over to the other war in ashcanistan, they offed three thousand prisoners by locking them in steel containers for days, Whomever didn't croak of thirst and heat, then got machine gunned and plowed into mass graves then. And torture and whatnot was and is still common there, it's common all over the place actually. That story came and went rapidly.
The first general at gitmo (when they started transferring prisoners there, and no I won't call them "detainees", that's intellectually just insulting and wrong) quit, because he wouldn't condone or participate in torture under his watch, that's back in the news someplace, I read it several times, too lazy to google for it now though.
What those soldiers did was certainly wrong, but on the all-time list of crimes possible in times of war, this is a minor traffic violation, not a felony or even a misdemeanor. But the "anybody-but-Bush" crowd is going berserk.
Bush's justification for the war was Iraq's WMD. You'll note that WMD have yet to be found. So, the new justification? Getting rid of Saddam, and closing down the torture chambers and stopping the abuse. Oops, that didn't pan out either.
Are you starting to see why this means something yet?
Full disclosure: I would vote for a slime mold before I would vote for George Bush. I believe he and his henchmen have pulled the wool over the eyes of the American public a few too many times. Also, the fact that he still supports Rumsfeld in this, despite Rumsfeld freely admitting that he withheld knowledge of the prisoner abuse from Bush for months, speaks volumes.
First - the bright side of thing is that army procedures at least are working somewhat - as in there were actual investigations even without publicity (though when the punishment for what the army itself calls "murder" is just being thrown out of the army and never serving any jail time...). However, this seems to be going on *despite* the Pentagon leadership who tried to minimise their scope and people's knowledge of them as much as possible within the boundaries of existing law and is more a testament to the strong structures put in place by previous Pentagon leaders and previous lawmakers rather than any real care for human rights of the current ones (who probably see them as more hinderences to their goals than anything else). This is why we need strong rights and checks and balances in a democracy. This example also shows the need for a strong free press in a democracy. What we are seeing are that the democratic structures in the US that previous generations laboured to put in place are still working.
Now, onto the bad side.
Personally, one of the things I find most repellent about the Pentagon's reaction to this issue is that they seem to see this more as a PR disaster then a humanitarian disaster. Of course they are making noises about how terrible it was blah, blah, blah. But Rumsfeld also complained mightily in his recent interview about how annoyed they are they are restricted by "peacetime rules" and hence can't control the dissemation of photos and videos on the web from servicemen and so the photos are getting to the media first without being vetted by the Pentagon.
"We're functioning in a - with peacetime restraints, with legal requirements in a wartime situation, in the information age, where people are running around with digital cameras and taking these unbelievable photographs and then passing them off, against the law, to the media, to our surprise, when they had not even arrived in the Pentagon."
As a result there have been mutterings of increased censorship of servicemen from the Pentagon. Before the photos came out, they tried to suppress the details of the information as much as possible without being able to be accused of doing something illegal eg. press releases released at times they know no-one will be paying attention (an old government trick) with only the barest details (not even the names of the soldiers accused nor any real details of the crimes). Nor was there any attempt to inform Congress at all (even though they were having high level meetings with Congress just a few hours before the photos were published and the Pentagon had known about it for ages as they asked CBS to delay broadcasting them during the fighting at Fallujah). Is it just me, or does *everything* about Iraq seem to shock Congress nowadays? "We didn't know anything!" seems to be their standard response. They are getting to be pretty useless as one of the 3 branches of government. The report about the prison abuses that was leaked to the New Yorker is defined as "Secret" even though the Pentagon admitted there was no real reason for it to be so.
Also the fact that they are trying to pass this off as a few rogue soldiers rather than a systematic problem (which is something their own report and the Red Cross make clear). It almost seems as if the major problem is not that what happened happened, but the fact that the mass media actually found out and are making a big story about it. Now, let's hang some soldiers as scapegoats, make a few noises about "being sorry" and hope it all goes away without us having to make any real changes so we can go back to doing the same thing as before.
If you were a neocon, you would think of the world in black and white. You would consider American soldiers to be "the good guys", and thus incapable of doing such things. So the idea of banning cameras would never occur to you.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
I agree with everything you've said. You should read the report. It will disgust you. Their brigade commander (BG Karpinski) seems to have LIED to the investigators about when she was at the various prisons.
Other officers are described as "dysfunctional".
Which would have been bad enough, but then you have civilian contractors telling the troops to soften up the prisoners and telling them that they're doing a good job at it and that they're getting good information because of the abuses.
Non-existant leadership.
No training on what the limits are.
Asking to help with intelligence operations.
Bush claiming that some prisoners are NOT subject to the Geneva Conventions.
Hostile environment.
No idea when they'll be going home.
So, a few enlisted will burn and the officers will be allowed to retire from service.
I think that their entire chain of command should be doing a few years in Leavenworth.
I can see how some worthless fucks could do what they did. I can see burning said worthless fucks. And the responsibility goes up the chain. Their commander should burn. Their commander's commander should burn.
And Bush needs to shut up about "unlawful enemy combatants" and state that EVERY prisoner is subject to either the US criminal justice system OR the Geneva Conventions.
In order to admit a picture as evidence (at least, in a normal criminal court--I don't know what they have to do in military courts), you generally do three things:
1) Print it.
2) Sign it.
3) Date it.
You then submit that to the court. For reference, my information on this comes from the US DOJ CCIPS page. Note that their position on this is similar to how they treat non-digital photographs--that is, they don't insist on the negatives, but they present developed photos to the court. I believe that they cite more case law in there about that so you can read up on it yourself. I'm still digesting lots of 4th ammendment case law from it, myself...
However, we have to keep in mind that the scope of the problem is very limited to a few people who took part in this whole prison thing.
But the rest of the world has no way of knowing the true scope of this, because the US refuses to let anyone monitor what is going in any of the other prisons (e.g. in Cuba, Afghanistan and others in Iraq). And quite frankly the fact that the US refuses to let anyone monitor what is happening makes it seem extremely likely that this sort of stuff is endemic. If not, then what is the US trying to hid in all those other prisons? Why not let monitors in if they're not committing war crimes in there?
Up until the release of these pics, most of the rest of the world could still give the US the benefit of the doubt, and say well maybe they're not doing anything bad. But with the release of these pics, that is gone, and there is absolutely no reason to take the US's word anymore that they're not committing war crimes everywhere. There is no credibility left, the chances seem pretty slim that this was an isolated incident.
The report, and photos had been around for months before getting released. Anyone who watched the hearing on thge matter knows this. Yet another little bit of "technology rules all" BS.
-bZj
.sig
Sure, the lead is good as far as photojouranlism goes, but the Pentagon has been sitting on some of the photos and torture videos since January.
So, instead of just the instant-access world of digital photos & Internet, we are also confronted with a world where the longer embarassing/damaging information is held, the more damaging it is when released. Also, from a journalism standpoint, please note how these instantaneous images have all been altered in Photoshop: the media aren't showing genitals.
-Josh
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
http://www.prisonexp.org/
And that only took 6 days.
To summarize: Lots of very ordinary people become viscous and sadistic in the absence of external controls.
The only way to counter this is with training and a clearly defined chain of command / chain of support which provides leadership.
#1. Those soldiers need to burn.
#2. Their commanders need to burn.
#3. The civilian contractors telling them they were doing a good job need to burn.
And I'm not talking about letting the officers get off with "retiring" from service. I'm talking Leavenworth.
and, #4. Bush needs to get off the bullshit about "unlawful enemy combatants" and say that EVERY prisoner is covered under EITHER the Geneva Conventions OR the US's criminal justice system with all the rights and protections of one or the other.
There are many Iraqi blogs out there were you can learn how Iraqis feel about this.
The photos have changed their attitudes towards the USA quite a bit (if you take the time to read earlier entries you will notice).
From monitoring these blogs I conclude that the USA already lost this war. Once you lose the support of the Iraqi population there is no way that this occupation will succeed. Although it continue to drag on for a very long time.
DISCALAIMER: I am just a non-American, non-Arab outside observer.
The author of the parent post is correct, the entire "abuse" wasn't just recently discovered. In fact, there is a transcript of the Coalition Provisional Authority Briefing that mentions briefly the same allegations that have been floating around in the press as of late.
Personally, I think the Associated Press writer needs to be fired for misrepresenting the facts; although, it is possible that he or she was merely using information available at the time. Regardless, this is just a blatant demonstration of the agenda behind purportedly unbiased reporting. Someone, somewhere saw an opportunity to pin this on an individual very high up in the chain of command (Rumsfeld) even though it is outdated news.
Yes, folks, even with the Information Age upon us, the three day delay between taking the pictures at Iwojima and publishing them was much faster than what happened here. The reason? The Pentagon didn't want them to be released for a while after the incident. (Though, it's a bit silly to discuss an investigation this late into the game--except to save face.)
He who has no
I agree. The thing is, these people are as dumb as they come. They couldn't find the door if you pointed it to them. Consider this: their primary job is to KILL PEOPLE. What kind of sick fuck chooses a career who's main task is to filet the guts out of another human being because of where they live? They couldn't get a more productive job like construction or cooking or programming or something? They chose to KILL PEOPLE instead? Imagine being some Iraqi kid watching TV with your dad in your living room and suddenly hearing a thud and looking down and seeing your intestines on your lap because some US soldier had to shoot his 50 caliber into your house because he thought someone was hiding out in there. "But I was just doing my job, sir." Sorta puts in perspective what kind of person a soldier is, so it wasn't any surprise to me at all that these kinds of photos existed. The President is also incorrect when he states that this behavior represents only a small portion of our military, because, as I explained, you'd have to be a pretty sick fuck to even BE a soldier in the first place. Most soldiers would do the EXACT same thing had they been put in charge of that prison.
Actually, I wouldn't blame the soliders. Being as dumb as they are, they're actually the victims in this scenario: Soldiers are the most ABUSED members of our society. You can only blame those in CONTROL of our society for this situation. And, in a capitalist society like ours, the people in control are the wealthy upper-class. The tiny upper-class (let's say, Chris Rock's A+ students) figured out a genious marketing campaign to actully get other human beings, mainly members of the hated and completely stupid lower-class (D/F students) and the vast and barely qualified middle-class (B/C students), to DIE for them. This is the ultimate, most brilliant marketing campaign ever- to get someone to DIE for your product of "country". Just look at our citizenry- they absolutely LOVE the military! "How dare you cut our $500 billion military budget?!" Love 'em like they're heros! Why? Not because they did something productive like find a cure for cancer or anything like that, but becuase they did something destructive like bomb an Iraqi hut with a cruise missile launched from a boat some 900 miles away, to, ultimately, protect "country".
In this era of globalization, where the idea of "country" becomes diminished since the entire world is instantly connected and therefore seperated by one degree, this would be the equivalent of a factory owner in Columbus, Ohio to get the citizens of Columbus to invade Toledo. I'm sure the people in Columbus are mad as hell at the people of Toledo, but, come on, it's sorta meaningless to those that don't believe in "city", right? And, if you notice when you go country to country these days, they're all pretty much the same, with the trade of the wealthy upper-class defining each "country".
I've had this hope for a long time, that somewhere, sometime, something will be going down and we'll get a picture from one of those cellphones with a camera.
We're all going on about Iraq here, so here's an example. After a particularly nasty helicopter crash, the army came in, secured the area, and confiscated all the cameras. If they were digital cellphone cameras, those pics would be uploaded to a "secure location" instantly.
The current scandal is further proof that a picture is worth a thousand words. The comparison to Rodney King comes to mind -- without that video that would have been another routine traffic stop. I for one was not ready to believe just how bad the situation in Iraq is, but now that even Rumsfeld has admitted this is just the tip of the iceberg, it really casts things in a new light.
To sum up: As technology progresses, there will be more instances of people being "caught" on camera or perhaps covertly recorded in a tiny MP3 recorder, and so on. And this is a good thing. What's that old saw: You can tell a lot about a person by how they act when they think they won't get caught.
What happend in Abu Ghraib is totally, totally beyond the pale and it simply boggles the mind on so many levels. It makes me feel physically ill. The idea that there's stuff going to come out soon that's much worse is just impossible to deal with.
All the stuff about Rumsfeld's dealings with Saddam aside, this was made possible because he personally and systematically removed every possible safeguard on the system. The ICGC was rejected, the Army's own regulations on the subject were thrown out. The Geneva-freaking-conventions were to be disregarded because this was "a new kind of war" or whatever awful press conference P.R. slogan newspeak bullshit. Well, now we couldn't make ourselves look worse if we hired a PR firm to try and do it for us. The kind of mindless arrogance that does this... makes you feel all tough and swaggery or whatever in the short term but these things will have real, objective consequences and this handed a tremendous propaganda victory to anti-American forces everywhere.
At least in this part of Europe, the United States are seen like a coutry where money and corporatism take the lead, far more than morality. Moreover, war exactions (e.g. in Vietnam) and dubious alliances aren't exactely forgotten. So yes, USA is a big great country, an economical leader, but it's not really seen as an example to follow. Not here.
Everybody is upset about this pictures, the sadest point is that nobody seems to be upset for those thousands of innocents deaths. That's the nature of the war beast, it's not news, it's not new, but it's there.
It seems that war is never the answer.
What's in a sig?
What's in a sig?
and should be modded as troll. How sanctimonious and self-righteous can you get?
Why do some people volunteer to kill people? Perhaps it's because they're dumb and don't understand the implications... but perhaps they ARE smart enough. Perhaps they understand that, in a violent, racist, zealous, genocide-prone world, lethal violence is sometimes necessary.
I'm sorry, but that's the hard truth. Look it in the eye. Go ahead. It's easy to do from your computer... a lot harder to do in person.
The soldiers who abused those prisoners WILL get what's coming to them, as well they should... but don't go tarring the entire military with the same brush... that's how racists and fanatical islamists think.
Even if you haven't the understanding of what it means to serve in the military, at least show a little respect... if it wasn't for those troops (and thousands of others like them) protecting your rights, you wouldn't be writing such trollish rants in this forum.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Although the capturing device has accelerated the 'flash to print' time, the main reason why the Iraqi photos travelled around the world so fast was the networking infrastructure that meant that they could be sent and received quickly.
A major factor in the publishing delay for WW2 photos was the time it took for the photo to get to one or more mechanisms for mass-distribution (i.e. then, the Newspapers).
Prior to the rise of the interconnected broadband public Internet, the only way that photos could be sent was by proprietary point-to-point sytems: initially wire transfer, more recently various forms of ISDN connection.
It was only during the 20th Century that the mass distribution of pictorial information became possible - through Newspapers, News reels and then TV.
In all this, the evolution of the camera itself plays a very small part... It is the rise of the public internet, with common (open) standards that allows hi-resolution photos to be sent quickly with confidence that they'll arrive in a form that can be viewed and published has transformed photo-journalism, along with the option for these photos to be published to massive audiences at almost no cost via public web sites.
If the camera can sign the images, the private key needed to do so must be in the camera. It would only be a matter of time before someone (and it only takes one) figured out how to get the key out of the camera, which would make people able to sign anything, and thus the camera's signatures pretty much meaningless.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
Someone named Fred said it much better than I could:
Note how obedient the Iraqis are. Think about this. One man doesn't give another a blow job for the amusement of Twiggy unless he is terrified of the consequences if he refuses. Is it only psychological torture? In the pictures, yes. Somebody is behind them with whips and pliers. Those men are scared shitless, and they have a reason.
That's an excerpt from here.