UPDATED Torture: The Hidden Photos Emerge
Monday, May 18, 2009 at 8:15 Revealed - Zelikow Memorandum Says Torture is not OK (Unless It’s Effective)
Torture - The Pelosi "Controversy" in One Sentence
Warning: This post contains graphic images.
UPDATE (18 May): Italian newspapers La Repubblica and Il Corriere della Sera have now published some of the photos. (Hat tip to Nur al-Cubicle via UJ).
When the scandal over the Abu Ghraib abuse photographs broke in 2004, it was reported that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was worried over "hundreds" more, as well as videotapes, that had not been revealed. It is probable that these photographs are among those whose release is being challenged by President Obama.
This morning I discovered, via the website Raw Story, that the Australian television series SBS Dateline had obtained some of the photographs in a documentary on torture in 2006. Raw Story summarised the story at the time, with 15 photographs, but little notice was taken.
After a great deal of discussion, Enduring America has decided to post the two "most moderate" photographs. We do so not to be sensationalist or voyeuristic but to show the "enhanced interrogation" carried out in America's name not only in Iraq but from Guantanamo Bay to Afghanistan to unnamed countries from 2002. We do so as an expression of concern that, in the name of "national security", the seriousness of this torture will be minimised by hiding it from us. We do so in the belief that acknowledgement of the past does not endanger America in the present but begins to redeem it.
Abu Ghraib, Detainees, Donald Rumsfeld, Raw Story, SBS Dateline, Torture in War On Terror
Reader Comments (6)
Question: Can 'enhanced interrogation' (torture) methods be viewed in isolation to the historical events and circumstances in which they were used? -- The 3 people waterboarded, suspected of having vital information that could prevent planned attacks that would kill many Americans.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki as another example -- No nuclear attack = continued Japanese pillage of Asia, conventional war resulting in many more deaths of both Japanese and Americans.
Did Pelosi divorce her principles from the interrogation methods? Did she go along with it thinking that the alternative was really worse?
Dave:
There were many senior American military leaders and politicians at the time who opposed the use of the atomic bomb against Japan. Here is the view of someone named Dwight D. Eisenhower. Whatever happened to such a weak-kneed liberal?
"During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude..."
- Dwight Eisenhower, Mandate For Change, pg. 380
Question: why is the question whether 'torture is justifiable to extract "vital" information' raised repeatedly, when it is well-known that the SERE-derived torture techniques were adapted from the Communists, who used them to force enemy (U.S.) soldiers to make false confessions?
Most experts on the subject agree that torture is only effective in gathering information in movies, on TV, and in Dick Cheney's sick mind.
IMHO, the real reason all those people were tortured, was for Cheney to vent his impotent rage, and to remind "them" who's the boss around here.
"IMHO, the real reason all those people were tortured, was for Cheney to vent his impotent rage...."
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But all the post 9/11 press conferences were sponsored by Viagra. ;-)
I WANT TO SEE WHAT'S IN THOSE MEMOS.
can that be true? i mean seriously?! what the..
can that be true? i mean seriously?! what the..