by hilzoy
Salon has them. The article is here; the photos are here. (h/t matttbastard ) From the article:
“The DVD containing the material includes a June 6, 2004, CID investigation report written by Special Agent James E. Seigmund. That report includes the following summary of the material included: “A review of all the computer media submitted to this office revealed a total of 1,325 images of suspected detainee abuse, 93 video files of suspected detainee abuse, 660 images of adult pornography, 546 images of suspected dead Iraqi detainees, 29 images of soldiers in simulated sexual acts, 20 images of a soldier with a Swastika drawn between his eyes, 37 images of Military Working dogs being used in abuse of detainees and 125 images of questionable acts.”
The photographs we are showing in the accompanying gallery represent a small fraction of these visual materials. None, as far as we know, have been published elsewhere. They include: a naked, handcuffed prisoner in a contorted position; a dead prisoner who had been severely beaten; a prisoner apparently sodomizing himself with an object; and a naked, hooded prisoner standing next to an American officer who is blandly writing a report against a wall. Other photographs depict a bloody cell.
The DVD also includes photographs of guards threatening Iraqi prisoners with dogs, homemade videotapes depicting hooded prisoners being forced to masturbate, and a video showing a mentally disturbed prisoner smashing his head against a door. Oddly, the material also includes numerous photographs of slaughtered animals and mundane images of soldiers traveling around Iraq.”
1,325 images of suspected detainee abuse. I feel sick.
About publishing these photos and linking to them: I would not publish inflammatory images if I thought that they were inflammatory because they might lead people to jump to erroneous conclusions. For instance, if a prisoner had had first a bad fall (and assume for now that I know that this is true), and then an accident while peeling potatoes, and someone had taken a photo of him bruised and covered in blood and surrounded by GIs, that would be a case for exercising editorial restraint. The natural conclusion to jump to after seeing such an image is that the prisoner has been beaten; if people leap to that conclusion, it could cause real problems; I know that conclusion to be false; and besides, in this case the picture has no real news value.
It’s a different matter entirely when a picture is inflammatory because what it depicts is genuinely outrageous. In this case, not running it because of its inflammatory nature is, basically, saying: the truth might legitimately inflame people, and for that reason we are going to withhold it. Not having canvassed all the possibilities in my mind, I don’t want to say that this line of argument should never be used by the press, or bloggers (being a philosopher, I naturally think of extreme counterexamples), but it’s a line of thought that any news organization should be wary of. Their job, after all, is to present the news that people find important, not to stage-manage the reactions of their public. They do (imho) have the right to make judgments of taste, etc., and they are obviously not under the obligation to publish every true thing they discover, but when something is inflammatory, it has presumably met the threshold of being of interest to the public, and thus there’s a presumption in favor of publishing it. (Note: I am talking here about photos and factual reporting; not about editorials and, um, cartoons, which are different.)
Moreover, the last people in the world who should be urging caution on the press are those who are responsible for the original outrage. They had it in their power not to act outrageously in the first place. They acted outrageously anyways. For them to ask the press not to publish it is, basically, to ask that the press refrain from doing its job because they failed to do theirs. It’s also a request that they be allowed to continue to perpetrate outrages with impunity. As I wrote earlier, it would be crazy if every time someone did something awful, they had the right to ask the press to help conceal their misdeeds in order not to spur outrage.
We need to know what is being done in our name. Those who put in place the policies that allowed this to happen should have considered the consequences beforehand. The fact that they did not should shame them; it is not a reason for the press not to do its job.
We need to know what is being done in our name.
those who act in our name disagree.
Hilzoy, thank you for posting this. Noticed a few other sites linking to teh Salon article (like suburban guerilla), but I’m really discouraged that blogdom as a whole seems to be ignoring the whole thing.
At the very least, Rumsfield has to go. Resign or be fired.
(reposting from late in the City on a Hill thread, now superseded by this one):
I’m more than a little concerned that the reaction to the release of additional images from Abu Ghraib will be “Those responsible have already been punished; case closed.”
Images of a swastika’d soldier reinforce the ‘few bad apples’ theme. But this is fundamentally a lie and distortion, and most commenters here know it.
This degradation starts from the top, with the executive orders and ‘legal findings’ in the White House: flouting Geneva Convention provisions for those detained in Afghanistan and Pakistan, redefining torture as legal, blanket authorization to kidnap persons anywhere in the world and render them to secret CIA prisons or governments that torture routinely.
Only a very small percentage of the 500-600 prisoners at Guantanamo are connected in any way to attacks on the U.S. or terrorism in any form, yet the majority have been subjected to repeated torture and abuse for four years.
Renditions to torture (and possibly death) are estimated to number at least a hundred.
CIA torture in Afghanistan has been ongoing since 2002, at Bagram and other sites, and, according to one Marine now dead, in airborne shipping containers.
Please: It’s important to discuss this. But it’s more important to speak out in more public forums in your own community, and to act. Otherwise you are simply in Hilzoy’s third category in the gigantic Milgram experiment now underway (people who didn’t decide at all, and went on doing what they were already doing, and thus obeyed).
Thanks for responding to the call of duty, Hilzoy.
Oh do they ever…
On the UN Guantanamo report:
On the previously unrevealed Abu Ghraib photos (the set released by SBS Dateline, not the Salon batch):
Same old tune they’ve been fiddlin’ since Rome started burning post 9/11.
Susan Sontag on Abu Ghraib Photos
“It is surely revealing, as more Abu Ghraib photographs enter public view, that torture photographs are interleaved with pornographic images of American soldiers having sex with one another.” …SS
I believe that all the material must be available for download from an easily available central location.
…
I am trying to read carefully. Hilzoy does not anywhere say that more material should be made public or published. In fact I fail to find in this post a statement that these particular photos should be published,only that they can be published, and only that those who criticize the press for publishing them on the grounds that they are inflammatory are incorrect.
“…it has presumably met the threshold of being of interest to the public”…hilzoy
Now this seems say that material should be published when the public wants to see it(with appropriate caveats), but later she uses the expression “need to know” without as far I can tell showing much argument for public good other than the public’s interest(“interest” has multiple meanings, but “curiousity” seems too shallow).
Now my argument for making all the material available is based on what I believe is an interesting possible connection (explored in Sontag’s essay) between people recording themselves engaging in sex and the same people recording themselves engaging in torture. I will grant that some might think the sexual material unsuitable for minors or a violation of privacy rights, but some are making similar objections to the prisoner abuse photos. A good test of violence vs sex arguments.
We need to know who these people are, and what all the conditions at Abu Ghraib were that allowed these abuses to occur.
“The department believes that a further release of images could only further inflame and possibly incite unnecessary violence in the world and would endanger our military men and women that are serving around the world,” spokesman Bryan Whitman said.
yeah, and you know how we hate unecessary violence.
Left out this link from my comment above, the reference to torture in Afghanistan related to a reporter by a Marine in 2004 but never taken further by the reporter until now, after his suicide.
Via an outstanding essay a few days ago on Body and Soul. Jeanne posted on the Salon Abu Ghraib documents just before this post appeared, and she is consistently one of the most informed, thoughtful, and determined bloggers who focus on human rights.
“…it has presumably met the threshold of being of interest to the public…”
There is a difference between this justification and a phrasing along the lines of “…in the interest of the public…”.
The Olympics are of interest to the public; the Congressional Record is interesting to very few, but it is in the interest of the public that it be published.
As far as I can see, hilzoy’s case made here seems more analogous to the Olympics than the CR.
On the UN report and the slimy and despicable White House response:
UN investigators were refused the opportunity to meet directly with prisoners, and therefore understandably declined to make a pointless show visit to Guantanamo.
The National Journal series of articles (linked, summarized, and discussed by Kevin Drum) dramatically refutes McLellan’s insinuation that Guantanamo prisoners are all or even primarily Al Qaeda operatives — a very small percentage have any connection to terrorism.
The idea that all the torture reports (from FBI witnesses, lawyers for the detainees, Red Cross, interrogators, chaplains, and military guards themselves) are fabrications is ludicrous, an insult to our intelligence.
Walter Shapiro on why Salon published the images:
These abuses were carried out by soldiers who wore our flag on their uniforms and apparently believed that Americans here at home would approve of their conduct.
Sadly, their belief is not wholly incorrect.
Bob: I was rushing to post this before having to go to a meeting. So I’ll just say now: (a) I think all the photos and videos should be available, preferably from one location. (b) I didn’t mean my criteria to be exhaustive (stuff should ONLY be published when x is true.) I think it is both in the public interest and interesting to the public that these photos appear.
Maher Arar’s lawsuit was thrown out today.
The full decision is here.
I expected this to some extent (I thought his constitutional claims might survive, I pretty much knew the Convention Against Torture claims wouldn’t), but I am finding it pretty hard to take (for reasons best explained here).
“The decision by Congress not to provide a private cause of
action under FARRA for individuals improperly removed to
countries practicing torture militates against creating one in
this case under the Torture Victim Protection Act.” p36
Is this “strict construction”, “textualism”, or just a general exercise of judicial integrity? As was Dred Scott.
…
“While one cannot ignore the “shocks the conscience” test
established in Rochin v. California, 342 U.S. 165, 172-73, 72
S.Ct. 205, 209-10, 96 L.Ed. 183 (1952), that case involved the
question whether torture could be used to extract evidence for
the purpose of prosecuting criminal conduct, a very different
question from the one ultimately presented here, to wit, whether
substantive due process would erect a per se bar to coercive
investigations, including torture, for the purpose of preventing
a terrorist attack. Whether the circumstances here ultimately
cry out for immediate application of the Due Process clause, or,
put differently, whether torture always violates the Fifth
Amendment under established Supreme Court case law prohibiting
government action that “shocks the conscience” – a question
analytically prior to those taken up in the parties’ briefing –
remains unresolved from a doctrinal standpoint” …p55 footnote of how binding int’l law and treaties are is also interesting
No comment at this time.
…
The national security and foreign policy submissive wetting begins on pg 71. It is almost too painful to read.
The photos will out, since that is the nature of things. They should’ve just released the whole shebang up front and took one big political hit instead of a stream of smaller ones. But then again, except when in campaign mode, the White House has done an awful job of communicating, and Cheney’s recent lame excuses are just another example. Good for Salon in providing explanatory context.
I think the FARRA/TVPA part is actually defensible, legally speaking. That part I expected. And following the law even when the law does horrible things to people is sometimes part of a judge’s job. (I have participated in this myself, though I’m no judge. I do try to avoid it, and at the end of the day can always tell myself it wasn’t really my call.)
With the caveats that I never took federal courts and am 10X too close to this case to judge it objectively, some other parts of the opinion seem really, really crappy.
I mean, that stuff about how it’s not clear whether torture to prevent a terrorist attack “shocks the conscience” is practically crying out to be cited in the memo about how waterboarding is legal even after the McCain amendment. Was that really necessary? Really?
That “ooh, just imagine the damage hearing this case could do to our relationship with Canada” paragraph was also pretty special. Everyone who thinks this case getting thrown out of court will improve Canada’s relationship with the United States, raise your hands. To say nothing of the continued damage that allowing the practice of f*cking sending innocent Canadian citizens to Syrian torture chambers to continue unabated might do to our relationship with our allies.
I mean, if you don’t have jurisdiction you don’t have jurisdiction; if you have to dismiss it you have to dismiss it. But if that’s what you’re doing, at least leave what “shocks the conscience” and what is good or bad for our relationship with Canada the hell out of it.
That “ooh, just imagine the damage hearing this case could do to our relationship with Canada” paragraph was also pretty special.
I hope our canuckstani correspondents will give us a low-down on how it is being covered.
I read it a little more sympathetically than that. Despite the outcome, the judge did a pretty methodical job of calling BS on a lot of the government’s arguments, and some of the points about the difficulties of managing discovery and motions practice seem fairly sensible when I think of the havoc that Paula Jones managed to wreak. I hate the result, but the opinion reads like the judge was working pretty hard at getting the right answer, not protecting the Administration.
I don’t think the judge was deliberately protecting the administration. I think a few of the arguments he made are incredibly unfortunate.
I wouldn’t trust myself to decide this case because I would want so badly not to dismiss it. Maybe he did too, and knew that judges are not supposed to be swayed by their emotions, and overcompensated. That’s how I tend to interpret the district judge’s opinion in the Uighur cases. I’m not real familiar with Trager’s work but it’s certainly plausible in this case.
I don’t think he had much choice on the Convention Against Torture claims. I thought, or at least hoped, that the constitutional claims would survive until discovery.
Arar: Outrageous. Hope he does better at the Second Circuit.
I can’t help thinking, as I read it, about the Flatow Amendment. One of the elements of the damages claim Congress has created against officials and agents of states that sponsor or support terrorism is that US officials, if they engaged in the same conduct, would be liable. Lots of courts have applied this standard to conduct less disturbing than suffered by Arar. Guess they were wrong.
Katherine, any insight into how much, if anything, can be done with the invitation to re-plead the claims relating to the period of detention in the U.S.?
I have much more respect for the institution of the judiciary than I have for the law. I view the judicial branch as not a tool in the service of the other two branches, but as a co-equal branch with an entirely different mission. The majority can take of itself, it is the specific role of the judiciary to protect the structures, processes, and underlying principles of the founding documents from whatever damage majoritarian excesses might inflict upon said structures etc. I do not in any way see the judiciary as ideally apolitical, nor disinterested in results. They are the last bulwark against politics becoming impossible, either in the case of tyranny or civil war.
They are essentially powerless, and have only the pulpit and what moral authority and legitimacy their decisions can accrue. Not one abortion was performed because of Roe v Wade. Not one. Various actors were willing to enforce Roe v Wade.
The various arguments over interpretation and restraint all boil down to whether the courts must submit to the will of the majority, all other considerations abandoned, or whether the courts have the special, often subversive and disruptive, role of protecting minorities. Understand that “following not making the law” means nothing more or less than that submissive dependent role. The “law” is not made in heaven by angels.
For a specific example, should a flag-burning amendment be passed, I have no problem with any or all judges issuing directed verdicts or dismissing cases, and facing the political consequences at the ballot box or impeachment proceedings. We might disagree as to which issue judges should draw these lines, in a 90% Christian country I can imagine worse examples, but it is their job to draw such lines, not to reinforce the popular will in moving the lines to and fro.
I believe the courts have in the various WOT cases failed to do their duty.
CP has Maher Arar’s reaction:
bob mcmanus–
They are essentially powerless, and have only the pulpit and what moral authority and legitimacy their decisions can accrue. Not one abortion was performed because of Roe v Wade. Not one. Various actors were willing to enforce Roe v Wade.
I’m not sure how this differentiates the judiciary from any other institution of government not staffed by people carrying guns. Not one abortion was prevented, in your terms, by legislatures who passed restrictive laws in the pre-Roe era — except that “various actors were willing to enforce” those laws.
The point just being: our system of government, judiciary and otherwise, isn’t an abstraction (though it’s necessary to abstract it in order to theorize); it’s just a bunch of people (guys, mostly) acting and reacting to one another, and to us and the rest of the world, in a variety of more or less formalized ways.
After thinking about this over dinner, I want to withdraw my first comment above. Prudential considerations might require a lot of caution in how any precedent established by this case is applied in the future, but on facts this egregious, there simply has to be a remedy. Leave the line-drawing for cases where the U.S. government didn’t send an innocent Canadian to Syria to be tortured.
They should’ve just released the whole shebang up front and took one big political hit instead of a stream of smaller ones.
Would that have made any difference? It wasn’t exactly a secret that these photos existed months before the ’04 elections, yet apparently, enough Americans cared so little about them–mere fraternity pranks, you know–that the politicians on whose watch this happened were rewarded with another 4 years in office.
I expect that “they” gambled that surviving a series of “small” political crises was less of a risk than the repercussions of a much more dramatic torture scandal in an election year. Apparently, “they” figured right.
Abu Ghraib should shame every American. I don’t feel very generous towards the politicians who failed to punish those abuses swiftly and dilligently; and I don’t feel very generous toward my fellow Americans who failed to hold those politicians accountable.