The Rest Of The Abu Ghraib Photos

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by hilzoy

They’re up at Salon. Go see what got Donald Rumsfeld his Presidential Medal of Freedom.

I’m only posting one, which is work-safe:

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There’s a mentally deranged detainee, wrapped in foam, sandwiched between the two litters this soldier is sitting on.

Think about it.

32 thoughts on “The Rest Of The Abu Ghraib Photos”

  4. This is the best way to spread freedom and democracy. Second best is force feeding it down prisoners throats at gitmo.

  5. There’s really a special quality to the green of the floor in that picture. It looks damp, maybe organic, as if some living substance is needed to resist the corrosion being pressed out by the guy in the gloves.

  6. “Think about it.”
    I’d really rather not, though I suppose I ought to. Can we call this “evil” too? It’s not quite as grotesque as the example you gave in the “evil post”, but I can’t think of any way that pressing a mentally deranged person could be in the service of “good.”

  7. Sickening behavior by the worst of our citizens. I hope the Iraqis can see fit to forgive us now that these losers have been brought to justice and thrown in jail.

  9. Hilzoy, you just don’t get the context of the photo. Or something. I forget what the administration talking point was supposed to be this week. You also, quite clearly, hate our freedom.

  10. blogbudsman: The worst of our citizens, those responsible for putting in place the policy of which this is the execution, have not been brought to justice.
    They include, but are not limited to:
    Donald Rumsfeld
    Stephen Cambone
    Alberto Gonzales
    John Yoo
    Dick Cheney
    David Addington
    William Haynes
    Geoffrey Miller
    Daniel K. McNeill
    Ricardo Sanchez
    Carolyn Wood

  11. bbm: I hope the Iraqis can see fit to forgive us now that these losers have been brought to justice and thrown in jail.
    We have funded, supplied, in some cases organized and trained, and in almost all cases turned a blind eye to the subsequent behavior of Iraqi commando squads and militia-filled police units who have abducted, tortured, and killed hundreds of Iraqis. Their torture and killing continues right on up to this very moment.
    I don’t expect forgiveness from the people of Iraq. We have done nothing to earn it.
    We show no signs of ever bringing to justice those who created the policy of torture. Until we do, no one has any reason to forgive us.

  12. Bbm: I hope the Iraqis can see fit to forgive us now that these losers have been brought to justice and thrown in jail.
    On 10th November 2003, Major General Abed Hamed Mowhoush surrendered to US custody after the arrest of four of his sons, who appear to have been taken hostage specifically to force him to surrender. This is a crime: no one, however, has been charged with it.
    On 26th November 2003, Mowhoush died. His body was dumped at a hospital, badly bruised and burned. cite
    Mowhoush had been interrogated daily since his arrest. Earlier interrogations had involved his being beaten by Iraqi nationals under the supervision of CIA agents, so the investigatory report suggests. The CIA agents and the Iraqis have not been charged. Mowhoush finally died when an American interrogator, Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer, “slid a sleeping bag over Mowhoush’s head and rolled him from his back and to his stomach while asking questions”. And then Welshofer “sat on Mowhoush’s chest and placed his hands over the general’s mouth”. The army’s press release said he had died of “natural causes”. cite
    On Saturday 21st January 2006, a jury convicted Welshofer of “negligent homicide and dereliction of duty” which would have meant a prison sentence of at most three years and dismissal from the service – which would have meant Welshofer, who is a 19 year veteran, would have been denied the military pension that he will qualify for in July 2006.
    On Monday 23rd January, the jury ruled “that the interrogator must forfeit $6,000 of his salary over the next four months, receive a formal reprimand and spend 60 days restricted to his home, office and church.”
    Frank Spinner, Welshofer’s defense lawyer, said “When you’re going to send our men and women over there to fight and put their lives on the line, you’ve got to back them up, you’ve got to give them clear rules and you’ve got to give them room to make mistakes and not treat them like criminals.”
    Soldiers in the courtroom cheered at the sentence. cite
    Welshofer has the dubious distinction of being the highest-ranking officer to be charged and convicted of crimes relating to US torture and homicide of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.
    Never mind “the Iraqis”, blogbudsman: do you honestly think that the family of Major General Abed Hamed Mowhoush, murdered by Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer, ought to forgive Welshofer now that he has forfeited $6,000 of his salary over the next four months, received a formal reprimand, and spent 52 days restricted to his home, office and church? (In 8 days more, Welshofer will be free to roam at will, though of course he’s still got two months of his salary deductions to go, which might restrict his activities a little. Honest answer, Blogbudsman: is 60 days and $6000 dollars what you had in mind when you talk of justice for torturers and murderers?
    link)

  13. Who are you mad at jes, the jury? I wasn’t in the deliberation room. I can only assume justice was served. Not everything ends the way you want it. Life’s like that, you know.

  15. bbm, your nonchalant tone is not that of someone who actually seeks or hopes for forgiveness. It comes off, in fact, as the voice of someone who doesn’t give a ____ about the life or suffering of General Mowhoush, his sons (who were taken as hostages to get him to surrender and then tortured in front of him), or any of the other Iraqis who died in U.S. custody.
    Note to posting rules zealots: This is not “mind reading”, but an honest description of the effect of bbm’s language.

  18. Blogbudsman: Who are you mad at jes, the jury? I wasn’t in the deliberation room. I can only assume justice was served.
    So, you’re not actually going to answer the question? Which was: do you honestly think that the family of Major General Abed Hamed Mowhoush, murdered by Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer, ought to forgive Welshofer now that he has been condemned to forfeit $6,000 of his salary over the next four months, received a formal reprimand, and has spent 53 days restricted to his home, office and church – with 7 days more to go?
    Well, hells bells Nell. It’s an honest answer.
    It’s not an answer at all. Try answering, rather than dodging the question.

  20. Blogbudsman: Yes, they should forgive him. And so should you.
    Okay, so you are sincerely in favor of forgiving people who commit serious crimes, whether or not they express any feeling of remorse or seem to have any sense of wrong-doing.
    Let’s hear it from you about how Zacarias Moussaoui should be forgiven and released. After all, he didn’t kill anyone.

  21. Also, BBM, you want to revise your earlier claim: “I hope the Iraqis can see fit to forgive us now that these losers have been brought to justice and thrown in jail.”
    to
    “I hope the Iraqis can see fit to forgive us now that these losers have been brought to justice and made to spend 60 days in their own homes.”

  22. I hope the Iraqis can forgive us for invading their country without having the commitment to see them through with serious force when things got a little tough–and that criticism is directed at Bush by the way (just so you don’t think this is a blame the left response). Our policy at the moment seems to be to avoid US casualties at the expense of actually doing anything about the war raging around them.

  23. “Major combat operations in Iraq” have, um, resumed:
    “U.S. and Iraqi forces on Thursday launched the largest air assault operation since the invasion of Iraq nearly three years ago, the U.S. military said.
    More than 50 aircraft are involved in Operation Swarmer, supporting more than 1,500 Iraqi and U.S. troops near Samarra, about 75 miles (121 kilometers) north of Baghdad.
    The aircraft also delivered troops from the Iraq and U.S. Army to “multiple objectives.”
    The offensive began Thursday morning in southern Salaheddin province “to clear a suspected insurgent operating area northeast of Samarra,” the site of the bombing of the Shiite shrine that escalated sectarian tensions and pushed Iraq to the brink of civil war.”
    Speaking of the civil war, they keep finding more bodies:
    “The death toll from apparent reprisal killings rose in Baghdad when Iraqi Emergency Police said they had found 31 bodies across the capital, 25 on Wednesday and another 6 on Thursday.”
    So we’re using air power against an insurgency, and dancing around the edges of a civl war. Is this anything like past US military adventures? No. Of course not. How could I think such a thing?
    And Bush is still talking tough about Iran?

  24. “I hope the Iraqis can forgive us for invading their country without having the commitment to see them through with serious force when things got a little tough”
    Not to mention the Afghanis. I hope they can forgive us for routing their repulsive government, destroying a good deal of their country and a number of innocent bystanders on the way, without having the commitment to see things through and help them build a better one. I don’t expect it–how would you feel if the US were invaded and its government overthrown by outsiders without any reference to how the inhabitants felt*, the invaders destroyed most of the infrastructure, put a weak puppet government that could only control about 12 square blocks in DC, and then left, congratulating themselves on a job well done–but I do sincerely hope it. Because if they don’t, we can expect more terrorism, more reprisals, more repression everywhere in the world in response to fear of terrorism, etc in a vicious cycle forever. Someone’s got to stop it. And if the wealthy, stable country that lost relatively little** isn’t going to do it, then the poor, unstable country that lost virtually everything will have to be the one.
    *Even assuming that the government had somehow changed into something resembling 1984 or The Handmaid’s Tale.
    ** Not to belittle the effects of the 9/11 attacks, but they are minor compared to the death and damage done by the invasion. The 9/11 attacks were hideous and evil. They killed nearly 3000, destroyed several buildings, and made the stock market crash. But they didn’t destroy the economy, the country’s infrastructure, or the government. Even in New York, essential services continued in most places (though downtown did loose power, water, and/or phone service for a while.) The hospitals were not overwhelmed. The police still responded to other emergencies. The subways ran again the next day. And so on. Within a month, life returned to close to normal for those not directly affected.

  25. Dianne, picky correction: Afghanis are the currency in use in Afghanistan. The people who live there are Afghans.

  26. The people who live there are Afghans.
    “Afghan” is also a generic term for any large woven textile – at least it was in northern PA when I was small.

  27. At the risk of turning a serious thread Farberesque: the original coverlet or rug or blanket called an “Afghan” was one with bright geometrical patterns that could, I suppose, be said to resemble the kind of geometrical designs found on Turkmen or Balouch rugs.
    I apologise for threadjacking.

  31. Jes: I was only being pretend indignant. Sorry I didn’t convey that properly. I guess I should have used a smiley or something. Actually, I don’t mind nit-picking corrections as long as they’re done in a reasonably polite manner and with some recognition that they are nit-picking.
    The issue of when to forgive is an interesting one, I think. For example, should the US have forgiven the 9/11 attacks as soon as those immediately responsible had been turned into carbon dioxide and water vapor–surely a more severe punishment than 60 days of house arrest? The answer would surely be no: the people who inspired, bank-rolled, planned, and perhaps even ordered the attacks were (are) still at large and most likely willing to do it again. In a similar manner, why should the Iraqis just forgive and forget because a few low level torturers have been mildly punished when the people who inspired, paid for, and ordered the torture are still at large, unpunished, and in power? In each case, since the planners are still at large and in power, the risk of a recurrence is unacceptably high.

  32. Diane: In a similar manner, why should the Iraqis just forgive and forget because a few low level torturers have been mildly punished when the people who inspired, paid for, and ordered the torture are still at large, unpunished, and in power?
    And the answer (primarily for Blogbuds benefit, since I don’t doubt you already know it): because Blogbuds and others in his corner do not wish to believe that there were any senior figures who inspired, paid for, and ordered the torture. The party line is that the torture was carried out by “a few bad apples”, not that the tree itself is rotting.
    Nor is this in and of itself surprising. Were a independent investigation to be launched into torture committed, paid for, and ordered by US government and military, with the aim of removing everyone complicit in torture and murder from public office, and prosecuting those directly involved – bearing in mind that in the military and in government responsibility is supposed to go up, not down – then who might find themselves on trial? Fantasies of Rumsfeld or George W. Bush apart (it would be just, but it would be almost infinitely improbable), it seems likely that some very senior figures in the Pentagon would find themselves under investigation, and if we include in the Department of Justice’s involvement in extraordinary rendition, some very senior figures there as well.
    In order to have such an investigation, there would be have to be someone senior to everyone involved, with authority to order it, and with the certainty that he could not be tainted by it, and the backbone to carry it through despite being publicly reviled by the right-wing press for unAmerican behavior. Which is to say: President Kerry.
    Karl Rove would doubtless have fought a dirty campaign in 2004 regardless, but the particular attacks on Kerry’s unAmerican behavior in opposing US atrocities in the past may well have been advance planning just in case Kerry did get in…

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