Why Obama May Not Be Releasing Torture Photos
Because they might also depict rape. Reuters picks up on reports by the British paper, The Daily Telegraph, which the Pentagon denies:
Thursday’s Telegraph quoted retired U.S. Army Major General Antonio Taguba, who conducted a 2004 investigation into abuse at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison, as saying the pictures showed “torture, abuse, rape and every indecency.”
The newspaper said at least one picture showed an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.
Others were said to depict sexual assaults with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.
In an interview with the New Yorker magazine published in 2007, Taguba was quoted as saying that he saw a video of a male American soldier in uniform sodomizing a female detainee.
Scott Horton at the Daily Beast thinks the British reports are true:
A senior military officer familiar with the photos told me that they would likely provoke a storm of outrage if released. The well-informed source confirmed, just as reported in the Telegraph, that many of the photographs are sexually explicit, including those mentioned above. The photographs differ from those already officially released. Some show U.S. personnel engaged in sexual acts with prisoners and each other. In one, a female prisoner appears to have been forced to expose her breasts to be photographed. In another, a prisoner is suspended naked upside down from the top bunk of a bed in a stress position.
Effed up does not even begin to explain the scenes depicted in the pictures if true. I do remember an interview with Sy Hersh a few years back when the first batch of pictures were released in which he said that the remaining unleased pics are “devastating.” I assume this is what he was talking about.
Are tortorous depictions of rape and sexual abuse worse than non-sexual depictions of torture? In my mind there is a clear distinction. At least the necessity of physical torture to extract key information, though repugnant, can be advanced and entertained in the interests of national security. But rape and sodomy of prisoners? I wonder if former VP Cheney would consider it acceptable practice if, arguendo, there was a chance it would illicit actionable intelligence. I would love to hear that argument as it would demonstrate the crude arguments in favor of torture.
Notes:
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emperorsnewclothes reblogged this from paxahmedicana and added:
pudding…. (i have no idea what that means, but read this blog entry by Paxahmedicana)
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paxahmedicana posted this
