] A Republican member of the Senate Armed Services
] Committee dismissed Tuesday the outrage over the abuse of
] Iraqi prisoners by U.S. troops, saying Iraqis depicted in
] widely broadcast photographs probably had "blood on their
] hands."

Rush limbaugh runs it. It flys. So they pull the story a little further in and run it again. If it flys again we'll see if from more mainstream leaders...

CNN.com - GOP senator labels abused prisoners 'terrorists' - May 12, 2004

] It's time to put up or shut up. Last week I wrote a column
] saying that CBS should have thought twice before showing
] the photos from Abu Ghraib prison. The response from
] readers and even some journalists was like I'd proposed
] banning the printing press. Numerous e-mailers said I'm
] no different than a Holocaust-denier who'd ban photos
] from Auschwitz.
]
] Well, now we have the horrible news that Nick Berg, an
] American contractor, was beheaded by an
] al-Qaeda-affiliated group explicitly in response to the
] release of the Abu Ghraib photos.

There has been an ongoing discussion on MemeStreams for over a year about the ethics of publishing raw war footage. Here is an right wing view. I think it sheds some light on the subject. Be sure to follow the link through to the column he references and read it as well.

Despite rambling off into crypto racist commentary about the literacy rate in Iraq, this article does make a valid observation. Why do we show pictures of prison abuses but we don't show the beheading video? Because the press uses its position to exhert greater pressure on those in power to be responsible then it does on those who are already assumed to be monsters. In general, there is no problem there. The abuse photos have certainly cost us a lot of ground in Iraq, and an arguement can be made that they should have been supressed, but honestly, if our political institutions are as strong as we beleive they are they ought to be able to weather such scrutiny, and communicate effectively about how we're handling it with the Arab public.

The issue at hand is that clearly the press does not make choices about what footage to air and what footage not to air on the basis of the nature of the footage alone. The press makes these decisions on a political basis. While this author's reference to footage of "partial birth abortions" is partisan and oversimplified, the general point must be considered. The press makes political decisions about what to air. In that sense they cannot be seen as objective. Once we've reached that conclusion we must ask what the political motives of the press actually are, and whether we feel like those motives are in line with our interests.

Jonah Goldberg on Abu Ghraib on National Review Online

] If it is forced to withdraw from Iraq, or to so limit
] its operations there as to be effectively withdrawn, the
] entire dynamic that the United States has worked to
] create since the Sept. 11 attacks will reverse itself,
] and the U.S. position in the Muslim world -- which was
] fairly strong in January 2004 -- will deteriorate, and al
] Qaeda's influence will increase dramatically.

I've been waiting for this one. They basically rip the administration on point after point after point. However, they also continue to support the overall concept of the Iraq war. But it only works if we don't loose it.

Stratfor Update

Second Clip - "Abuse is different from torture." - Rumsfeld

COMEDY CENTRAL: Daily Show on Abu Ghraib - 2

First Clip - "Oh no, this might make the Arab world angry at us..."

COMEDY CENTRAL: Daily Show on Abu Ghraib - 1

] Iraq's deepening crisis has left the Bush administration
] with few options, and although the US has entrusted the
] United Nations with the task of finding a way towards
] political stability and elections, officials and analysts
] close to the White House admit that hopes of success are
] receding fast.
]
] Insiders describe a lack of direction and a prevailing
] sense of gloom and desperation in the administration.
] This gloom has only been intensified by the exposure of
] torture and sexual abuse of Iraqi prisoners.

Is the US about to loose control of this completely?

Capitualtion in Iraq?

] "Tormenting Iraqis, in her mind, would be no different
] from shooting a turkey. Every season here you're hunting
] something. Over there, they're hunting Iraqis."

A portrait of West Virginia...

The Daily Telegraph | Good ol' girl who enjoyed cruelty

] Among the corrosive lies a nation at war tells itself is
] that the glory -- the lofty goals announced beforehand,
] the victories, the liberation of the oppressed -- belongs
] to the country as a whole; but the failure -- the
] accidents, the uncounted civilian dead, the crimes and
] atrocities -- is always exceptional. Noble goals flow
] naturally from a noble people; the occasional act of
] barbarity is always the work of individuals,
] unaccountable, confusing and indigestible to the national
] conscience.

washingtonpost.com: A Wretched New Picture Of America

So newspapers all over the planet are blaring these pictures today on the front page, but the issue seems to be 3rd page news in the domestic American media and the pictures are very difficult to locate online. Here they are. This isn't all of them but its enough.

The soldiers explanations about having not gotten proper guidance from management seems ridiculous in light of the photographs. It should be obvious to anyone that this behavior is inappropriate.

In case you haven't seen the stories, the individual on the box has been told that if he falls off the box he will be electrocuted...

The Abu Ghraib Prison Photos

] A militant group has threatened to kill three Italian
] hostages unless their countrymen demonstrate against the
] presence of Italian troops in Iraq, according to a video
] aired on an Arabic news channel.

This is about the dumbest thing that I've ever heard. It would be good for the blooper reel if it wasn't for the fact that people's lives are at stake. What is the point of a protest rally when it is held under duress? It means nothing and will have no political impact.

These guys are either dumb, or something got lost here in the translation (maybe intentionally).

The government certainly won't organize a protest. It will be interesting to see if protests occur. Its possible that some people won't get the memo that you don't comply with requests like this. Will the ensuing demonstation actually satisfy the kidnappers? Who knows?

A much more interesting strategy would have been to kidnap people during election time and then demand that people vote a particular way or you'll kill the hostages. Maybe this is a trial run for such an attack.

Usually they'd prevent such a message from getting to the media, but under these circumstances Al'J might run it and the domestic media wouldn't be able to keep it bottled up. You could also end run that by posting your demand broadly on the internet... Spam it...

The only way to manage a situation like that is to launch a strong multi-partisan domestic cultural response that the terrorist demands ought to be ignored by the voters and then hope people come through. Things could get really really ugly if one of the domestic parties tried to take advantage of the situation...

(U:) Probably the point of this is not to influence the west, but to demonstrate to gullible people in the middle east that they terrorists have influenced the west.

CNN.com - Protest 'or Italian hostages die' - Apr 26, 2004