The Pentagon's Secret Stash

April 2, 2005 4:38 PM

The Pentagon's Secret Stash. "...There can be narratives of things that are much worse, but if they aren't accompanied by photos, they somehow don't register....The Abu Ghraib photos are sort of the military equivalent of the Rodney King case....And I hate to attribute motives to people I don't know, but it is easy to imagine that the officials who are withholding these images have that fact in mind."
posted by gsb (16 comments total)

How do we keep the sadists out of the military? (Or is it just inevitable that some divisions of the miltary (i.e prison details) will attract a disproportionate number of sadists?
posted by kmtharakan at 5:19 PM on April 2, 2005

kmtharakan, you mean like how some cops are there not out of a desire to protect and defend, but rather to lord it over everybody else?

I don't know...I guess you have to accept that some degraded individuals will be drawn to those authority positions and keep a vigilant eye out for deviant behavior.

Seriously, I don't have a better answer.
posted by 1016 at 5:22 PM on April 2, 2005

Organizations which wield this type of power tend to create sadists out of otherwise normal people.

I don't think the problem is the people who go in as sadists, that is just an unfortunate reality, but making sadists out of normal people is something you have control over.
posted by Chuckles at 6:53 PM on April 2, 2005

The mandate is sadistic. Keeping sadists out of the Pentagon, and therefore the White House, would seem to be a resonable start.

"if the Democrats really think that belaboring complaints about harsh treatment of the enemy is the way to 'score points with the public,' they're more out of touch than we thought."

Indeed.

As a practical matter, making public the even more super gory perverted stuff would put 100,000-plus Americans on the ground in Iraq, who had nothing to do with that demented operation, at greater risk. These people want to do their time and get the fuck out of there. My desire to see the chain of command held responsible for their depraved methods in the execution of a vile war I never supported does not translate into the acquiescence that a thousand more soldiers be snuffed in making that happen.
posted by airguitar at 7:22 PM on April 2, 2005

Does my profession lean towards dehumanization. Perhaps, but if so, how can we control that? I don't think it really has anything to do with whose in the White House though, just as much as although Alan Greenspan is in charge, he doesn't really control everything that happens.

So still it remains: how do you make people who unfailing act human in rather dehumanizing situations.
posted by Lord Chancellor at 7:52 PM on April 2, 2005

airguitar: I hear what you're saying. But the reasoning is circular. Partially sweeping such acts under the rug makes it more likely that they will be repeated.

It is attractive to fantasize that the Congress has this problem well taken care of. And the Pentagon's on a short leash now, by gum. Do you really think that is happening?

Anyway, this whole discussion is absurd. We're criticizing the US for not being nice invaders? The elephant in the room here is that the US forces have, to put it lightly, very little goodwill to draw upon. Those poor soldiers are trapped in a hostile country, and under enormous strain. But this is not because of anything the Washington Post would ever do.

The think-of-the-soldiers defense is nuts. I mean, so if Rumsfeld sends them less body armor, we have to soft-pedal our criticism by a proportionate amount? The more aggressive and insane and unpopular the strategy is, the less we can criticize it?

Given the current leadership, if you wait for a nice time to criticize when there are no soldiers abroad, you may wait for a very, very long time.
posted by brevity at 8:06 PM on April 2, 2005

kmtharakan writes "How do we keep the sadists out of the military?"

We could let it be known that if you kill a wounded Iraqi prisoner, your entire punishment will consist of -- wait for it -- getting out of the Army.

Why they'll be lining up -- lining up wounded Iraqi prisoners against a wall -- to get out!
posted by orthogonality at 8:53 PM on April 2, 2005

The more aggressive and insane and unpopular the strategy is, the less we can criticize it?

Good point. It is circular logic, but in this instance, I don't know that publishing military-grade snuff porn is going to get done what should have been done Nov 2, 2004.

It was easier to believe that public outrage was leading to real change at the top, before this last election. And that's where change would have to take place were it meaningfully to take place at all. It's a civilian-run military.

Plus, I just saw that movie Gunner Palace tonight. What's done is done. Those people need less trauma, not more. They live it every day. We get to hash it over with little personal consequence.

I can see why elected representatives would put the kibosh on this second set being published. They should guard against putting the people they represent in harm's way (anymore than they already have, I know, I know), and even though the slime in the Pentagon get shielded along the way, the people on the ground are protected. I don't have a problem with that.
posted by airguitar at 9:27 PM on April 2, 2005

airguitar, while I can see your point in so far as reducing trauma for troops is good, I fail to see the connection with pictures in newspapers.

I think you are suggesting that the Iraqis will see the pictures and kill more Americans, but that seems terribly unlikely to me. The Iraqis know what is happening in their own neighborhood pretty well, I bet. I doubt a few scandalous pictures in newspapers would make much difference to people who have already seen the direct consequences of the invasion.

I think pictures in newspapers would have a pretty big effect on everyone else in the world though. I guess one could envision scenarios where that might cause more Americans to die in Iraq, but it seems like a real stretch to me.

Oh, and brevity, 191 words is borderline, how am I supposed to know if the name is meant to be ironic or not?
posted by Chuckles at 10:08 PM on April 2, 2005

I recommend the movie, whole-heartedly. What you see is how these preciously young people (19!) try to keep the peace, post-invasion, in a land where none of them speak the language, or look very much like anyone else. They all rely on interpreters and, most importantly, the good will of the general populace. If nothing else goes wrong, they are still getting pelted with rocks from seven-year-olds, and cursed at by the adults.

As far as the connection between pictures and killings, it's a guess. We can place our bets on different squares, neither knowing which would be more correct. But as it's possible that playing rape videos on Al-Jazeera would lead to increased tensions and additional murder, I am equally less inclined to support that broadcast.

Believe me, it's fucking disturbing that this sick behavior took place in the first place, and was allowed to continue. And encouraged. And made possible, from the very top. But this all broke a year ago. And the time for real change was November. I guess I'm resigned to another four years of malfeasance, and I don't feel like the people stuck on the front lines should have to die for someone else's perverted ideas of interrogation and prisoner management.

If I thought that releasing the gory stuff would help root out the people who made it happen, I could weigh that against risks on the ground (because that would help mitigate the risks), but I don't see that happening. These people don't give a fuck. And if the stars of this unreleased material haven't already been court marshalled and jailed, I'm completely at a loss to understand why the people running the military should ever be trusted, at all, in any situation, ever again.
posted by airguitar at 11:05 PM on April 2, 2005

airguitar, whether it leads to change or not is no reason not to report the news. You report it, then it's up to the people to make the change. If the change doesn't happen it may be tempting to say, in essence, "screw 'em, let 'em get what they voted for," but too much else is at stake to take that stance.

When it comes to the troops being put in (more) danger, it is not obvious that releasing further pictures will put them in that, what's already been shown would make any Iraqi rightfully livid. But this is not an argument for never printing the photos to begin with, it's an argument for making sure these kinds of things never happen to begin with. You can bet all kinds of other things happen which we never hear about, but that doesn't excuse those things, and it doesn't mean they shouldn't see print if word of them is ever discovered. That's simply how the press in the U.S. works, or rather, is supposed to work.

Another perspective: Our troops may be in an uncomfortable position, but even if makes things more dangerous for them, not revealing the full story about what happened in Abu Ghraib will ultimately aid the people who unwisely put them in that danger in the first place, and thus will ultimately result in even more danger for those troops.
posted by JHarris at 3:36 AM on April 3, 2005

Some people are trying to let us know what is happening in the military. Bet it doesn't make them very popular.
posted by leftcoastbob at 7:42 AM on April 3, 2005

Rumsfeld keeps these recordings at his private residence as a personal porn collection.
It's what gets him off.
He does share with wolfie and perle and feith.
Nothing like torturing darkies!
posted by nofundy at 3:05 PM on April 3, 2005

What you see is how these preciously young people (19!) try to keep the peace, post-invasion, in a land where none of them speak the language, or look very much like anyone else... If nothing else goes wrong, they are still getting pelted with rocks from seven-year-olds, and cursed at by the adults.

The patrol footage in the preview for that movie Gunner Palace looks exactly like what's in a documentary I just saw called Exile & Empire: 20 Short Films about Iraq. Filmed by a Canadian/Iraqi, it shows plainly just how hopeless the task is.

Short clips from the short films, including an abandoned Abu Ghraib prison before the Americans moved in.
posted by LeLiLo at 9:48 PM on April 3, 2005

Related to this post?
posted by uncanny hengeman at 11:21 PM on April 3, 2005

The decision not to release this sort of material should not be in the administrations hands, and if it is, there should be substantial penalties for all involved in making that decision to unneccessarily limit the public's information sources. Democracy relies on people having accurate info. In the US and Australia our fragile awareness of our unethical position in the world is kept in a matchbox full of cotton wool.
posted by arjuna at 3:02 PM on April 4, 2005