The ACLU’s access to addi­tion­al pho­tos and videos from Abu Ghraib has been blocked. Hunter at Dai­lyKos explains what we’re miss­ing:

The images, accord­ing to those law­mak­ers who have seen them, paint a pic­ture of tor­ture at Abu Ghraib far, far worse than most Amer­i­cans have yet been will­ing to admit. Via the Boston Her­ald, May 8th, 2004:

Sig­nal­ing the worst rev­e­la­tions are yet to come, Sec­re­tary of Defense Don­ald Rums­feld said the addi­tion­al pho­tos show “acts that can only be described as bla­tant­ly sadis­tic, cru­el and inhu­man.” […]
The unre­leased images show Amer­i­can sol­diers beat­ing one pris­on­er almost to death, appar­ent­ly rap­ing a female pris­on­er, act­ing inap­pro­pri­ate­ly with a dead body, and tap­ing Iraqi guards rap­ing young boys, accord­ing to NBC News.

Repub­li­can Sen. Lind­sey Gra­ham of South Car­oli­na said the scan­dal is “going to get worse” and warned that the most “dis­turb­ing” rev­e­la­tions haven’t yet been made public.

“The Amer­i­can pub­lic needs to under­stand, we’re talk­ing about rape and mur­der here,” he said. “We’re not just talk­ing about giv­ing peo­ple a humil­i­at­ing expe­ri­ence; we’re talk­ing about rape and mur­der and some very seri­ous charges.”

And from inves­tiga­tive reporter Sey­mour Hersh:

The women were pass­ing mes­sages say­ing “Please come and kill me, because of what’s hap­pened”. Basi­cal­ly what hap­pened is that those women who were arrest­ed with young boys/children in cas­es that have been record­ed. The boys were sodom­ized with the cam­eras rolling. The worst about all of them is the sound­track of the boys shrieking.

Note these links are from 2004. We’ve known about the addi­tion­al abuse cas­es for over a year. And yes, the rest of the world already knows.

Update [2005–7‑22 20:41:35 by Hunter]: In ref­er­ence to a num­ber of posts below… To be hon­est, I don’t even care if this effort looks par­ti­san any­more. If being anti-child-sodomy is now con­sid­ered the par­ti­san posi­tion, then I’m going to be the biggest f—ing par­ti­san on the plan­et, and to Hell with any­one who isn’t.

I’m tired of all of it. Just tired. I’m tired because the rest of the world has known this for a year, and we refuse to dis­cuss it in this coun­try. And in truth, we can’t dis­cuss it in this coun­try with­out the (heav­i­ly cen­sored) pic­tures, because with­out the pic­tures, the hor­ri­ble, hor­ri­ble actu­al pic­tures, the loath­some, brick-stu­pid f—ing news media does­n’t see a sto­ry. And with­out the pic­tures, every bloat­ed, pill-pop­ping, corpse-like Rush Lim­baugh clone in Amer­i­ca will con­tin­ue to claim it’s all lies, all exag­ger­at­ed, all phony.

Amen. If child-sodomy is par­ti­san, I’m glad I’m with the par­ty that’s against it. Dit­to for rape and abus­ing the dead. If your par­ty is on the oth­er side, maybe you want to write some­one a let­ter. Or vote for the oth­er guy, even if the let­ter next to his/her name is a D.

Don’t for­get this from the tes­ti­mo­ny gath­ered by Gen­er­al Tagu­ba:

I saw [name blacked out] fuck­ing a kid, his age would be about 15–18 years. The kid was hurt­ing very bad and they cov­ered all the doors with sheets. Then when I heard the scream­ing I climbed the door because on top it was­n’t cov­ered and I saw [blacked out], who was wear­ing the mil­i­tary uni­form putting his dick in the lit­tle kid’s ass,” Mr Hilas told mil­i­tary inves­ti­ga­tors. “I could­n’t see the face of the kid because his face was­n’t in front of the door. And the female sol­dier was tak­ing pictures.”

Salon.com had a review of Machete Sea­son: The Killers in Rwan­da Speak by Jean Hatzfeld, a book by a jour­nal­ist in Rwan­da. This jour­nal­ist went to a prison and inter­viewed 10 peo­ple who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the slaugh­ter in rur­al Rwanda.

I’ll quote some of their comments:

“Man can get used to killing, if he kills on and on,” said Alphonse. Ful­gence went one step fur­ther: “The more we saw peo­ple die, the less we thought about their lives, the less we talked about their deaths. And the more we got used to enjoy­ing it.”

…

But there was anoth­er key com­po­nent to the geno­cide’s feroc­i­ty: No one was watch­ing. There is noth­ing so damn­ing in “Machete Sea­son” as when the men speak of the “whites.” One man sug­gests that the idea of geno­cide ger­mi­nat­ed in 1959, when Hutus mas­sa­cred many Tut­sis “with­out being pun­ished.” And in 1994, Hutu extrem­ists grad­u­al­ly real­ized that the world was avert­ing its eyes from the present atroc­i­ties as well. “All the impor­tant peo­ple turned their backs on our killings,” said Elie. “The blue hel­mets, the Bel­gians, the white direc­tors, the black pres­i­dents, the human­i­tar­i­an peo­ple, and the inter­na­tion­al cam­era­men, the priests and the bish­ops and final­ly even God … We were all aban­doned by all words of rebuke.” Pan­crace agreed: “Killing is very dis­cour­ag­ing if you your­self must decide to do it … but if you must obey the orders of the author­i­ties … if you see that the killing will be total and with­out dis­as­trous con­se­quences for your­self, you feel soothed and reassured.”

When we sent our sol­diers off to Iraq, they got orders to do these things. A bunch of kids from the sticks did­n’t just decide to let loose, they were giv­en a green light by their supe­ri­ors. And Mark Dan­ner has a pret­ty good doc­u­ment trail that comes close to prov­ing it.

If we don’t want our boys com­ing back “used to killing,” not think­ing about oth­er peo­ple’s lives, “enjoy­ing” mur­der, we need to do what no one had the courage to do 10 years ago. We need to demand action. We need to make our­selves see what we don’t want to.

Too many peo­ple see this Bagh­dad mur­al of the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty flip­ping the switch on the Hood­ed Man from Abu Ghraib and think it rep­re­sents you and me.

That’s not OK. 

In a democ­ra­cy, it’s not OK for cit­i­zens to sit by and wait for the gov­ern­ment to take care of a prob­lem. As they say, if the peo­ple lead, the lead­ers will fol­low. As long as you haven’t com­plained to your sen­a­tors, they don’t have any inter­est in dig­ging into this and get­ting real answers. Brown­back and Roberts sit on com­mit­tees with over­sight of Abu Ghraib, and have been con­tent to let the mil­i­tary inves­ti­gate itself. That won’t do, but they think you don’t care enough.

Tell them otherwise.

Tell the it’s not OK to stomp POWs (a Gen­er­al and a Lt. Colonel) to death.

That’s not America.