The Torture Photos We’re Not Supposed To See

NOTE January 24, 2016: Following persistent harassment from Google because of the ads I host, which, hilariously, make me almost no money whatsoever, I have removed the three images that were on this page. Google stated, “Google does not allow the monetization of content that may be sensitive, tragic, or hurtful. While we believe strongly in the freedom of expression and offer broad access to content across the Web without censoring search results, we reserve the right to exercise discretion when reviewing sites and determining whether or not we are able to provide a positive user experience delivering contextually targeted ads to a site with this type of content.” It was stated that I could remove the ad’s code from the page, but I didn’t know how to do that on a page by page basis. If you still want to see images from Abu Ghraib, follow the link below.

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Below are three photos of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, from the website of the Sydney Morning Herald, which made them available in 2006, and from Britain’s Daily Telegraph. The photos relate to President Obama’s recent decision to back down, at the last minute, from a promise to comply with a court order demanding the release, by May 28, of 44 photos of the abuse of prisoners in various locations in Afghanistan and Iraq. As the Guardian noted last month, the photos confirm that “abuse was much more widespread than the US has so far been prepared to admit,” and even though these photos are not thought to be part of the 44 photos in question, it is believed that they constitute part of the 2,000 photos that the government was also “processing for release” at the time, according to the Justice Department.

Announcing his decision, Obama said that the photos in question were “not particularly sensational, especially when compared to the painful images that we remember from Abu Ghraib.” This may be so, but we will never know if they are not made available, and in any case, as the Daily Telegraph reported, the photographs “reportedly show military guards threatening to sexually assault a detainee with a broomstick and hooded prisoners on transport planes with Playboy magazines opened to pictures of nude women on their laps,” which, though not as vile as the Abu Ghraib photos, could certainly be regarded as “sensational.”

Obama’s main point, however, was spelled out when he added that “the most direct consequence of releasing them, I believe, would be to further inflame anti-American opinion and to put our troops in greater danger.”

In response, Anthony D. Romero, the President of the ACLU, which has been campaigning since 2003 for the release of the photos, made the following statement:

The Obama administration’s adoption of the stonewalling tactics and opaque policies of the Bush administration flies in the face of the president’s stated desire to restore the rule of law, to revive our moral standing in the world and to lead a transparent government. This decision is particularly disturbing given the Justice Department’s failure to initiate a criminal investigation of torture crimes under the Bush administration.

It is true that these photos would be disturbing; the day we are no longer disturbed by such repugnant acts would be a sad one. In America, every fact and document gets known — whether now or years from now. And when these photos do see the light of day, the outrage will focus not only on the commission of torture by the Bush administration but on the Obama administration’s complicity in covering them up. Any outrage related to these photos should be due not to their release but to the very crimes depicted in them. Only by looking squarely in the mirror, acknowledging the crimes of the past and achieving accountability can we move forward and ensure that these atrocities are not repeated.

If the Obama administration continues down this path, it will betray not only its promises to the American people, but its commitment to this nation’s most fundamental principles. President Obama has said we should turn the page, but we cannot do that until we fully learn how this nation veered down the path of criminality and immorality, who allowed that to happen and whose lives were mutilated as a result. Releasing these photos — as painful as it might be — is a critical step toward that accounting. The American people deserve no less.

Both sides, I believe, have a point, but in reviewing whether or not to post these particular images, I decided that it was worth publishing them for three reasons:

1: As a reminder of what happens when military personnel, who are trained to obey orders, are ordered to disregard the Geneva Conventions and to indulge in sadistic behavior as part of their instructions to “soften up the detainees” for interrogation.

2: As a reminder that the acts depicted were not the rogue activities of “a few bad apples” (as Bush administration officials maintained, and as President Obama also attempted to claim, when he said that “the publication of these photos would not add any additional benefit to our understanding of what was carried out in the past by a small number of individuals”), but were part of a deliberate policy, inspired by the US military’s SERE program and authorized at the highest levels of the Bush administration — and, in particular by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld — in which the use of torture and abuse as part of the Standard Operating Procedure was authorized in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantánamo. The photos I have chosen — featuring nudity, sexual humiliation, hooding, painful shackling and the use of dogs to terrify detainees — are typical of the techniques used widely in the “War on Terror.”

3: As a reminder that, although Barack Obama pledged, in an Executive Order issued on his second day in office, that the questioning of prisoners by any US government agency must follow the interrogation guidelines laid down in the Army Field Manual, which guarantees humane treatment under the Geneva Conventions, his government has appealed a ruling by Judge John D. Bates, granting habeas corpus rights to foreign prisoners subjected to “extraordinary rendition” and held in the US-run prison in Bagram, Afghanistan.

The administration’s determination to maintain a regime of total secrecy at Bagram does nothing to convince me that, beyond his rhetoric about embracing the Geneva Conventions, Obama has actually insisted that Donald Rumsfeld’s brutal innovations are thoroughly repudiated, that prisoners seized in wartime will genuinely be protected once more by the Geneva Conventions, and that copies of the Geneva Conventions will be prominently displayed in any interrogation setting, as they were before the Bush administration began its journey to the “Dark Side.”

For more on the story, see Documents Describe Prisoner Abuse Photos Obama is Withholding on The Public Record, and for extensive galleries of previously released photos, see two articles at Salon, here and here.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK). To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed, and also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, published in March 2009.

For other articles on Abu Ghraib, see: Remember Abu Ghraib? (a review of Mark Danner’s Torture and Truth), Former US interrogator Damien Corsetti recalls the torture of prisoners in Bagram and Abu Ghraib (December 2007), Film Review: Standard Operating Procedure (a review of Errol Morris’ challenging documentary about the scandal) (July 2008), In the Guardian: The 5th anniversary of the Abu Ghraib scandal (April 2009).

For other articles on Iraq, see: Book Review: Road From Ar Ramadi: The Private Rebellion of Staff Sergeant Camilo Mejía (January 2008), Iraq’s refugees in Syria: Mike Otterman reports (February 2008), UK government deports 60 Iraqi Kurds; no one notices (March 2008), A History of Music Torture in the “War on Terror” (December 2008), The Ten Lies of Dick Cheney (Part Two) (December 2008), Refuting Cheney’s Lies: The Stories of Six Prisoners Released from Guantánamo (January 2009), Even In Cheney’s Bleak World, The Al-Qaeda-Iraq Torture Story Is A New Low (April 2009), Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi Has Died In A Libyan Prison (May 2009), Dick Cheney And The Death Of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi (May 2009), Lawrence Wilkerson Nails Cheney On Use Of Torture To Invade Iraq (May 2009), Cheney’s Lies Undermined By Iraq Interrogator Matthew Alexander (May 2009).