Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> Newsday - June 15, 2004
>
> Moore Stayed Quiet About Prisoner Footage
>
> By Associated Press
> June 15, 2004, 8:03 AM EDT
>
> SAN FRANCISCO -- Filmmaker Michael Moore had footage of prisoner
> abuse in Iraq long before the atrocities captured international
> attention, but decided to stay quiet until his new movie came out.
> Now he's questioning that decision.
>
> "I had it months before the story broke on '60 Minutes,' and I really
> struggled with what to do with it," Moore told the San Francisco
> Chronicle. "I wanted to come out with it sooner, but I thought I'd be
> accused of just putting this out for publicity for my movie. That
> prevented me from making maybe the right decision."
>
No. He made the right decision.
Even now that they have been revealed (with more promised) they are not having all that much of an immediate effect, and coming out first from Moore might have dampened the effect they have had.
Consider the (probably millions) of liberals/radicals/leftists who _still_ haven't been able to free themselves from the superstition that now that the u.s. is there it must stay there until it has somehow corrected the damage it has done! That is the ideology (spontaneous but denied 'trust' in the ability of the u.s. state to operate from good intentions) which hampers and will continue to hamper for some time the anti-war effort.
The revelations of torture will not in themselves even touch the common sense tendency (on the whole probably useful in day-to-day survival) to trust one's leaders and to assume the rightness of one's own nation (club, clan, family, etc). When the anti-war movement becomes large and visible enough to offer a contrast to this common sense, _then_ and only then will the revelations of torture and other horrors of u.s. imperialism begin to make a difference: they won't "change peoples minds" but provide substance for a change which comes from other sources.
Carrol