The ones I have are the uncensored versions of those displayed at <http://www.aztlan.net/iraqi_women_raped.htm>.
Doug
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They're out there somewhere and certainly some are not fake. Here is Seymour Hersh's latest:
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040517fa_fact2
>From that article dated 05/10/2004:
``...Last week, I was given another set of digital photographs, which had been in the possession of a member of the 320th. According to a time sequence embedded in the digital files, the photographs were taken by two different cameras over a twelve-minute period on the evening of December 12, 2003, two months after the military-police unit was assigned to Abu Ghraib.
An Iraqi prisoner and American military dog handlers. Other photographs show the Iraqi on the ground, bleeding.
One of the new photographs shows a young soldier, wearing a dark jacket over his uniform and smiling into the camera, in the corridor of the jail. In the background are two Army dog handlers, in full camouflage combat gear, restraining two German shepherds. The dogs are barking at a man who is partly obscured from the camera's view by the smiling soldier. Another image shows that the man, an Iraqi prisoner, is naked. His hands are clasped behind his neck and he is leaning against the door to a cell, contorted with terror, as the dogs bark a few feet away. Other photographs show the dogs straining at their leashes and snarling at the prisoner. In another, taken a few minutes later, the Iraqi is lying on the ground, writhing in pain, with a soldier sitting on top of him, knee pressed to his back. Blood is streaming from the inmate's leg. Another photograph is a closeup of the naked prisoner, from his waist to his ankles, lying on the floor. On his right thigh is what appears to be a bite or a deep scratch. There is another, larger wound on his left leg, covered in blood...
NBC News later quoted U.S. military officials as saying that the unreleased photographs showed American soldiers "severely beating an Iraqi prisoner nearly to death, having sex with a female Iraqi prisoner, and `acting inappropriately with a dead body.' The officials said there also was a videotape, apparently shot by U.S. personnel, showing Iraqi guards raping young boys."...''
In addition to the fast closing moment for Democrat opposition to get back on the other side of this door, there is also a faster closing window of getting and keeping authentic witness narratives and photographic documentation available and intact.
It won't take too much fake material to turn this into the Big Muddy.
Another interesting possibility for US institutionalized cognitive dissonance would be a DoJ shut down and prosecution of internet sites that publish either authentic or fake image material. This is after all pornography at its finest, and we know how Deacon John (Ashcroft that is) feels about that.
Fake torture material, anti-war propaganda done as `journalism', conspiracy theories, and other obvious abuses need to be recognized and disowned immediately, if not in advance. These are as dangerous to us and Iraqis as the `real thing' is to Bush and the Right. We need to keep our collective heads straight on this shit. These sorts of creative abuses while some what amusing have the serious potential to discredit sincere opposition, anti-war movements, progressives, and leftists---while at the same time muddy the facts.
(As one who is guilty of these sorts over reactions, consider most of this a note to myself.)
I suspect, we might soon get a rightwing propaganda offensive and media blitz the likes of which we may have rarely seen before. If there is a slow down in bad news cycles from Iraq, then as soon as the Right recovers from their own spinning head and Bush's descent into hell's own sewer, we may have to face a credibility assault of our own. So, I am saying to myself get ready to get hit, grab something fixed and solid, because my guess is a tidal wave might be coming.
In a sense it has already started as the local news media has ramped up the number of nightly features covering local military families, exploiting their struggles and emotional suffering over their loved ones in Iraq. These stories seem to seek to neutralize the impact of the torture, murder, and cruelty inflicted by US forces in occupied Iraq. During Vietnam the same `balanced' coverage of the `suffering at home' was often used to neutralize the combat footage. The message was we are all suffering so shut up. Americans are dying, how dare you object. True. But, how did US troops get over there to endure their suffering and dying in the first place?
(Maybe I am being paranoid again.)
There are other distinct possibilities for the Right to exploit that are possibly more damaging and effective. I think making a rough outline of that potential may serve to de-fang it a little in advance.
I would expect that Arab media have already gone off the deep end in both their anti-US propaganda and in their factual coverage. I certainly would, and have. So then by citing Arab media sources and news reports (many of which maybe accurate) and linking them to US domestic opposition to the war, the Right can succeed in making the domestic opposition appear to be equivalent to the `enemy' and therefore opposition amounts to treason, sedition and support for terrorism.
(Fortunately the bad news cycle just keeps coming in week after week and it has made it almost impossible for the Right to re-group.)
The Right has already done this bait-switch with mixed results during the height of the Israel PLO battles the year before Iraq and they managed to mostly discredit Al Jezeera and other Arab media along with most domestic opposition to Israel. The technique was to establish an equivalence between anti-Israeli views with anti-Semiticism, and to do so very conveniently after the Right had declared itself wedded to Israel until the Rapture. Thankfully Israel was so blatantly criminal while committing its own atrocities that most of this Rightwing smear campaign failed. But the nice thing about smear is some shit sticks no matter what.
I still think the central issue is not the torture (real or fake), but the war, the occupation, the military intelligence run gulag that constitutes Bush's war on terrorism.
I suspect the model for this US run MI gulag (aka War on Terrorism) is a combination of Israeli and UK military counter-terrorism models developed to deal with the PLO, Hamas, and the IRA. The US internal sources would be the CIA and DEA wars in Latin America and Central America. Other US sources might include FBI and ATF units used against US domestic paramilitary wackos, including hiring their former targets and informers as consultants, and other miscellaneous crap.
Speaking of domestic paramilitary wackos, nobody has identified who fills in the ranks of `private contractors'. However, the Mississippi guy who was released from Iraq, looks like a paramilitary poster-boy for Soldier of Fortune to me---straight out the white-trash NRA catalog, under the section: fully automatic kits available.
But these are just the possible source materials for the military intelligence gathering arm of the gulag. The other half, the guard and the operations half of the gulag must have mostly US sources, and here US prison guards and domestic police forces picking up extra pay joining the Army reserves was a natural to fill-in for MP units.
While it seems obvious enough and a matter of Army tradition to court marshal the lowest ranking personnel as scapegoats for the sake of plausible deniability by higher ranking officers, it also has another virtue. Going after the guards deverts attention from the military intelligence arm. The guards probably have no idea what the purpose of their `softening' techniques was, beyond the obvious and patently un-informative words `intelligence gathering.' Is that immediately useful combat intelligence like what street do the bad guys hold tonight? Or longer term information like who lives where. What are they planning, etc. etc? Probably all of it of course.
But if a general sweep of information about Iraq political and military society was the goal, how does any of that information inform the general DoD and Bush goal of attacking Islamic terrorism? Iraq wasn't a clerical or theocratic state. It was a secular military dictatorship. As such it had nothing to do with the Taliban or Al Qaeda groups that presumably carried out 9/11, the Spanish train bombing and other events.
So that leaves information on anti-coalition activities as the default information gathering goal. But this is an absurdity. We invaded and occupy the country. Certainly it is expected that somebody would object. Duh. So the US puts together a Gestopo as its security plan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom? We create a resistance to fight one? Go figure.
If that is the intelligence goal, then that turns Operation Enduring Freedom in to a question as in, can you survive it?
Well it certainly clears up why `security' is a problem in Iraq. The US military is too busy grilling ordinary Iraqis on their support for resisting the occupation to be bothered to manage traffic and do routine neighborhood crime patrols.
Hell the Taguba report says, they will release ordinary criminals if they promise to be politically compliant. I guess pre-release forms state: Go back to theft, robbery, rape and murder, and leave the political stuff to us. Sign here....
Sure boss. No problema.
CG