Oh, I’m not letting them off the hook. Believe me.
If it were up to me, the only images the Iraqi people would have seen of that squalid bunch that pretended to be Guardsmen would have been beamed live from their courts-martial.
Abusive situations happen in every war. It’s sadly, unfortunately true. Inflaming the situation by broadcasting images of the abuse only gives the Iraqi people cause to hate us more, and makes our job there much tougher.
It would have been far better for us, and for the Iraqi people in the long run, if the situation were handled openly and publicly, but without inflamatory imagery.
I don’t think he’s complaining about Boone actually expressing his opinion in a letter, so much as complaining about it getting airtime. In other words, why is Boone’s opinion newsworthy over someone else’s (besides the celebrity factor, obviously).
Did he really cover “Enter Sandman?” The Metallica song? Really?
In a more perfect world, I’d agree with you. Unfortunately, I don’t believe there would have been any courts martial had the images not hit the air. And there certainly wouldn’t have been the media attention paid that has begun to uncover that the authorizations for the torture may have gone all the way to the president.
I think the pictures were necessary to incite public attention to the issue. This is a big deal. People have a right to know what’s going on in their name. And in this time of public jadedness, people have to be smacked upside the head with reality sometimes. That way, maybe we’ll have a few less people whining “Why don’t they like uuuuuuuussssssssssssss?” when it comes to terrorism and the Middle East.
I’m a veteran, too. And nothing disgusts me more than seeing people in American uniforms, who swore to uphold the rule of law, abusing defenseless human beings.
That said, there is a world of difference between images of Americans engaging in illegal acts and the murder of a single individual. The American people have the right to know what their military is doing, particularly when what they’re doing is illegal. Nick Berg’s murder was illegal as well, but does not carry the same import as the abuse at Abu Ghraib. It was a tragic event, to be sure, but showing the video serves no other purpose than to inflame the Americans against the Iraqis.
Are you sure? So many news outlets did show the Berg video, I would be surprised if CBS didn’t. That is, they showed a portion of the video with Berg seated and guys standing behind him. Or are you complaining that they did not show the decapitation? If that is your point, you don’t have much of a point. Gee, why didn’t they show his head being cut off on national television?
Apart from that, I don’t suspect it was so much a consequence of showing the Abu Ghraib photos, but of Abu Ghraib itself. Do you think that the folks in the region did not know what was going on there? Nobody was saying anything? Rumors of mistreatment weren’t spreading through the populace? Okay.
It isn’t. but the fact is that his “celebrity” will get more people’s attention to their product, which essentially what modern commerical news media has boiled down to.
Unfortunately I doubt it would have been handled openly and public - or as openly and publicly as it is now, anyway - without the imagery. There were reports in January that the Army was investigating things, and there had been abuse stories going as far back as Afghanistan. But it just wasn’t that big a deal. When the military, Congress and the public saw what that abuse actually was, they had to deal with the reality and with the seriousness of the problem. I’m sure the government would have been perfectly happy to keep this quiet, it didn’t do them any good to deal with it publicly.
I just listened to the free clips of “Smoke On the Water” and “Panama.” I’m both horrified and fascinated. I think I really want this CD, but I don’t want to pay money for it. Y’know?
I’m not complaining at all. I’m merely pointing out that news outlets make editorial decisions every day about what images you, as a news consumer, get to see.
Somebody made the decision along the way, at “60 Minutes”, the Washington Post, and elsewhere, that the public should see the Abu Ghraib photos. Indeed, some news outlets were falling over themselves to outscoop each other on the photos to the point that fake photos were printed.
Does anybody really believe that this was done solely to force the Army to conduct an investigation that they had already begun? Or did the everpresent need to sell newspapers, print ads, and TV advertising have something to do with the decision?
These were shocking photos, and shock sells very well these days. My contention is that the decision was made to print these pictures without any heed to the damage it might cause to the soldier in the field. And that’s a shame.
I don’t believe in censorship, mind, but if the media acts without any regard for any obligation it owes toward any entity but itself, you’ll eventually find people calling for some kind of controls. People like Pat Boone, I guess.
No, news outlets do things for their own reasons. Producers want to sell the product, reporters want to get the scoop. Nonetheless, the ends pursued by the news media can bring about positive consequences like openness and investigations of wrongdoing that would have otherwise been hushed up.
But the goes for the people who carried out and photographed these abuses. They weren’t thinking about the reaction or the safety of their fellow soldiers- much less the rights of the people they were torturing.
The thing that I suppose people are hesitant to talk about is that covering up these photos was plainly in the interest of the military and the Bush administration, since they knew the fury over the photos would do damage to them. So if the media acted with regard to its obligations or whatever, it serves a partisan purpose, and that’s not acceptable either. In fact I’d say that if the media covers up scandals it’ll generally end up serving the party in power…
But I wasn’t asking them to cover up a scandal, Marley23. I was saying they could have covered it without pictures.
The same way they cover the partial-birth abortion story without showing us what one actually looks like.
And yes, covering up the pictures was in the interest of the military. Which is made up of soldiers. Who, right now, have angry Iraqis shooting at them.
I thought that was my point. Thanks for making it again for me.
Part of the story in this case was that the pictures were going all through the military. Like I said, this was covered, a bit, in January. The images and their shocking nature is part of the story.
My point is that military BRASS were also interested in covering it up. They weren’t being shot at, they just wanted to protect their jobs. That also goes for the Pentagon- they may have wanted to protect soldiers, but they definitely wanted to cover their own asses because they knew how the public would react to a story like this.
But CBS did, in fact, consider the consequences of publishing the pictures. When the Defense Department learned that 60 Minutes was going to do a story on Abu Ghraib, they asked CBS to postpone the story:
As noted above CBS complied with the request until it became obvious that others had the photographs and their release was inevitable.
The pictures were an important part of the story. Without them the abuse would have been trivialized as “frat hazing” or “blowing off steam” as Rush Limbaugh has tried to do.
I’m sure money had something to do with it; I’m not naive or stupid enough to believe it didn’t. However, wars are prosecuted on the basis of public opinion, and this administration has been more secretive than most. Moreover, given Bush’s known loyalty to his subordinates meant that any of these men would probably not be held accountable for their behavior or their orders. At best, had these photos not made the American press, a few low-level E-3 grunts might’ve been court-martialed while their superiors got off scot-free.
Again, what damage could these images possibly have caused the soldier in the field? If the American press had not shown these photos, Al-Jazeera certainly would have. The average Iraqi insurgent listens to Al-Jazeera more than he does Sixty Minutes. And you can bet Al-Jazeera would have made the Americans look a hell of a lot worse than Sixty Minutes.
I find any handwringing about “putting troops in danger” to be extremely disingenuous coming from anyone who supported the invasion in the first place. If Pat Boone (or anyone else who is whining about these photos) really gave a shit about the soldiers then he should have opposed Bush sending them into harm’s way for no reason over a year ago. It’s intellectually dishonest to support sending troops to the desert for a completely unnecessary war and OTOH pretend that you care about their lives. The positions are mutually contradictory.
What Boon and his ilk are really upset about (if they are honest with themselves) is that the photos hurt Bush.
For what it’s worth, since I think I was the first to bring up other celebrities, I didn’t complain about Pat or anyone else spouting off. I just don’t think their voices are any more important simply because they’re well-known. Hell, they have outlets I don’t have; more power to them, and thank Kdapt for capitalism. But I have no reason to value their opinions more than my own, or yours, or Lib’s, or my car mechanic’s. That’s all I’m saying.
If you can’t see the fundamental difference between pictures of soldiers who are an absolute disgrace to their uniforms making grown men stand around naked or in piles, or be scared by dogs, and pictures of grisly, stomach-churning violence like what an aborted fetus or Nick Berg looked like, then you’ve got no sense. There’s an entire order of magnitude separating the content of those images.