Robert Fisk - Why Have We Suddenly Forgotten Abu Ghraib?

[RussBLib]

love this guy

http://counterpunch.org/

We are now in the greatest crisis since the last greatest crisis. That's how we run the Iraq war--or the Second Iraq War as Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara would now have us believe. Hostages are paraded in orange tracksuits to remind us of Guantanamo Bay. Kidnappers demand the release of women held prisoner by the Americans. Abu Ghraib is what they are talking about. Abu Ghraib? Anyone remember Abu Ghraib? Remember those dirty little snapshots? But don't worry. This wasn't the America George Bush recognised, and besides we're punishing the bad apples, aren't we? Women? Why, there are only a couple of dames left--and they are "Dr Germ" and "Dr Anthrax".

But Arabs do not forget so easily. It was a Lebanese woman, Samia Melki, who first understood the true semantics of those Abu Ghraib photographs for the Arab world. The naked Iraqi, his body smeared with excrement, back to the camera, arms stretched out before the butch and blond American with a stick...Forced to walk in a straight line with his legs crossed, his torso slightly twisted and arms spread out for balance, the Iraqi prisoner's toned body, accentuated by the excrement and the bad lighting, stretches out in crucifix form. Exuding a dignity long denied, the Arab is suffering for the world's sins."

...what happened to all those videos which members of Congress were allowed to watch in secret and which we--the public--were not permitted to see? Why have we suddenly forgotten about Abu Ghraib? Seymour Hersh, the journalist who broke the Abu Ghraib story--and one of the only journalists in America who is doing his job--has spoken publicly about what else happened in that terrible jail.

I'm indebted to a reader for the following extract from a recent Hersh lecture: "Some of the worst things that happened that you don't know about. OK? Videos. There are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib... The women were passing messages out saying please come and kill me because of what's happened. And basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children, in cases that have been recorded, the boys were sodomised, with the cameras rolling, and the worst above all of them is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking..."

Already, however, we have forgotten this. Just as we must no longer talk about weapons of mass destruction...So as we continue to stagger down the crumbling stairway of our own ghastly making...

Second Iraq War indeed. How much more of this tomfoolery are we, the public, expected to stomach?

Not for many years has there been such a gap--in America as well as Britain--between the people and the government they elected...

Robert Fisk is a reporter for The Independent and author of Pity the Nation. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's hot new book, The Politics of Anti-Semitism.

more at http://counterpunch.org/

[KeepItReal]

1. We (the media that is) "Suddenly Forgets" anything negative to Bush & Co.

Relevancy, urgency, or injustice be damned.

Any questions?

[enough]

2. nothing more profoundly dangerous since WWII

snip>

And he can say that again, can't he? For it is difficult to think of anything more profoundly dangerous for us, for the West, for the Middle East, for Christians and Muslims since the Second World War--the real second war, that is--than Blair's war in Iraq. And Iraq, remember, was going to be the model for the whole Middle East. Every Arab state would want to be like Iraq. Iraq would be the catalyst--perhaps even the "crucible"--of the new Middle East. Spare me the hollow laughter.

I have been struck these past few weeks how very many of the letters I've received from readers come from men and women who fought in the Second World War, who argue ferociously that Blair and Bush should never be allowed to compare this quagmire with the real struggle against evil which they waged more than half a century ago.

snip>

[LibertyorDeath]

3. A true Journalist the man is Brilliant at his craft.

Thanks for this.