Who is holding out on the Iraqi child sodomy video?

[tinanator]

Assuming this exists outside of national security walls, there seems to be only two logical explanations for its current invisibility.
Either the release is going to be timed to effect the election, or there will be no release whatsoever to preserve the occupation for the sake of the thieving profiteers. Either way it is outrageous that the American people are being denied the sort of proof they must have to cooberate claims of Seymour Hersh and international human rights groups. We must not allow this story to be just another arrow in the quiver.

[gWbush is Mabus]

1. i hope this is the democrats october surprise

[tinanator]

3. doesnt that seem like two wrongs?

withholding evidence from the American people is nothing new, but usually amounts to subverting democracy at the very least. Im nearly as outraged by the possibility of strategic news manipulation as I am by the likely facts on these tapes.

[mopaul]

2. the pentagon, the joint chiefs, the senators and congressmen

the president and big dick. can we just talk about koby bryant or michael jackson or scott peterson?

[cthrumatrix]

5. amazing that our press is awol again on this sad issue

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. They wouldn't be able to show it

because it's child pornography. I agree it should be talked about, much more than it is now; but it's even less likely to be shown by any news organisation than the beheading videos.

[tinanator]

6. they can use blue spots or blurring technology

so that excuse just doesnt wash. The importance of this evidence demands public airing. We are not entirely reliant on nationalized "news organizations" for our information, so it is down to whoever is holding the reigns on these clips. I believe it could be described as a criminal conspiracy.

[Emmanuel Goldstein]

7. "They wouldn't be able to show it...

...because it's child pornography."

Bullshit, Muriel.

Pornography is indecent material produced expressly for the purpose of appealing to the prurient interest. The Abu Ghraib tapes, however explicit they may be, are criminal evidence the American public must be forced to witness if they to understand how "9/11 changed everything."

I'm not arguing that some people wouldn't get off on them (no doubt they would) but if we dare to censor them, by pixellating-out the naughty bits, or just relaying the sound without the picture, it would only reinforce the denialist argument that these atrocities are merely a leftist slur manufactured to make the glorious American occupation look bad.

Like the horrors of Buchenwald and Dachau, nobody will really believe this until they're smacked across the face with incontrovertible evidence that it actually happened, and god help the neocons when it finally does.

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. Which does bring up the question of why they videoed it

It wasn't for evidence against themselves. It may have been to show later to other prisoners. But it is quite possible that it is literally pornography - that they videoed it to show later for enjoyment.

Practically, I can't see that a nation that swooned when Janet Jackson's tit popped out would ever broadcast the videos; I wouldn't have thought that cable would either, but I suppose HBO might - they have the ability to get serious sometimes. But I think they'd have real worries about prosecution for showing indecent material. Would they be able to get prior approval from a court that it wasn't against laws?

I don't think UK TV would show it either, for much the same reasons.

Even if someone did show them. you're not going to be able to force people to watch unless you tie them down, Clockwork Orange style. The people who really need to know about it are the first people who'd complain when they knew it would be shown - and wouldn't watch.

[Joanne98]

9. They could play the audio

Hersh said it was the worst part. But fuck them. If it was put on the internet it would fuck Bush up. I hope some brave patriot is saving it for October. to get even for Oct. 1980 just to let them know we never forget.

[tinanator]

10. delayed partisan gain over quick justice?

thats my objection. If someone is holding these out for later, they own every life lost between their earliest opportunity to reveal the proof and the day the truth comes out.

[NightOwwl]

11. Rolling Stone article "The Secret File of Abu Ghraib"

has been available for a couple of weeks. Very incriminating.

Rolling Stone article

Progressive.org references the Rolling Stone story. Also indicates Sy Hersh will write up what he knows "sooner or later". But I can't help but wonder why doesn't he come forward now since he has had the information for so long.

The author gives the impression that news is going to start leaking out. I'm not familiar with progressive.org, so I have no idea if they have accurate information or not but I thought I would share:

"This then is George Bush's Iraq and, however much media fatigue there may be about it here...<snip>... Between now and November, it is likely to devolve further and more spectacularly, and so drive the Bush administration toward November 2 in an ever greater state of panic.

<snip>

Among these stories, none is potentially more devastating than the one that seems to combine those missing "children's prisons" and those never-to-be-reconstituted "rape rooms." We know that New Yorker reporter Seymour Hersh is on the trail of the story of the rape and sodomizing of young, imprisoned Iraqis, possibly by Americans, or at least viewed by and filmed by Americans, in Abu Ghraib and that he plans to write it up sooner or later. ("The worst is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking…")

<snip>

In the meantime, Rolling Stone magazine has gotten its media hands on the 106 "annexes" to the Taguba Report on Abu Ghraib that the Pentagon long held back from Congress. And these, as recounted in an Osha Gray Davidson piece, The Secret File of Abu Ghraib, make grim reading indeed, right down to eyewitness accounts of the sexual abuse of children and, of course, of adults, stripped, beaten, humiliated and then made to climb upon one another, forming what were called "dog piles" for prison-photo ops."

Progressive.org article

[shraby]

12. If the Senate committees don't

make headway right after they are back in session, I would guess that is when the story and photos will hit the papers. They are probably being held back to see if the government is going to do it right or cover it up. That's what I think anyway. I really don't think Hersh is going to give them a pass on it.