Salon: The Abu Ghraib Files (279 photos, 19 videos)

[VolcanoJen]

Salon has published an extensive photo and video gallery, along with a timeline accompanied by essays.

It's a staggering piece, if you ask me.

http://www.salon.com/news/abu_ghraib/2006/03/14/introduction/

Today Salon presents an archive of 279 photos and 19 videos of Abu Ghraib abuse first gathered by the CID, along with information drawn from the CID's own timeline of the events depicted. As we reported Feb. 16, Salon's Mark Benjamin recently acquired extensive documentation of the CID investigation -- including this photo archive and timeline -- from a military source who spent time at Abu Ghraib and who is familiar with the Army probe.

Although the world is now sadly familiar with images of naked, hooded prisoners in scenes of horrifying humiliation and abuse, this is the first time that the full dossier of the Army's own photographic evidence of the scandal has been made public. Most of the photos have already been seen, but the Army's own analysis of the story behind the photos has never been fully told. It is a shocking, night-by-night record of three months inside Abu Ghraib's notorious cellblock 1A, and tells the story, in more graphic detail than ever before, of the rampant abuse of prisoners there. The annotated archive also includes new details about the role of the CIA, military intelligence and the CID itself in abuse captured by cameras in the fall of 2003.

[Fiendish Thingy]

1. k&r!

are these the photos/videos that Sy Hersh has written about and were ordered to turned over?

[VolcanoJen]

4. I don't know if it's all of them, but...

... by far, it's the largest release of photos yet.

[lostexpectation]

24. remember !!

these pictures offends and angers people (and motivates them to take action) all over the world not just in the Middleeast.

[The Stranger]

2. Kick and recommend for greatest.

[helderheid]

3. K & R and God help us all.

[VolcanoJen]

5. CNN now discussing this extensive release of photos and video

The coverage was almost immediate... wow...

[Solly Mack]

6. !

Recommended

[Sensitivity]

7. U.S. has Zero credibility in much of the world post-Abu Ghraib

Sadly, both the pukes and the dems still believe we are in a pre-Abu Ghraib world.

[arcane1]

8. yet Bush says it's the UAE ports deal that "sends the wrong message"

:puke:

[Gregorian]

9. Maybe now the American public can see the truth. Finally.

Like I told the judge in this case, the truth cannot be suppressed. Our letters and faxes made a difference.

[VolcanoJen]

11. Absolutely, and Letters and faxes can continue to make a difference.

Let's continue to stay on our representatives, and also the media.

Demand continuing coverage of the Abu Ghraib story. It has not been told completely yet, but Salon's off to the best start yet.

Americans shouldn't be so frightened of learning the truth. Send the Salon link to everyone you know who needs to read it.

[Julius Civitatus]

10. Still some videos missing

as described in the past. Some of the most horrid videos are still missing from that list.

[truebrit71]

14. Those tapes should be the end of this Junta if they ever come out...

...and proof positive that the sign over Abu Ghraib should simply have read "Under New Management"...

The horror that has been committed in our name is almost beyond comprehension...they MUST be held accountable...

[boobooday]

12. These are people who have been liberated from a tyrant?

Looks like they didn't get the memo.

But it looks like our soldiers got the message of the swaggering neo-cons LOUD and clear. Rumsfeld, Bush and Cheney must be held responsible for these atrocities.

[arcane1]

15. um, why is the U.S. military arresting prostitutes in Iraq?

"suspected prostitutes", I should say...

is that their job? :shrug:

[VolcanoJen]

13. The CID recently reopened the investigation?

Salon says the CID (Army Criminal Investigation Division) told them that they recently reopened its Abu Ghraib investigation "to pursue some additional information."

That's something I hadn't read yet in the media, and I think it's pretty significant.

[Tommy_J]

16. Are these the new pictures

Which ACLU sued over some time ago?

[VolcanoJen]

18. The ACLU isn't sure

This article is back from February 16, shortly after Australian television aired the photos and video, followed by Dateline, and then Salon published them, as well as additional photos. Salon says it obtained the images from a DVD given to them from a military source.

Since the ACLU has never seen the images and evidence that it is fighting to obtain, I guess they can't be certain if the images shown by SBS, Dateline and now Salon (most extensive) are the ones they're looking for, let alone the only ones.

Since Sy Hersh has seen images, I'd like to hear him tell us if these Salon images are from the same batch he has seen.

http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/2821

The ACLU, on behalf of several human rights groups, has been trying to obtain additional evidence of misconduct in US-run prisons worldwide. In September 2005, a federal district judge ordered the government to turn over all evidence of abuse to the group, including photographs and videos, but so far, Washington has stalled the ruling with an appeal.

In a press release yesterday, the ACLU said it does not know whether the images released by Dateline are among those sought in its court battle.

[Richard Steele]

17. Our nation is BROKEN. It no longer EXISTS, it is a memory.

And everyone in the goddamned world knows it but us.

Weep, America.
WEEP for the memory of a glorious,
golden beacon of Freedom which stood upon a shining shore
of opportunity.

It never actually existed, but it was a nice delusion
for a few decades there.

But that DREAM is over forever, never to be dreamt again.

Wake up, America...and take notice that your 300-thread-count sheets
are dripping with the blood of the innocent.

Turn the key in your ignition, and hear the cries of
toddlers ripped apart by YOUR bullets, YOUR bombs.

Look at those photos; look at them LONG and HARD...
And don't you EVER forget that EVERYTHING
you see there was done IN YOUR NAME.

[file83]

23. We can only hope that something good will arise from the ashes...n/t

[The Stranger]

19. Kick it again.

[DoYouEverWonder]

20. While Bush continues to laugh

at the world.



has he runs off to another meaningless photo op. Got to kill some time you know.

[Hubert Flottz]

21. Your tax dollars at work winning hearts and minds!

Ain't "Liberation" grand?

Edit...Abu Ghraib probably turned out more terrorists than Bin Laden's schools ever did.

[file83]

22. There is no glory anymore for America. We are a dark nation.

[rman]

25. Standard CIA torture practice- sensory disorientation, self-inflicted pain

Democracy Now
Friday, February 17th, 2006
Professor McCoy Exposes the History of CIA Interrogation, From the Cold War to the War on Terror
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/17/1522228

Professor Alfred McCoy talks about his book “A Question of Torture”, a startling expose of the CIA development of psychological torture from the Cold War to Abu Ghraib. Professor Alfred McCoy talks about his book “A Question of Torture”, a startling expose of the CIA development of psychological torture from the Cold War to Abu Ghraib. CIA mercenaries attempted to assassinate McCoy more than 30 years ago.

Alfred McCoy, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Author of “A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, From the Cold War to the War on Terror” and also “The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade.”

<snip>

ALFRED McCOY: Well, if you look at the most famous of photographs from Abu Ghraib, of the Iraqi standing on the box, arms extended with a hood over his head and the fake electrical wires from his arms, okay? In that photograph you can see the entire 50-year history of C.I.A. torture. It's very simple. He's hooded for sensory disorientation, and his arms are extended for self-inflicted pain. And those are the two very simple fundamental C.I.A. techniques, developed at enormous cost.

From 1950 to 1962, the C.I.A. ran a massive research project, a veritable Manhattan Project of the mind, spending over $1 billion a year to crack the code of human consciousness, from both mass persuasion and the use of coercion in individual interrogation. And what they discovered -- they tried LSD, they tried mescaline, they tried all kinds of drugs, they tried electroshock, truth serum, sodium pentathol. None of it worked. What worked was very simple behavioral findings, outsourced to our leading universities -- Harvard, Princeton, Yale and McGill -- and the first breakthrough came at McGill. And it's in the book. And here, you can see the -- this is the -- if you want show it, you can. That graphic really shows -- that's the seminal C.I.A. experiment done in Canada and McGill University --

ALFRED McCOY: Oh, it's very simple. Dr. Donald O. Hebb of McGill University, a brilliant psychologist, had a contract from the Canadian Defense Research Board, which was a partner with the C.I.A. in this research, and he found that he could induce a state of psychosis in an individual within 48 hours. It didn't take electroshock, truth serum, beating or pain. All he did was had student volunteers sit in a cubicle with goggles, gloves and headphones, earmuffs, so that they were cut off from their senses, and within 48 hours, denied sensory stimulation, they would suffer, first hallucinations, then ultimately breakdown.

<snip>

Now, then the second major breakthrough that the C.I.A. had came here in New York City at Cornell University Medical Center, where two eminent neurologists under contract from the C.I.A. studied Soviet K.G.B. torture techniques, and they found that the most effective K.G.B. technique was self-inflicted pain. You simply make somebody stand for a day or two. And as they stand -- okay, you're not beating them, they have no resentment -- you tell them, “You're doing this to yourself. Cooperate with us, and you can sit down.” And so, as they stand, what happens is the fluids flow down to the legs, the legs swell, lesions form, they erupt, they separate, hallucinations start, the kidneys shut down.

<more>

[Up2Late]

26. I still wonder how much of this sort of stuff happens in U.S. Prisons...

...(not just Military) but we never hear about it.