When did the only options become suppressing the fact that atrocities took place and grotesque voyeurism?

I’m not so sure there is a middle option. Human beings are visual creatures and the discussion is being dominated by charismatic president desperately trying to cover asses and a former vice president who is not only a consummate liar but who shows an active disregard for anything that might be called the truth. Like it or not, the bodies of the people in these images have become political, they are the center of a political issue, and these pictures being submitted to a monstrously voyeuristic public is perhaps the only thing which is likely to cause any kind of serious investigation.

We use graphic images when we talk about the holocaust not to underscore how terrible it was or because it was somehow special or unique, but to dispel any possibility of denial. We don’t want to believe that our own people are capable of the kinds of things that were done at Abu Ghraib, we don’t want to believe that anyone is capable of those kinds of things, as a culture we look for any excuse we can to push away that possibility (from the “bad apples” argument to gross denial to justifications).

The release of these photos would undoubtedly be a violation of the privacy of the people in them but, realistically, thats one of the things that we must accept is part of the discussion. Obama wants this all to go away and only significant political force will overcome that. This is an issue that could cost him his presidency if he goes after high officials from the previous administration and he does not want to risk that. Congress has shown that it is does not have the will to press the issue. That leaves us, sadly, with two options. Sacrifice the privacy of torture victims in the hope that the incontrovertible, visceral evidence their images provide will force a reaction, or allow those in power to make the entire affair just fade away. Both are terrible options, and so it is that torture continues to do it’s damage long after the flesh it was visited upon has died.

It’s interesting, like evil_fizz has argued, that there seems to be a fine line between sexual assault and outright rape that it being upheld, here. The photos I have seen almost all displayed sexula or gendered humiliation – then why would releasing these photos be such an issue?

Probably because most people don’t think like feminists? Melissa McEwan made the point that the original Abu Ghraib photos should have clued people in to the strong likelihood of sexual assault and rape, because they depicted the sexualized dehumanization of helpless prisoners. I’m kind of amazed that anyone can deny that this happened. But the connection between “gendered humiliation” and sexual assault isn’t very well understood. Look at Joe Arpaio. He’s tough on crime, not a sadist.

We know this shit is happening. We know people torture other people. How is voyeurism going to make that stop? Unless something big changes and someone with much more power than I have makes a commitment to actually do something about it, it won’t stop. Releasing pictures will satisfy some really gross urges for some people, allowing them to feel more moral for a little while, but ultimately it’s pretty dehumanizing for the victims. This shouldn’t even be a debate.

I feel about this the way I feel about other similar debates, like the “right” of media sources to release names of victims of rape: I’m not sure any third party should decide one way or the other. And I agree that we have no right to violate the victims’ privacy in order to make a political point, and that they have no reason to trust any of us as advocates.

But I don’t know if I agree with the argument that these photos would have no moral impact for people who currently aren’t terribly bothered by the idea of waterboarding the bad guys. Knowing and seeing are different things. We react on a much more visceral level to individual and visual evidence. We “knew” that there were death camps, but what we remember now are the photographs of prisoners who became living skeletons. Images like that can become the defining elements of cultural memory. Perhaps this is because I already understand torture as reprehensible, but I feel differently about the photos than I do about the simple fact of torture, or even details like “183 times.”

Then again, the original Abu Ghraib photos–which certainly indicated widespread sexualized abuse to anyone with half a dose of common sense–don’t seem to have accomplished much. The Jack Bauerites are still clinging to their thumbscrews and their religion. I may be looking at all of this through a journalistic fallacy: create space for the human interest and then fill it up. Our apathy is what creates these pictures in the first place.

Ashley – THIS. THANK YOU. The big racist, xenophobic elephant in the living room about our whole sordid adventure in Iraq. This will be the much harder issue for all of us to deal with, regardless whether the photos are released or not. It underlines almost everything else about our policies in the Middle East and Southwest Asia.