"Self-Censorship and Torture"

Abu Ghraib, CBS and American Power

By David Peterson

Right before the close of last Wednesday's 60 Minutes II segment about the torture and abuse of Iraqis at the hands of the American military personnel in control of the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, the program's host Dan Rather added a "postscript" ("Court Martial in Iraq; US Army soldiers face court martials for actions at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib Prison," 60 Minutes II, CBS TV, April 28, 2004):

RATHER: A postscript. Two weeks ago, we received an appeal from the Defense Department, and eventually from the chairman of the military Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers, to delay this broadcast given the danger and tension on the ground in Iraq. We decided to honor that request while pressing for the Defense Department to add its perspective to the incidents at Abu Ghraib Prison. This week, with the photos beginning to circulate elsewhere and with other journalists about to publish their versions of the story, the Defense Department agreed to cooperate in our report.

Today, Tuesday, May 4, marks the sixth day since this program and these words first aired on CBS TV. And yet this appalling confession on the part of CBS TV's news department---that, based on a request from the American state to delay the broadcast of its Abu Ghraib report, CBS agreed, and only changed course when Seymour Hersh's article on the same for the New Yorker was set to be published (i.e., "Torture at Abu Ghraib," May 10)---has received next-to-zero coverage in the U.S. media, let alone expressions of the monumental outrage that it deserves.(Note that Hersh's report was first posted to the New Yorker's website on April 30---that is, two days after the 60 Minutes II report first aired.) www.counterpunch.org

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Tuesday, May 4th, News Update posted:

Torturing Hearts and Minds

By Marjorie Cohn

U.S. soldiers who fought in Vietnam were trained to think of the North Vietnamese as "gooks." The objectification of the non-white enemy made it more palatable to kill and abuse them. American troops and mercenaries in Iraq likewise objectified their Iraqi prisoners when they sexually abused and sadistically humiliated them in the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. One U.S. official, who told the Los Angeles Times that 50-100 Iraqis died in U.S. custody last year, said, "There was a mentality that the people we’re in charge of are not humans."

Graphic photographs, which the Defense Department finally allowed CBS to release after two weeks of keeping them under wraps, depict Americans posing, laughing, pointing or giving the thumbs-up to the mistreatment of nude Iraqis. But although the Bush administration claims these are isolated incidents, they were just the tip of the iceberg.

An Army report found "systemic and illegal abuse," including "numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses." It lists numerous examples of physical and sexual abuse, including "sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broomstick," and "positioning a naked detainee on a box with a sandbag on his head, and attaching wires to his fingers, toes and penis to stimulate electric torture." www.truthout.org