As I was reminded while perusing another blog today -- where I found not merely an account of the murder of young Emmitt Till but a photo of his corpseafter its recovery from the river where his body was "hidden". Graphic? Sensational? Disturbing? Damn straight -- and damn sure necessary, in its day and time, to make utterly clear the distribution, extent and severity of not just his fate but the unsung and unremarked and undeserved fates of countless other black men, boys, children, and women at the hands of racists in the US. Did that photo help convict the men who killed that boy? No. But it changed the limits of tolerance for a generation of Americans. That's why hiding the torture photos is wrong.
It's well known that the DoD went to great lengths to prevent the American people from seeing the unsavory side of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan under Bush. Even photos of the returning caskets were forbidden. Why would that be?
The perception among DoD muckety-mucks that TV coverage of Viet Nam's slaughter turned the average citizen against the war. Don't for a moment imagine that body bags, bandages, field medics, and Dan Rather at a medevac LZ didn't play a part in that; don't for a moment think fears that Rather might succeed again at driving people away from a wanton war -- particularly a war of choice based on lies and covering up atrocities US forces committed on orders from the White House -- played a part in running him off the CBS Evening News.
The photos need to come out. The evidence Seymour Hirsch alludes to -- screaming children, women in detention -- must come out. This festering pustulence at the heart of America's government and military has to be lanced, the wound disinfected, before any healing can start. Unless we do this, the rot will destroy us -- and we'll deserve it.
- Sarah's blog
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Eisenhower invited all the press into the
internment camps and mandated all the Germans to walk through the camps in their nation for the same reason. The photos must come out or we'll never get over this.
"Someone needs to point out that elephants produce infinitely more shit than donkeys." Brad Mays
Excellent parallel, Sarah
I hadn't thought of it. Thank you.
deniseb, as I said, I saw it elsewhere. Thought it bore
repetition here.
I keep hearing how Obama can't care about the troops if he doesn't continue the coverup.
That's bullshit.
If the truth is hidden, the cure is prevented.
We can admit that we’re killers … but we’re not going to kill today. That’s all it takes! ~ Captain James T. Kirk, Stardate 3193.0
1 John 4:18
Open Casket of Emmet Till
Mamie Till insisted that Emmet have an open casket because she wanted the world to see what had been done to her son.
We need to clean house. If Gerald Ford and our political class had not been cowards, Nixon would have been prosecuted for his crimes instead of being allowed to walk. It was a supremely teachable moment and we let it pass. That failure made Reagan and Iran/Contra possible. It led directly to Cheney and Rumsfeld and our war of aggression against Iraq and the torture state.
We have another chance now to clean the filth out of government, to hold our "highest" politicians accountable. If we don't, we have only ourselves to blame.
Solar is civil defense
This article says
That once the American people saw it, the torture stopped.
So the visuals are important. Which is of course why Obama is hiding them, just like the hide the caskets of those who die for their folly.
He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.
- Sir William Drummond