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"I'm not questioning you patriotism, I'm questioning your judgment" - Anyone remember where that quote came from?

I bow down to the rhetoric of my good friend and a fine photo journalist FOXphotog who has stated the case far better than your's truly with his insiders knowledge and his profound understanding of the world around us.

That being said, let me just add this.

To those who think the military didn't discover the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuses but rather the International Red Cross did, this is simply not true. The spokesman for the ICRC Roland Huguenin, who visited the Baghdad prison last October, stated that Red Cross staff members wrote regular reports every six to eight weeks. However, when pressed he declined to say when the abuses at Abu Ghraib first came to the attention of the Red Cross. In other words, we know they reported something but we don't know what they reported or when.

We do know that the military corrected items the ICRC report that it agreed with but not all of them. Some they deemed non-issues. The ICRC report did not speak to abuses found in those 1600 pictures specifically until its February report, weeks after the whistleblower Joseph Darby had already told his superiors about the abuses.

By January 16th, people were already removed and a public announcement was made that stated, "An investigation has been initiated into reported incidents of detainee abuse at a Coalition Forces detention facility. The release of specific information concerning the incidents could hinder the investigation, which is in its early stages."

The handling of this HAS been piss poor but not on the part of the Defense Department. Once the information came to light, they took the necessary step to start fixing the problems uncovered. As Rumsfeld said yesterday, "The military, not the media, discovered these abuses. The military reported the abuses, not the media."

What the military didn't do and what shouldn't have been done was to present images to the public that said, "here is how these individuals screwed up." This was absolutely stupid. In doing this, CBS did nothing more than cater to the voyeuristic tendencies we all fight. These being same tendencies that make us slow down to look at car wrecks and shake our heads.

I disagree with those who think the pictures needed to come out. At the very least, not while the question is still in doubt. If these people had already been convicted and a final resolution was in place and our guys are out of harms way then yeah, at that point you could give some more specific but without the orgy of 8" x "10s.

In going early, they may have:

  1. Ruined the case against the defendants.
  2. Violated the Geneva Convention by displaying Iraqi prisons for public curiosity.
  3. Needlessly added to the anger in a community that need no more reason to hate us.

I too believe to the power of free speech and I don't think the government should censor news organizations. On the contrary, I put the responsibility for self-censorship squarely on the shoulders of Big Media. In my opinion, they made both poor ethical and poor moral judgments.

We have members of the media willing to go to jail to protect their sources and authors like Woodward waiting until "Deep Throat" is dead before he'll reveal the name. But these same individuals have a moral code that says it is okay to run stories they KNOW will get our guys killed and violate the Geneva Convention all in the name of higher ratings and advancing their political agenda.

Now add in Democrats like Charlie Rangel, Nancy Pelosi, and John Kerry who are turning these events into fundraising letter and calls for removal of political enemies. This is what you are flocking out to the post office to register to vote for?

You scoff, sneer, and turn your noses up images from 9/11 being used in campaign ads because it demonstrates the American spirit and reminds us how we came together as a people to stand up to evil. Now you scream that images of Americans at their worst should be plastered on every major newspaper cover from now until election day in an effort to beat ourselves to death and weaken a President you can't stand.

You may want to engage in self-torture and self-abuse but the good people of America have to stand up and say enough is enough. Insisting this pornography and violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (USMJ) "gets out" is not defending the constitution or free speech and it sure isn't patriotic. Patriotism isn't even a part of the equation. Lack of good judgment is.

Anyway, for them what care...

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� colin-g 2001-2003