BobHarris.com - Abu Ghraib: the scandal that keeps on giving

Books! Actual books!

"A rollicking ride of intellectual discovery and emotional growth... his comic timing never fails"

-- The Wall Street Journal

"Pulls you in like a good sports story"

-- The New York Times Book Review

"Endearingly frank... jubilant... lighthearted and fast-paced"

-- New York Newsday

"A surprisingly touching memoir"

-- Entertainment Weekly

"Snappy and informative"

-- Associated Press

"Effortlessly funny and informative... tender, human, and very wise... A must for anyone who loves Jeopardy!, or has ever seen it, or is breathing."

-- Joss Whedon, creator, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

"I haven't seen Jeopardy! since I was a kid, and yet I was charmed and amused by Bob Harris's fascinating and surprisingly suspenseful book. Through sheer force of personality, he takes this brainy TV show and makes it funny and easy to relate to."

-- Ira Glass, creator and host, This American Life

"A surprisingly intimate, entertaining book."

-- Orson Scott Card, 4-time Hugo Award winner, author of Ender's Game

"Funny, enlightening -- and just might help you win a million bucks on Jeopardy!"

-- A. J. Jacobs, author of The Know-It-All

"A masterful job of describing the feel of Jeopardy! in the heat of battle... I knew Bob was a great guy and a fantastic Jeopardy! player. Now I've found that he's also a wonderful writer. I think I'm starting to hate him."

-- Brad Rutter, top money-winner in Jeopardy! history

Books I'm Getting

Who Hates Whom:
Well-Armed Fanatics, Intractable Conflicts,
and Various Things Blowing Up —
A Woefully Incomplete Guide™

“Revelatory... Harris's sly wit and infectious curiosity make understanding world chaos fascinating... witty, horrific, and necessary.”

— Boston Globe

"Brave... irreverent... charges into the thick of the globe's myriad simmering wars... hilariously relaxed."

— New York Observer

"Only Bob could make a user’s guide to our increasingly hostile world this absorbing, this breezy, and—ultimately—this hopeful.”

— Ken Jennings, author of Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs

“Fascinating, enlightening, and surprisingly: NOT TOTALLY DEPRESSING. A gimlet-eyed look at the world we endure that’s also suitable for enjoying with a gimlet.”

— John Hodgman, author of The Areas of My Expertise
and correspondent for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

"All three [presidential] candidates should read all three of these [recommended] books, but McCain gets first crack at Bob Harris's "Who Hates Whom“... a lighthearted overview of the insurrections and civil wars in the world today."

— Steven Pinker, author of The Stuff of Thought, in the New York Times Book Review

Main

Buzzflash

Abu Ghraib: the scandal that keeps on giving

Tag it now -

Friday, 27 May 2005

A federal judge has just ordered the release of additional photos of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib.

This could be a much larger story than it seems at first glance.

What's in the photos? I don't know. But last July I noticed German news reports of over 100 children being interned and subject to abuse by the U.S., a story which reached Der Spiegel and spread worldwide while the U.S. media was pretending to be shocked at Whoopi Goldberg's schoolyard language.

A week later, Seymour Hersh, an actual reporter with excellent sources and a reputation for integrity, took the story where the German stories hadn't yet, flatly stating that the U.S. had video of boys being sodomized at Abu Ghraib:

"The worst is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking," the reporter told an ACLU convention last week.

The Pentagon, not surprisingly, has refused to release any more visual materials related to Abu Ghraib, claiming (preposterously, given recent history and the fact that faces can be blurred in about two seconds of work) respect for Iraqis and their privacy. Which is a lot like their explanation for banning the press from Dover as dead U.S. soldiers come home. They know how the media works: baby likes pretty colors. No pictures, no story.

So we in the U.S. have had the privilege of forgetting. Gitmo and our penchant for exporting torture are ongoing outrages in much of the civilized world, but we have runaway brides and Bo Bice to worry about. Hersh's charge, which never got its visual support and thus fell down the memory hole, even seems to have been edited out of the ACLU's own video of his speech.

So is it possible Hersh was wrong, Der Spiegel was misinformed, and we've already seen the worst of Abu Ghraib?

Umm... not likely.

Congress got a look at some of the stuff Hersh was talking about. Their reactions speak volumes.

The images, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Congress, depict "acts that can only be described as blatantly sadistic, cruel, and inhuman." After Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) viewed some of them in a classified briefing, he testified that his "stomach gave out."

NBC News reported that they show "American soldiers beating one prisoner almost to death, apparently raping a female prisoner, acting inappropriately with a dead body, and taping Iraqi guards raping young boys." Everyone who saw the photographs and videos seemed to shudder openly when contemplating what the reaction would be when they eventually were made public...

The overwhelming response, besides revulsion, was, in the words of Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner (R-Va.), that the pictures "should not be made public."

If this is what the federal judge is ordering to be released, and Team Chimpy can't keep the lid on... shit, meet fan.

PS -- ongoing appreciation of Kos and his diarists.