The peoples of Afghanistan and Iraq are well aware that we torture. Their families have seen American bombs dropped on their cities, they've grieved over lost loved ones, they've fled their homes and come back to ruins.
The American people, however, are detached from the gruesome horrors of our wars. It is imperative that the reality of our wars and occupation are shown to them. Nuremberg called an aggressive war,
"Essentially an evil thing...to initiate a war of aggression...is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."
From that initial evil flowed Abu Ghraib. The war is the locus for all the evils done to the American people via Cheney et. al.
It is my belief that if the American people witnessed the photos of our "enhanced interrogation program" there would be no debate about whether it was torture. There would be no Cheney media blitz, there would be no right-wing commentators being water-boarded for publicity and discovering it is indeed torture.
Are the photos being withheld worse than Abu Ghraib?
Torture is a means of receiving false confessions not obtaining factual evidence. George Tenet called WMD a "slam-dunk" and perhaps he was not lying. Perhaps he received tainted information from torture. If torture was indeed the creator of our false intelligence we should have a right to know so that these mistakes can never happen again.
Without the pictures people will be confused. Without the pictures of Abu Ghraibthe story would never have been told. Sometimes a picture says a lot, more than the greatest orator of our age could tell.
Below are pictures of Abu Ghraib. If you don't want to see them skip the rest of the diary.
The photos make you angry right? Through them you learn all you need to about the conditions at Abu Ghraib. There is no question of whether it "worked" in some strange way. There are no questions except "who was responsible for those crimes?" and "how can we bring justice to their victims?".
Sometimes crimes are so heinous that there can be no justice for the victims. How can you ever repay a people after they suffer a million deaths as the Iraqis have? But to the American people we can say learn your lesson. Never allow this to happen again.
Eternal vigilance is what is needed and the beginning is to say loud and clear "Torture is evil" and "Anyone that engages in a war of aggression or torture will face justice".