http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,632967,00.htmlTuesday, May. 04, 2004
There's no question U.S. officials are deeply aware of the damage done by the Abu Ghraib torture photographs. From President Bush on down, they've expressed outrage and revulsion at the images of U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi detainees in one of Saddam Hussein's old torture chambers. Inquiries have been launched and reprimands delivered, and the question of how this disaster was allowed to happen may remain a focus of public discussion in the U.S. for some time. But none of that is likely to undo the potentially catastrophic impact of those images on the ability of the U.S. to achieve its objectives in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. While Iraqis may share President Bush's outrage over the photographs, they are far less likely to have been shocked to learn that detainees have been abused by U.S. troops. Indeed, UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi warned two weeks ago that addressing Iraqi concerns over the conditions under which detainees are being held in Iraq was an urgent priority for the U.S. occupation authority.
The Abu Ghraib photographs capped a month of bad news for the Bush administration from Iraq. There was the Shiite uprising and the mutilation of bodies at Fallujah, and the defection and dissolution of Iraqi security forces and mounting rebellion from inside the Iraqi Governing Council. There were the photographs of flag-draped coffins being flown home in a month when an average of four American soldiers were killed each day, and then the no-win standoffs with insurgents in both Fallujah and Najaf. And the fact that with the planned handover of symbolic sovereignty a month away, no plan was yet in place.
Days before the first photographs of detainee abuse appeared on CBS, a CNN/USA Today Gallup poll found that 60 percent of Iraqis now want U.S. troops to go home immediately, even though they acknowledge that their departure might bring further instability. Those numbers captured a decisive swing away from the U.S. in the mood of Iraqis over the year since Saddam Hussein's regime fell. And that survey was taken before U.S. actions against insurgents at Fallujah and in Baghdad sparked widespread condemnation among even pro-U.S. Iraqis. It's a safe bet that in the wake of the mass circulation of the Abu Ghraib photographs across all media platforms in the Arab world, the number of Iraqis wanting an immediate U.S. withdrawal will almost certainly have increased.
Senator Joe Biden, ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee and a supporter of the decision to invade Iraq, characterized the revelations of abuse as the single most significant blow to U.S. prestige in the Arab world over the past decade. Anthony Cordesman, the widely respected defense analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies was equally forthright: "Those Americans who mistreated the prisoners may not have realized it, but they acted in the direct interests of al-Qaeda, the insurgents, and the enemies of the U.S.," he said. The reason is that they came at a point when U.S. standing in the Arab world was already at an all-time low. Says Cordesman, "These negative images validate all other negative images and interact with them." In other words, they function as a multiplier by providing photographic "proof" of the demonic picture of the U.S. painted by anti-American propagandists.
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