JOURNAL FOR CULTURAL RESEARCH

VOLUME 12

NUMBER 2

(APRIL 2008)

The Camera as a Weapon: On

Abu Ghraib and Related Matters
Carsten Bagge Laustsen
cbl@ps.au.dk
Journal
10.1080/14797580802390848
RCUV_A_339251.sgm
1479-7585
Original
Taylor
202008
12
Carsten
00000April
and
&
for
BaggeLaustsen
Article
Francis
(print)/1740-1666
Cultural
Francis
2008 Research (online)

When time has erased all details and ambiguities concerning the Iraq war the Abu
Ghraib pictures will still be remembered, for two interrelated reasons. First, the
pictures may be seen as part of a particularly cruel form of torture, in which the
act of exposure multiply the feeling of shame. The significance of the pictures
rests not in what they depict but in the fact that they were taken at all. The
sexual nature of the torture, the use of the camera to multiply the feeling of
shame, and the fact that the soldiers through their inclusions in the frame show
no shame constitute their truly shocking nature. Second, the pictures provoked
significant debate. They were used as forms of resistance against the coalition
of the willing, with the Bush government afterwards trying to exercise damage
control. The reason that the pictures had such impact was not the event itself
the fact that torture was applied. Most people know that such acts occur in wars.
However, the various photographs, especially the hooded man in the Jesus
Christ pose with wires attached to his limbs, had iconic potential. On a more
fundamental level the perverse practices known from the prison worked as a
secret and disavowed basis of American power, which was brought to light.
Suddenly, American ideals appeared on the same plane as their constitutive
exceptions. This left the administration with the choice of either denying the
existence of this downside or in generalizing the exception (legalizing torture
etc.). It was in fact by not choosing one of the strategies, but playing both cards
simultaneously, that the Bush government lost so much prestige.

When time has erased all details and ambiguities concerning the Iraq war, the
Abu Ghraib pictures will still be remembered, for two interrelated reasons. First,
the pictures may be seen as part of a particularly cruel form of torture, in which
the act of exposure multiplies the feeling of shame. The significance of the
pictures rests not only in what they depict but also in the fact that they were
taken at all. The sexual nature of the torture, the use of the camera to multiply
the feeling of shame, and the fact that the soldiers through their inclusions in the
frame show no shame constitute their truly shocking nature. Second, the pictures
provoked significant debate. They were used as forms of resistance against the
coalition of the willing, with the Bush government afterwards trying to exercise damage control. The reason the pictures had such an impact was not the
ISSN 14797585 print/17401666 online/08/02012320
2008 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/14797580802390848

124

LAUSTSEN

event itself the fact that torture was applied. Most people know that such acts
occur in war. However, the various photographs, especially the hooded man in
the Jesus Christ pose with wires attached to his limbs, had iconic potential. On
a more fundamental level, the perverse practices known from the prison worked
as a secret and disavowed basis of American power, which was brought to light.
Suddenly, American ideals appeared together with their constitutive exceptions.
This left the administration with the choice of either denying the existence of
this downside or generalizing the exceptions (for example, legalizing torture).
It was, in fact, by not choosing one of these strategies but by playing both cards
simultaneously that the Bush government lost so much prestige.
Most of us have seen at least some of the photographs from Abu Ghraib. For a
long time, reports were surfacing on mistreatment and torture in the American
prisons in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, in Bagram in Afghanistan, in Abu Ghraib near
Baghdad and elsewhere, in what has become known as the American Gulag, but
it was not until the photographs were made public that the scandal gained momentum. Soon, these photographs came to symbolize the problems that the USA faces
in Iraq, and, as such, they called for an immediate reaction from the government.
Without doubt the greatest problem was that it became even harder to see the
American militarys presence in Iraq as a step towards a brighter future. It is
uncertain how widespread the acts of torture were; we only know that the prison
has had thousands of prisoners, and of these it is claimed that innocent people,
who had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time, accounted for 7090%
(Danner 2004, p. 3). For these people, and especially for those who have been
tortured, it is a pressing question whether American guardianship is any better
than Saddams regime. Has one repressive regime just replaced another?
Furthermore, the abuses assured anti-Western forces that the way of the West
was one of moral decay, sexual degradation and profanation (Yone 2004).
Western critics were also provided with ammunition: in their view, the photographs proved that optimism regarding Iraq was unjustified. And even worse, the
photographs showed that the country leading the War on Terror was capable of
being as roguish as the so-called rogue states.
Most of us remember important events by recalling an iconic photograph.
Huynh Cong Uts photograph of naked children running from an American napalm
attack is the image of the Vietnam War. This photograph not only symbolizes the
American fiasco but also the sufferings caused by the war. It links past and
present, and allows for meaning to be condensed as well as for interpretation and
remembrance to flow unhindered (Sontag 2004b, p. 76). How, then, will the war
in Iraq be remembered 20 years from now? Two photographs match the iconic
quality of the above mentioned photograph. First, there is the photograph of
an Iraqi man who stands on a box in a Christ-like pose with wires attached to his
hands and feet. His face is covered by a sandbag. What is shown is a scene of
torture (the victim will get electric shocks if he lowers his arms, or at least he is
told so) and, as such, the photograph symbolizes the brutality of the American
army in Iraq. The photograph gains its iconic potential through its reference to
the suffering of Christ, to the idea of a martyr. In the second photograph, Lynndie

THE CAMERA AS A WEAPON

125

England holds a prisoner on a lead, and once more a huge iconic potential is
revealed. A reference to American imperialism can easily be established: the USA
treats Iraq like a dog on a lead. Furthermore, the photograph is reminiscent of a
scene from Sal, Pier Paolo Pasolinis famous 1975 film on Italian fascism, in
which the fascists humiliate Italian boys and girls by forcing them to behave like
dogs.
The scandalous photographs were published in the New Yorker in April 2004
and appeared on the American news programme 60 Minutes II. Later, more
photographs were published in the Washington Post along with some videos that
could be accessed via its website. Within a few days, the photographs were
known worldwide. It was Joseph Darby, a sergeant in the American army, who
made the initial move, leaving an anonymous note under the door of the Criminal
Investigation Division, a mobile unit that investigates breaches of military law.
In its first response, the American government explained the excesses as
deviant behaviour caused by lack of training. They were isolated instances that
did not represent the USA and its army (Bush 2004). Two governmental reports
supported this view: the report signed by Antonio Taguba which explains the
torture as being the result of lack of leadership, discipline and training, and
Schlesingers report that denies any link to official government policies (Adams
et al. 2005, p. 14). Several commentators, however, stressed that the Abu Ghraib
incident should be understood in connection with numerous governmental
memos in which the definition of torture was constantly softened.
This article analyses the Abu Ghraib photographs in their local as well as their
global context. In the global context there exists, on the one hand, the climate
that made torture possible. Here, we must investigate the official discourse on
terror and the so-called torture memos. And we must focus on the circulation of
the photographs in various media, as well as on the political strategies and narratives that were provoked by the scandal. In the local context, on the other hand,
we need to analyse the relationship between the perpetrators and the victims.
Here, an asymmetric relation of power is established, and a row of cultural
stereotypes becomes activated. Furthermore, the fact that the humiliation was
photographed is significant. Was this an integral part of the torture, and how can
the fact that these photographs were/could be distributed to both soldiers and
the victims families be accounted for? This article begins by describing the
photographs and then moves on to investigate them as a sophisticated form of
torture. The climate which made the torture possible is then scrutinized, particularly the torture memos released after September 11. Finally, the various
attempts at damage control are discussed.

Torture in Abu Ghraib

Before the American invasion, Abu Ghraib was known as the site where Saddam
Hussein tortured and executed political opponents approximately 4000 men
and women in 1984 alone. The prison was built by English constructors in 1960

126

LAUSTSEN

and is situated 32 kilometres outside Baghdad. At its peak it held 1500 prisoners.
All the prisoners were released just before the American army reached Baghdad,
which allowed the former prisoners to blast the site. One of the first tasks of the
American invasion force was to repair the prison, which was then renamed
Camp Redemption. Once again, the prison was filled with prisoners a maximum of 7000 in the summer of 2004. On 24 May 2005, i.e. after the photographs
were made public, Bush announced that the prison was to be demolished.
However, Ghazi Mashal Ajil al-Yawer, the temporary Iraqi president at that time,
and James Pohl, military judge, rejected Bushs suggestion as the prison was the
site of a criminal investigation. Hence, it still operates as a prison, but the people
who were involved in the torture scandal have, of course, been removed, fired
or charged with criminal offences.
The prisoners were guarded by 90 members of the 800th Military Police Brigade
(Strauss 2004, p. 3). These military police officers only rarely participated in the
interrogation process as their task was to break or soften the prisoners
before the interrogation units took over. We do not know if these members of
the military police were specifically instructed to do this; we only know that they
were praised for their speed and success (Danner 2004, p. 19; Macmaster 2004,
p. 14; Rahimi 2004, p. 7). The closest we get to an order authorizing the acts is
one given by Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez (the leader of the American
forces in Iraq), encouraging military interrogation and police units to work
closely together in order to manipulate an internees emotions and weaknesses
(Macmaster 2004, p. 14).
Let us begin by describing three scenes of torture, all videotaped and publicized
shortly after the first wave of photographs. In the first scene, three soldiers are
shown hurrying-up prisoners. One of them is dragged along the floor and becomes
the first building-block in a human pyramid. All the prisoners are flexicuffed and
blindfolded with green sandbags. The second video sequence shows prisoners
forced to masturbate and in the third sequence a man is chained to a prison door,
against which he bangs his bleeding head until he faints (White et al. 2004). There
are more than 1000 photographs in addition to these videos, showing prisoners in
various uncomfortable, fear-invoking and humiliating situations and positions.
Some photographs show prisoners being threatened by barking dogs or who are
bleeding from dog bites. Others show various kinds of sexual humiliation: for example, one man who is forced to simulate oral sex with a banana, two prisoners who
are chained to each other in a way that forces them to touch each others penises,
and finally chained prisoners wearing ladies tights on their heads. In many of these
photographs we see members of the brigade posing together with their victims.
Most scholars agree that the aforementioned episodes should be considered
torture. In the 1984 Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or
Degrading Treatment or Punishment (ratified in 1985 and acceded to by the USA
in 1994), torture is defined as:
any act by which severe pain or suffering whether physical or mental, is
intentionally inflicted by or at the instigation of a public official on a person for

THE CAMERA AS A WEAPON

127

such purpose as obtaining from him or a third person information or confession,

punishing him for an act he has committed or is suspected of having committed,
or intimidating him or other persons. Torture constitutes an aggravated and
deliberate from of cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment. (Arnold 2004,
p. 1002)

It should be mentioned that more conventional forms of torture were also

witnessed in Abu Ghraib. An often-used technique was to place a wet towel on
the face of a prisoner and drip water onto it to give the prisoner the impression
that he was about to drown. Alternatively, prisoners heads were kept under
water and lifted out only shortly before they were about to drown (the submarine). Other techniques involved giving prisoners electric shocks, forcing them
to take various drugs or depriving them of their senses. All these techniques are
in vogue because they do not leave physical scars. Thus, it is difficult to prove
that torture has taken place. But sometimes even these techniques fail there
have been victims of the various methods of simulated drowning in particular. To
date, at least 26 people have died in American custody during the War on Terror
and of these at least five have died in Abu Ghraib (Danner 2004, p. 48).

Torture and Shame

Before they went to Iraq, American personnel were given a one-week course on
Iraqi history and culture. They also received a pamphlet with guidance on proper
conduct. Here is a quote from it:
Do not shame or humiliate a man in public. Shaming a man will cause him and his
family to be anti-Coalition. The most important qualifier for all shame is for a
third party to witness the act. If you must do something likely to cause shame,
remove the person from view of others. Shame is given by placing hoods over a
detainees head. Avoid this practice. Placing a detainee on the ground or putting
a foot on him implies that you are god. This is one of the worst things we can do.
Arabs consider the following things unclean: Feet or soles of feet, Using the bathroom around others. Unlike Marines, who are used to open-air toilets, Arab men
will not shower/use the bathroom together. (quoted in Danner 2004, p. 18)

The guidelines, however, were not used as intended, that is, as restrictions on
behaviour. Instead, they also became a recipe for how to create as much shame
in the prisoners as possible. The members of the brigade must have understood
themselves as sexually liberated and their prisoners as burdened by rigid
traditions and religion. Accordingly, their weak spots were perceived to be their
sexuality and homophobia (Thukral 2004). This view is also found in neoconservative policy circles in Washington. These are influenced, according to Seymour
Hersh, by Raphael Patais book The Arab Mind (1973). The book claims that sex
is a taboo in Arab countries and that the taboo allows for a return of the
repressed: the Arabs must use more mental energy on sex-related topics than
anyone else. The book also offers a description of their view on homosexuality

128

LAUSTSEN

and the obligation to keep sexuality within the private and intimate sphere
(Hersh 2004, p. 39).
It is difficult to tell where the brigade got their view of the Arab cultures
attitude towards sex from, and I will go no further than to stress that these
sexualized acts of torture were a most efficient means of breaking down the
prisoners. And they were harmful, too. These acts may not leave physical scars,
but mental ones can be just as damaging. The following statement was given
under oath to a unit investigating the torture. Note how all the aforementioned
shame-inducing elements are activated:
Some of the things they did was make me sit down like a dog, and they would
hold the string from the bag and they made me bark like a dog and they were
laughing at me. A few days before they hit me on my ear, the American police,
the guy who wears glasses, he put red womans underwear over my head. And
then two American girls that were there when they were beating me, they were
hitting me with a ball of sponge on my dick. And they were taking pictures of
me during all these instances. (quoted in Danner 2004, pp. 1314)

Another statement was as follows:

Ahmad said he was forced to insert a finger into his anus and lick it. He was also
forced to lick and chew a shoe. Sattar too said he was forced to insert a finger
into his anus and lick it. He was then told to insert this finger in his nose during
questioning, still kneeling with his feet off the ground and his other arm in the
air. The Arab interpreter told him he looked like an elephant. (quoted in Danner
2004, p. 15)

It is all here: the stress on sexual taboo, nakedness as a means of increasing

shame, making prisoners behave like animals and, finally, contamination from
impure substances (licking excrement from a finger and contact with feet and
shoes). All these practices indicate that the perpetrators had some idea of the
Arab mind. In order to understand these practices, it is beneficial to distinguish
between who one is and what one does. While guilt is related to actions undertaken and thus is something one can repent, shame is a matter of identity. Shame
concerns our way of being humans and people. Lewis writes:
The function of guilt and shame is to interrupt any action that violates either internally or externally derived standards or rules. In guilt, the command is essentially
Stop. What you are doing violates the standard or rule. Pay attention to what you
did and alter your behaviour. In shame the command is much more severe:
Stop. You are no good. More important, it is about self, not about action; thus,
rather than resetting the machine toward action, it stops the machine. Any action
becomes impossible since the machine itself is wrong. (Lewis 2003, p. 1188)

One feels ashamed when one transgresses moral, religious or cultural rules and
norms. The acts experienced or undertaken are compared to certain moral
standards, and shame is produced if the gap between the two is considered to be
too wide (Lewis 2003, p. 1181). Shame and loss of self-respect might also be felt

THE CAMERA AS A WEAPON

129

when one experiences oneself as subjected to another persons whim (Shapiro

2003, p. 1132). An especially grave case is when the perpetrator uses the victims
body as a tool of torture. An example could be when heat or touching is used to
provoke an erection (the way the female soldiers are playing with the victims
penis in the quote above) or when the victim desperately tries to avoid breathing
when forced to do the submarine (Sussman 2005, pp. 2223). One could further
mention the common practice of refusing access to toilet facilities, which forces
prisoners to soil themselves. Besides the humiliating and infantilizing impact,
what matters is the way the victim struggles not to do it a struggle s/he sooner
or later will lose. It is the active contribution from the victim that provokes the
feeling of shame (Sussman 2005, p. 22). Something similar occurred when the prisoners wet themselves because of their fear of dogs. There were even competitions
among the guards to be the first to make a prisoner wet himself (White & Higham
2004). After having searched a cell for narcotics, William J. Kimbro was asked to
frighten some prisoners with his dog. He refused because his dog was not trained
to do so, and he remains one of the few in Tagubas report who are acknowledged
for their moral habitus (Hersh 2004, p. 34). The general impression is that the
humiliating practices were widespread, and that criticism was rare.
The aim of torture is not primarily to cause pain but to break the will of the
victim. Usually this is done by depriving the victim of control over the situation
(Shapiro 2003, p. 1141). The sexualized forms of torture we have seen in Abu Ghraib
are sophisticated ways of depriving the victim of his selfhood. The reason why the
perpetrator works on the victims sexualized zones might be because these
zones are considered to be private and intimate, and that control over these zones
thus equals total control (Sussman 2005, p. 7). When a prisoner is forced to masturbate, he might try to get an erection by activating his most private fantasies, which
allows the perpetrator to show that he is capable of accessing even this domain
(Sussman 2005, p. 22). To blush or get an erection might also make it difficult for
the victim to uphold a private and undisclosed self (Sussman 2005, p. 29).
Shame is a social emotion caused by the anticipation of other peoples views.
This explains why shame victims hide from others, avoid eye contact, or give
testimony through a screen, as was the practice for rape victims testifying to the
Truth Commission in South Africa (Hersh 2004, p. 44). Some might even take their
own life to avoid humiliating their families. Forcing others (fellow inmates,
family members, guards) to watch the shaming acts also adds to the destructive
impact of the torture. In Abu Ghraib, we have witnessed three versions of this
phenomenon: prisoners being forced in turn to watch their fellows being
tortured, prisoners posing naked in front of soldiers, and finally the practice of
photographing the acts. These photographs increase the number of possible
witnesses and, as such, they add to the shame felt by the victim.
Shame, however, is not only produced by internalizing the condemning view of
others; self-blame is just as important (Shapiro 2003, p. 1134). Shame differs
from primary emotions (like the feeling of hunger) by being conditioned by selfreflection (Lewis 2003, p. 1181). It is an emotion that is preconditioned by a splitting of the self: one is both the subject and object of the shaming act or, in other

130

LAUSTSEN

words, one feels ashamed of oneself (Lewis 2003, p. 1187). It is this splitting of
the self that is used when the victim is forced to participate in his own torture.
It has already been described how this is the case when victims are forced to
urinate in their clothes. Another example is when a victim is given the impression
that he might please the torturer and thus avoid his anger: What is it they want?
What do they wish me to say? The hope is, however, soon dashed, making the
victim feel that he has made a mistake and has to pay for it (Sussman 2005,
p. 23). As Sussman puts it:
Torture does not merely insult or damage its victims agency, but rather turns
such agency against itself, forcing the victim to experience herself as helpless yet
complicit in her own violation. This is not just an assault or violation of the
victims autonomy, but also a perversion of it, a kind of systematic mockery of
the basic moral relations that an individual bears both to others and to herself.
(Sussman 2005, p. 30)

Trophies
Photographing prisoners in humiliating positions was an integral part of the
torture (Hersh 2004, pp. 3839). All photographs are memento mori, Sontag
claims. To take a photo is to participate in the mortality or vulnerability of
another person (Sontag 1979, p. 15). In Abu Ghraib, the camera literally worked
as a weapon of war (as an instrument of torture). The denial of a shared humanity,
the killing of the other as a human person, is a prominent feature in all the photographs. The victim is not seen as a person with a face and a history. The use of
sandbags might serve to disorientate the prisoners, but it might also be seen as
a way of reducing prisoners to bodies, which makes it possible for the perpetrators
to ignore the plea for mercy that every haunted face displays.
In his book on the Iraq war, Slavoj Zizek (2004) mentions a television
programme in which a photograph of a presumed terrorist from Al-Qaeda was
shown and a voice asked if the viewers would allow this man, who might have
important information that could possibly save thousands of lives, to be tortured.
The answer was, unsurprisingly, a massive yes. Why was this so? Because the
man on the screen already showed marks of torture, was photographed in an
unflattering way and was dressed in an orange jumpsuit with a bare chest. He
looked like a terrorist! Had he worn a businessmans suit, had his hair been neatly
combed and had he been photographed at an advantageous moment, then the
viewers would surely have been much more favourably disposed towards him.
Were the prisoners in Abu Ghraib not also reduced to a state in which their guilt
appeared as evident? They smelled of urine, blood, excrement and sweat. The
sandbags hid their faces and the jumpsuits made them look anonymous and
suspect. All this served as proof of their guilt.
Bourke compares the photographs from Abu Ghraib with those of ritualized
violence in the Second World War and the Vietnam War. A head cut off a body
might be placed on the front of a car or on a spear near the entrance to the
Zc[o
arn]

zca
o
[rn]

THE CAMERA AS A WEAPON

131

soldiers tents in order to show ones superiority over the enemy (Bourke 2005,
p. 42). It is the same phenomenon when trophy hunters pose in front of an animal
that they have just killed. The parallel to the way the prisoners were treated in
Abu Ghraib is obvious. Imagine that the prisoner was a dead tiger and you will
have a classic trophy shot.
The soldiers gritty grins and their over-articulated postures show that the
photographs served to document their fantasies of enjoyment (Kear 2005, p. 113).
As such, the photographs can be compared to those where we pose in front of
great natural scenery or a historical monument. The message conveyed is always
the same: I was here! Look at me! If we are to use Lacanian terminology, we
could say that the scene is set for the big Other to view: the photograph is staged
for an imaginary master, who is urged to ratify our enjoyment (Davis 2005, p. 79).
The photographs were taken for others to look at how can the fact that the
perpetrators include themselves within the frame be explained otherwise?
The American tourist, in contrast [to the Japanese], focuses the camera on the
self: on the grin, the leer, the phallic posturing, the gesture of appropriation, the
need to crow ones mastery over the other. Abu Ghraib is a stark revelation of
the perverse desire that fuels that need. One goal of these pictures is to give the
folk back home a taste of what theyre missing: Abu Ghraib as an American
Kasbah, true Orientalism. (Davis 2005, p. 80)

The members of the 800th Brigade show no awareness in the photographs of

doing something unacceptable. Signs of aggression could at least have indicated
a sort of respect for the enemy (Sante 2004). This is also the reason why Sante
compares the photographs to those of Ku Klux Klan lynchings. More than 5000
such photographs exist. Black people were hanged from trees, and occasionally
their bodies were set on fire. Sometimes, their bodies showed signs of torture
and limbs had been cut off (for example, castration) and, occasionally, postcards
were produced. There were a number of reasons for displaying these in public:
they could be used as advertisements for stores wishing to show that they were
on the right side; those who posted the cards could make the same statement;
and some might use them to prove that they had participated in a great show.
Look what you have missed! I was there! How enjoyable it was! (Bourke 2005,
p. 42). Additionally, the postcards could convey a message to the blacks, to those
who might wish to challenge the supremacy of the white race: Look, this is what
happens if you interfere with a white man (Carby 2004).
The American forces have suffered many defeats in Iraq: for example, they
were not received as liberators and the prison guards were fired upon when
leaving the prison. They were, in a way, feminized if we are to understand
the concept as signifying the feeling of a lack of control and vulnerability. The
misdeeds in the prison might be understood as an attempt to reverse this
situation (Feldman 2004). The guards were no longer the weak and vulnerable.
They could act out the masculine role, characterized by strength, courage and
capability. The formula was simple: to become men by turning the prisoners
into women.

132

LAUSTSEN

A wider context for these gender reversals might be a wish to avenge 9/11:
they could not get Bin Laden, but somebody else could indeed take his place. The
prisoners were terrorists and religious fanatics just like Bin Laden. Bush
described these men as evil and wicked; Rumsfeld, as well-trained terrorists;
Haynes and Hastert, as people of an extraordinary and unique kind; and, finally,
Cheney, as truly wicked persons. The enemy is a man deprived of reason and
motives. He is pure evil as his goal is merely to kill as many as possible. This rhetoric was repeated by the Senates chief of armed forces: to him, the prisoners in
Abu Ghraib were murderers, terrorists and rebellious partisans (Sontag 2004a).
The underlying message conveyed was, of course, that harsh treatment was justified when you are dealing with the ultimate and barbarian enemy.

Signals
Did these ideas of enmity influence the behaviour of the military police? A short
detour into the working of the Third Reich is useful in attempting to answer this
question. A written order authorizing the final solution has never been found,
and it might well be that Hitler never issued such a command in a written form.
But, then, what made the Nazi machinery work as efficiently as it did? The
answer is signals. The generals attempted to deliver what they thought Hitler
wished for. In these attempts to please Hitler, they offered still more radical
solutions. Christopher Browning explains why vague signals were an effective
way of coordinating the activities of the Third Reich as follows:
Instead, new signals and directions were given at the centre, and with a ripple
effect, these new signals set in motion waves that radiated outward with the
situations they found themselves in and the contacts they made, these bureaucrats could not help but feel the ripples and be affected by the changing atmosphere and course of events. These were not stupid or inept people; they could
read the signals, perceive what was expected of them, and adjust their behaviour accordingly. It was their receptivity to such signals, and the speed with
which they aligned themselves to the new policy that allowed the Final Solution
to emerge with so little internal friction and so little formal coordination.
(quoted in Adams et al. 2005, p. 26)

Did the military police see their acts as authorized and approved of based on the
signals from Washington? Instead of saying Look what horrible things I have
done, they could say Look what horrible things I have done to serve my country
fighting terrorism. The temptation to be overcome was the empathy felt
towards the victims (Zizek 2006). Similarly, Ivan Fredericks lawyer claimed that
Frederick did what was expected of him and that his superiors were too clever
to issue an order like this in a written form. It was not something he liked doing.
Few of the military police have been found to suffer from mental problems,
and to some extent the question concerning their health might be irrelevant.
Bushs rhetoric of good and evil and the way the government twisted the Geneva
Conventions could justify what anybody healthy or unhealthy did (Strauss
Zc[o
arn]

zca
o
[rn]

THE CAMERA AS A WEAPON

133

2004, p. 7). At the individual level there is, of course, a responsibility to be

accounted for, but there are also people responsible higher up the chain of
command. When somebody claims that torture is only exercised when the pain
equals that experienced when a vital organ fails, he is at the same time responsible for allowing less harmful acts. It was a long time before Rumsfeld informed
the government and Congress about the photographs, and it might be that this
long silence can be explained by his seeing the abuses as minor and unimportant,
or as justified by the War on Terror (Strauss 2004, pp. 1011).
Its going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically to
achieve our objective, Dick Cheney said in his first interview after September
11. Bush stressed that the events urged for a new paradigm a new way of
thinking the laws of war (Strauss 2004, p. 6). All I wish to say is that there was
a before 9/11 and an after 9/11; these words were uttered by the Central
Intelligence Agencys Coordinator for Counter-terrorism Cofer Black, but the
view is shared by many (quoted in Brown 2005, p. 978). The government knew
without doubt that the hollowing-out of the Geneva Conventions would generate
negative publicity, but the calculation must have been that the War on Terror
made it a path worth following.
Rumsfeld made two crucial moves that influenced what happened in Abu
Ghraib. He sent Major General Geoffrey Miller, who was responsible for the
prison facilities in Guantanamo, to Abu Ghraib in order to introduce the methods
he knew from Guantanamo in the prison: Abu Ghraib was gitmo-tized (Strauss
2004, p. 17). When they were applied in Guantanamo, the techniques were only
aimed at key members of Al-Qaeda. Some of the methods that were allowed
were the use of physically uncomfortable positions, removal of clothes and denial
of sleep (Adams et al. 2005, p. 18). It was Steven Carbone from the Department
of Defenses Interrogation Unit who made the decision to introduce Special
Action Programme (SAP) procedures in all prisons in Cuba, Afghanistan and Iraq,
and we must assume that his superior, Donald Rumsfeld, was informed.
Several of the memoranda produced after September 11 claimed that the
president stood above the law and international conventions when he acted in
his capacity as chief of the armed forces (Strauss 2004, pp. 1213). The president
could, for instance, allow for torture to be used when national security was
threatened. This also applied to interrogators. If an interrogator harmed an
enemy combatant during interrogation, he would be doing so in order to prevent
further attacks on the United States [and] interrogators actions would be
justified by the executive branchs constitutional authority to protect the nation
from attack (Bybee, quoted in Strauss 2004, pp. 1314). The set-up is the usual
ticking-bomb scenario: a lesser evil, for example torture, is acceptable when a
greater good is to be defended. A view such as this is not the work of incompetent
lawyers: these are the words of the chief of the governments Office of Legal
Counsel, Jay Bybee. This highly creative interpretation of the law testifies to the
change of climate that occurred after September 11.
The second crucial initiative was to restrict what counted as torture. All the
memoranda produced in the wake of September 11 were consistent with the idea

134

LAUSTSEN

of taking off the velvet gloves (Danner 2004, p. 33). With regard to the mental
consequences of the interrogation process, Bybee claimed that torture would
only have occurred in those cases where the succeeding pain lasted for months
or years. And this harm had to be intentional; just to suffer was not enough. As
to the physical pain, Bybee claimed that it should be comparable to organ failure
to count as torture (Adams et al. 2005, pp. 8ff.). This narrowing-down of the
definition of torture almost makes the phenomenon disappear. Lewis makes the
following scathing comment on Bybees memoranda:
[The memoranda] read like the advice of a mob lawyer to a mafia don on how to
skirt the law and stay out of prison. Avoiding prosecution is literally a theme.
One remarkable suggestion is that an interrogator who harmed a prisoner could
rely on the argument of self-defence as a legal justification defence not of
himself but of the nation. (quoted in Hersh 2004, p. 18)

We do not know how broadly Bybees memorandum was read; however, it is a

fact that it was just one of many obscure juridical reports that appeared in
Washington (Strauss 2004, p. 15). For those on site, in Abu Ghraib and elsewhere,
the memoranda caused confusion about what counted as torture. Univocal guidelines would undoubtedly have been important for soldiers in combat who were
forced to make hard choices. If we add to this the fact that many of the members
of the brigade were poorly trained and subjected to an unclear chain of
command, we get the idea of an operative climate with only few externally
imposed limitations on the soldiers conduct (Adams et al. 2005, p. 12). On the
one hand, it might be that a direct order to humiliate the prisoners was not
given. On the other hand, however, it is also clear that the brigade was
applauded for their success and that the signals from Washington could make
them feel justified in what they were doing. The undermining of international
conventions meant that there was nothing except the soldiers conscience to
prevent what happened from happening.
There still remain three steps ahead of us: first, there is the crucial question
of the scandal itself. Was it of any importance that the scandal was triggered by
the display of photographs rather than written sources? Second, we must
interrogate the way key actors reacted to the display of the photographs? And
finally, in conclusion, we will question the way we look at the photographs.

Photographs
Just before the Abu Ghraib scandal, there was another dispute over a display of
sensitive photographs: a photograph of coffins loaded onto an airborne transport
carrier was shown in various media. The number of coffins indicated that the war
was being fought with great losses; some would even say that they showed that
the American policy in Iraq had failed. The way Rumsfeld reacted to these photographs showed his attentiveness to the power of visual imagery. The soldiers acted
like tourists, he said, and they took photographs and handed them over to the

THE CAMERA AS A WEAPON

135

press, which he claimed to be against the law. These photographs weakened army
morale and put national security in jeopardy (Sontag 2004a). To avoid something
similar occurring later on, Rumsfeld banned the possession of mobile phones with
built-in cameras. It is just as revealing that Rumsfeld received dozens of reports
about Abu Ghraib without taking any action. He did not react until the photographs
were shown in the visual media (Macmaster 2004, p. 13). He explained the delay
as follows: You read it, as I say, its one thing. You see these photographs and
its just unbelievable. It wasnt three-dimensional. It wasnt video. It wasnt
colour. It was quite a different thing (quoted in Hersh 2004, pp. 6465).
Why are photographs different? The answer is not just colour and dimensionality, although they add to the intensity of looking at a photograph. Roland
Barthes work on photography is useful in answering this question. Photographs
are horrifying because their materiality generates an impression of authenticity
in us. Their truth value is therefore rarely questioned: they are considered to
depict an external world directly and without mediation. They are, so to say,
windows, opening towards an externally given reality. Photographs, at least
those taken by amateurs, lack artistic value and are therefore usually understood
as being less manipulated than a painting or a novel (Sontag 2004b, p. 24). A
photograph is taken; a painting or a novel is produced (Sontag 2004b, p. 41). A
photograph erases all traces of its production, that is, of the technical process
allowing the photograph to be produced. It does not allow for interpretation in
the same way as abstract art or novels (Taylor 2005, p. 44).
This notion of correspondence and objectivity is, of course, erroneous.
Photographs offer only a certain reified perspective on the world. They freeze a
moment and create simultaneity between the viewer and what the photograph
depicts. But as such they are nothing but fragments (Kear 2005, p. 109). Unlike
televised pictures, photographs condense information by selecting certain
aspects and ignoring others. They work in the same way as a quote or a slogan
(Kear 2005, p. 109). In sum, two qualities characterize a photograph: objectivity
and partiality. Objectivity because the camera is a machine-like object that
reproduces something already out there, and partiality because there is
always someone taking the photograph. A photograph is thus both description
and interpretation (Sontag 2004b, p. 23).
The photographs from Abu Ghraib allowed us to face the evil. It was like we
were there. As such, the photographs begged for moral involvement. They say:
Stop this! Do something! And they highlight the question of remembrance as
well: Look what a man is capable of doing. Do never forget (Sontag 2004b,
p. 102). Some responded to this plea, others ignored it, but no matter what,
everybody had to develop a stance towards the photographs (Sontag 2004b,
pp. 3738). But one can also become numb to the overexposure of suffering
(Sontag 2004b, pp. 104105). Sontag mentions the health authorities in Canada
who placed pictures of cancerous lungs, hearts, teeth and brains on cigarette
packets. These visual warnings, they claimed, were 60 times more effective than
a written text. And people were shocked but not for long (Sontag 2004b,
pp. 7273)! The same thing happened with the photographs from Abu Ghraib.

136

LAUSTSEN

After the first display of the photographs, interest declined rapidly. The movement from initial shock to moral reflection and from moral reflection to action
seems to be in a straight line, but it is by no means certain that people will follow
it all the way (Sontag 2004b, pp. 104105).
By being just a perspective on the world, a fragment, the photographs tell us
as much about those taking them as they inform us about what has happened.
The photographs count as a perfect hybrid of reality television and pornography.
The photographs from Abu Ghraib testify to the importance of the sexual liberation of 1960s America and to the availability of pornography on the internet
(Bourke 2005, p. 43). There is, as Davis stresses, nothing spontaneous in the
photographs. They are commoditized in the same way as pornography:
Such is the mindless leer on Private Englands face, the staple of the woman in
porn, offering herself to the camera in that look that epitomizes the Playboy
bunny, the idiot look of one trying to persuade herself and the male viewer that
this is what female pleasure looks like: the come take me any way you want me
I live just to please you come on. (Davis 2005, pp. 8081)

The reality effect is the wish to be watched by others (and applauded for what
one is doing). Our society is a society of the spectacle, as Debord claimed
decades ago. Events have to be spectacular and visual to be considered worthy
of attention. Even people wish to become pictures: celebrities (Sontag 2004b,
p. 97). What is worrying about the photographs is their everydayness: the fact
that they do not shock. We are in possession of all the interpretative resources
necessary to decode their content (Gordon 2004).
Photographs make us remember, they might even shock, but they do not make
us understand. To understand we need narratives (Sontag 2004a, p. 80). It is
crucial, therefore, to investigate the interpretative strategies and narratives
that were produced to deal with the photographs. I have already stressed the
importance of the discourse on the War on Terror as a narrative scheme that
conditioned what happened in the prison, and I will now turn to the way major
players responded to the scandal. I cannot map all the reactions and will therefore mainly focus on the neoconservative contribution.

Cover-up
In his book on the Iraq war, Slavoj Zizek (2004) retells the joke about the broken
kettle. Freud used it to illustrate that in dream thought there are no contradictions. Zizek claims that this applies also in the ongoing war against Iraq. The joke
runs like this: a man borrows a kettle and when he returns it, it is broken. He
then offers three excuses: (1) I never borrowed a kettle from you; (2) when I
returned it, it was in perfect order, it must have been you who broke it; and,
finally, (3) the kettle was already broken when I borrowed it from you. The narratives offered after the display of the photographs from Abu Ghraib follow the
same kettle logic: (1) it was not torture but mistreatments caused by a few
Zc[o
arn]

Zc[o
arn]

zca
o
[rn]

zca
o
[rn]

THE CAMERA AS A WEAPON

137

rotten apples the acts, in other words, do not represent the USA; (2) it was
torture, but the ongoing critique of the misdeeds indicates a lack of patriotism
and makes the operation in Iraq more difficult; and, finally, (3) torture is
necessary in the War on Terror but the USA tortures in a more ethical and
humane way than totalitarian states. In sum, three contradictory strategies:
denial, ignorance and re-evaluation. The torture is interpreted as deviation, as
normal and as a necessary evil.

First Narrative
Rumsfelds initial reaction was to deny that torture had taken place. The
photographs depicted something that was technically different from torture, he
said (Sontag 2004a). Although it was not torture, it was still unacceptable and
something utterly un-American. Rumsfeld must have been tired of the many
complaints about mistreated prisoners. In 2002, he claimed, for example, that
these complaints were the result of international hyperventilation (Hersh 2004,
p. 17). But even though he saw the scandal as being exaggerated, he still had to
react and minimize the damage. The strategy was to frame the incidents as
isolated acts. There were 50 to 100 soldiers partaking in the torture, which would
only count as a few rotten apples. This is what Rumsfeld said on CBS News:
There certainly is no excuse for anyone in the armed forces to behave the way
these photographs indicate some individuals behaved. We also know that the 1.4
million men and women in uniform on active duty and the terrific Guard and
reserve forces are filled with fine, talented, honourable people who dont do
that type of thing. (quoted in Brown 2005, p. 977)

The strategy was to psychologize. Lynndie Englands behaviour was, for

instance, more or less explicitly explained by the fact that she belonged to the
trailer trash segment: she was one of the poor and uneducated whites who
joined the military on short-term contracts because there were few jobs
(Younge 2004). The Republican Senator Ben Campbell wondered how these
people entered the military (Giroux 2004, p. 789), and General Kimmitt warned
against judging the whole military on the basis of a few deviant persons (Brown
2005, p. 976).
This narrative strategy suffers from two deficits. First, all the members of the
brigade, with Charles A. Grander Jr. as a possible exception, seemed to be
normal and healthy persons. Sabrina Harmans friends described her as a person
who could never hurt a fly. If she saw an insect, she would pick it up and release
it outside (Rahimi 2004, p. 4). Similar views could easily be documented concerning the other members of the brigade. Second, a pattern seemed to be revealing
itself, which was making it even harder to claim that Abu Ghraib was an isolated
case: Guantanamo, Bagram, the secret prisons in Europe and elsewhere, the
export of prisoners to less sensitive allies, etc. all this pointed towards
something bigger.

138

LAUSTSEN

Second Narrative
Soon the abuses could no longer be denied, and thus the narrative strategy had
to change: they were no longer denied. Instead, the neoconservatives
complained about critics who harmed the state by mentioning the case and put
the soldiers working abroad at risk. A true patriot is one who does the best for
his country no matter what. To keep quiet was considered to be a sign of
patriotism. Those who criticized the War on Terror served the interest of the
terrorists, as John Ashcroft put it in 2003. They undermined national unity and
thus the ability to fight decisively (Norris 2004, p. 255). The Republican Chairman
of the Senate, John Warner, warned against publishing more photographs
because they would place servicemen serving the country at risk (Sontag 2004a),
and, finally, the Republican Senator James Inhofe said: I am also outraged that
we have so many humanitarian do-gooders right now crawling all over these prisons looking for human rights violations while our troops, our heroes, are fighting
and dying (quoted in Giroux 2004, p. 787).
The critics made a fuss about the photographs. They overstressed their importance and the harm done to the victims. The way of defence was no longer to
deny the mistreatment but to claim that such events were to be expected in a
war zone. Rush Limbaugh, a right-wing radio personality, said: You know, these
people are being fired at every day. Im talking about people having a good time,
these people. You ever heard of emotional release? (quoted in Sontag 2004a,
p. 3). The soldiers got some emotional relief through some harmless teasing. This
was not something Americans needed to care about.
The problems that arise with this narrative path, unsurprisingly, are the extent
and the character of the torture. If prisoners die as a consequence of emotional
release, then something is terribly wrong. Furthermore, some neo-Christian
conservatives saw the events as conditioned by a depraved culture. It was
claimed that the perpetrators were raised watching MTV (Music Television), hard
pornography and violent films, and that the result was scandals like Abu Ghraib
(Giroux 2004, p. 787). Consequently, the only way out was to argue that the
torture was necessitated by the War on Terror.

Third Narrative
Some time after the publication of the photographs, narratives about the necessity of torture began to appear. Torture was no longer perceived as a dirty secret
but something one ought to reconsider in a situation when national security was
at risk. Robert Jackson, a columnist, warned about treating the Constitution as
a suicide pact. National security trumps civil liberties, and thus there is a need
to keep an open mind about certain measures to fight terrorism, like court
sanctioned psychological interrogation. And well have to think about transferring some suspects to our less squeamish allies, even if thats hypocritical.
Nobody said this was going to be pretty. (quoted in Macmaster 2004, p. 3)

THE CAMERA AS A WEAPON

139

Within the academic field, Alan Dershowitz (2002) became known for airing
similar arguments. The laws of war had to be adjusted if one was to beat the
terrorists, he claimed. These people were not fighting in a conventional way,
and hence they could not expect to be protected by conventions. Torture might
be necessary against these irregular warriors to get hold of the intelligence that
might possibly save the lives of thousands. If one was to do a good job fighting
the terrorists, one could not avoid being in conflict with some of the conventions. Torture is expected to take place and might in fact be necessary, in
situations of emergency (Dershowitz 2002, p. 4). We have to regulate the practice of a phenomenon that is bound to occur, Dershowitz argued. Acts of torture
should be legally authorized and codified through certain torture warrants
issued on a case-to-case basis: Im not in favour of torture, but if youre going
to have it, it should damn well have court approval; There is no good realistic third alternative. This is a classic choice of evils (quoted in Cohen 2005,
p. 27). Dershowitz would allow for needles to be inserted under the nails of
prisoners or the drilling of teeth to the point of pain (Macmaster 2004, p. 4).
There are plenty of inconsistencies and problems with this narrative strategy:
the limit on what counts as torture has been raised, allowing for even more harm
to be suffered; instead of being an exception, a desperate last option, torture
becomes an acceptable norm; it becomes even harder to define what counts as
torture; and, finally, one overrides a reasonable taboo (Zizek 2005). The idea of
torture light suffers from the same problems as fat-free cheesecake or Diet
Coke. There can be no such thing as a torture without torture (Cohen 2005,
p. 25). Either an act is torture, or it is not. Additionally, analytic treaties like
Dershowitzs neglect the historical context that shapes how other countries and
persons view the USA and its foreign policy (Macmaster 2004, p. 2). This critique
will be dealt with in the concluding paragraph. To put it differently, all three
narrative strategies mentioned here are united in their neglect of this fourth
possible path the path that I will now follow.
Zc[o
arn]

zca
o
[rn]

That Free Dom Foy Bosh

This article began by mentioning a photograph of a man posing like Jesus Christ
with wires attached to his limbs. This photograph was reused in a caricature
painted by Salah Edine Sallat on a wall in Baghdad. Next to the man, there is now
the Statue of Liberty wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood. And instead of holding a torch,
it raises its left arm towards a switch connected to the wires that are attached
to the victims limbs the victim is about to be electrocuted. Both figures stand
on boxes, looking remarkably similar to the Twin Towers of the World Trade
Center. Beneath the caricature, we find this comment: That Free Dom Foy Bosh
(Mitchell 2005, p. 304). We can only speculate on its true meaning. One version
could be The free doom from Bush. Bush is bringing doom to the Middle East,
and he even perceives this as something people want, as something that they have
freely accepted. Or how about That freedom from the boss (the USA)? The Iraqi

140

LAUSTSEN

people are getting freedom but on the condition that they stay on the path laid
down by the boss. A third option could be That freedom from Bosch. Western
and American enterprises (Bosch being used as an example, although they do not
operate in Iraq) are taking over companies and oil reserves in Iraq. Is this what
free enterprise implies freedom for Western capital? Or perhaps a fourth
version could be one in which Bosh refers to Hieronymus Bosch, the Netherlandish
Renaissance painter known for his depiction of sin and the evil in man.
The interesting feature about the caricature is its reversal. The victims from
Abu Ghraib are, as we remember, all displayed as subdued and silent; they are
deprived of both their face and voice. Hardly anyone knows their names. There
has been great interest in figuring out who the perverts really were, but few
have shown a genuine interest in getting to know the victims. Sallat is not just
veiling the Statue of Liberty, depriving it of its face in the same way as the perpetrators and commentators deprived the victims of their identity, he is also trying
to create a counter-narrative. Unlike Western commentators, he deals with the
scandal from a Middle Eastern perspective. What is his message? His caricature
directs our attention towards the paradoxical idea of winning freedom by the use
of force, here torture. The USA is not just bringing freedom and democracy to
Iraq, but also an updated version of the Ku Klux Klan, as one commentator put it
(Gordon 2004).
Sometimes when a state of exception was declared, Justicia, the symbol of the
law, was veiled. In a similar way, one could claim that civil liberties were
suspended in Iraq the moment democracy was given to the Iraqis. This is why
Sallat veils the Statue of Liberty. And it is not just veiled, but veiled under a Ku
Klux Klan hood. He hereby highlights the dark downside that pertains to American
exceptionalism. I mentioned the parallel between the photographs from Abu
Ghraib and those of the lynching of blacks. There is, however, more to be said
on this topic. Gordon writes:
Placed together, the photographs form an American family album of racist, pornographic iconography: a hooded Iraqi man standing with arms extended and wires
attached to his body recalls a naked African man standing on an auction-block
awaiting sale; an Iraqi mans face contorted in terror and forced against prison
bars as dogs are set on him conjures up the image of a civil rights freedom-rider
stumbling to escape police-dogs and fire-hoses in Alabama; the image of naked
Iraqi men twisted and bound together or stacked in pyramids becomes captured
African men and women, suffocating and dying in slave ships; an Iraqi man curled
up on a prison floor and held at the end of a leash is the lynched body of a black
southerner, freshly cut down from a tree in Mississippi, or James Byrd, dragged
to death until he was decapitated, in Jasper County, Texas. (Gordon 2004)

Gordon projects the photographs onto their sender. Who is behind the camera?
What allowed such incidents to happen? Were the abuses ordered, authorized or
encouraged from above? Do they have a history? The question is, as Sontag
claims, not primarily who and how many carried out the abuse, but what was the
climate that allowed for such acts to happen in the first place. Seen in this light,
the photographs are us (Sontag 2004a). I see comments such as Sontags as

THE CAMERA AS A WEAPON

141

strategic interventions and as encouragement to self-criticism. The analogies as

such go beyond a strictly descriptive function. The move is not unlike the one
made by Horkheimer and Adorno in their Dialectic of Enlightenment. In this
seminal work, they interrogated the reversal of enlightenment into fascism. One
could likewise claim that it is the reversal of democracy and freedom into torture
and dependency that has been investigated in this article. If one is to fight the
dark downside of American exceptionalism, then a first step is to acknowledge
that such phenomena exist. Essentially, a genuinely ethical way of relating to the
Abu Ghraib photographs is self-criticism. And what does this imply? A twofold
strategy, I would say. On the one hand, the political and narrative strategies that
form and colour the reception of the photographs must be analysed. On the other
hand, these interpretative schemes, these commonsensical and stereotypical
ways of looking at the world, need to be reversed, or at least shaken up a bit.

References
Adams, G. B., Balfour, D. L. & Reed, G. E. (2005) Putting Cruelty First: Abu Ghraib,
Administrative Evil and Moral Inversion, Ethics and Integrity of Governance: A Transatlantic Dialogue, Leuven, Belgium, 25 June.
Arnold, R. (2004) The Abu Ghraib Misdeeds: Will There Be Justice in the Name of
the Geneva Conventions?, Journal of International Criminal Justice, vol. 2, no. 4,
pp. 9991006.
Bourke, J. (2005) Sexy Snaps, Index on Censorship, vol. 34, no. 1, pp. 3945.
Brown, M. (2005) Setting the Conditions for Abu Ghraib: The Prison Nation Abroad,
American Quarterly, vol. 53, no. 3, pp. 973997.
Bush, G. W. (2004) Remarks by President Bush, The White House, 30 April, http://
www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/04/print/20040430-2.html.
Carby, H. (2004) A Strange and Bitter Crop: The Spectacle of Torture, Open Democracy,
11 October, http://www.opendemocracy.net/media-abu_ghraib/article_2149.jsp.
Cohen, S. (2005) Post-Moral Torture: From Guantanamo to Abu Ghraib, Index on
Censorship, vol. 34, no. 1, pp. 2430.
Danner, M. (2004) Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror,
Granta Books, London.
Davis, W. A. (2005) Passion of the Christ in Abu Ghraib: Toward a New Theory of
Ideology, Socialism and Democracy, vol. 19, no. 1, pp. 6793.
Dershowitz, A. M. (2002) Why Terrorism Works: Understanding the Threat, Responding
to the Challenge, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.
Feldman, A. (2004) Abu Ghraib: Ceremonies of Nostalgia, Open Democracy, 18 October,
http://www.opendemocracy.net/media-abu_ghraib/article_2163.jsp.
Giroux, H. A. (2004) Education after Abu Ghraib: Revisiting Adornos Politics of
Education, Cultural Studies, vol. 18, no. 6, pp. 779815.
Gordon, M. (2004) Abu Ghraib: Postcards from the Edge, Open Democracy, 14 October,
http://www.opendemocracy.net/media-abu_ghraib/article_2146.jsp.
Hersh, S. M. (2004) Chain of Command, Penguin, London.
Kear, A. (2005) The Anxiety of the Image, Parallax, vol. 11, no. 3, pp. 107116.
Lewis, M. (2003) The Role of the Self in Shame, Social Research, vol. 70, no. 4,
pp. 11811204.
Macmaster, N. (2004) Torture: From Algiers to Abu Ghraib, Race and Class, vol. 46,
no. 2, pp. 121.

142

LAUSTSEN

Mitchell, W. J. T. (2005) The Unspeakable and the Unimaginable: Word and Image in a
Time of Terror, ELH, vol. 72, no. 2, pp. 291308.
Norris, A. (2004) Us and Them: The Politics of American Self-Assertion after 9/11,
Metaphilosophy, vol. 35, no. 3, pp. 249272.
Patai, R. (1973) The Arab Mind, Scribners, New York.
Rahimi, B. (2004) Ishraqat, Part II: Torture and War: Lessons from Abu Ghraib, Nebula,
vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 113.
Sante, L. (2004) Tourists and Tortures, The New York Times, 11 May.
Shapiro, D. (2003) The Tortured, Not the Torturers, Are Ashamed, Social Research,
vol. 70, no. 4, pp. 11311148.
Sontag, S. (1979) On Photography, Penguin, London.
Sontag, S. (2004a) Regarding the Torture of Others, The New York Times, 23 May.
Sontag, S. (2004b) Regarding the Pain of Others, Penguin, London.
Strauss, M. S. (2004) The Lesson of Abu Ghraib, Ohio State Law Journal, vol. 66,
http://ssrn.com/abstract=597061.
Sussman, D. (2005) Whats Wrong with Torture?, Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 33,
no. 1, pp. 133.
Taylor, J. (2005) Iraqi Torture Photographs and Documentary Realism in the Press,
Journalism Studies, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 3949.
Thukral, S. (2004) Understanding Shame and Humiliation in Torture, Human Dignity and
Humiliation Studies, http://www.humiliationstudies.org/documents/ThukralFinalHumiliation.pdf.
White, J., Davenport, C. & Higham, S. (2004) Videos Amplify Picture of Violence, The
Washington Post, 21 May, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A437852004May20.html.
White, J. & Higham, S. (2004) Use of Dogs to Scare Prisoners Was Authorized, The
Washington Post, 11 June, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/
A32776-2004Jun10.html.
Yone, A. A. (2004) Empires Mockery, Open Democracy, 12 October, http://
www.opendemocracy.net/democracy-abu_ghraib/article_2151.jsp.
Younge, G. (2004) Blame the White Trash, The Guardian, 17 May, http://
www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/may/17/iraq.usa5.
izek, S. (2004) Iraq: The Broken Kettle, Verso, London.
Z
izek, S. (2005) Biopolitics: Between Terri Schiavo and Guantanamo, Lacan Dot Com,
Z
http://www.lacan.com/zizartforum1205.htm.
izek, S. (2006) The Depraved Heroes of 24 Are the Himmlers of Hollywood, The Guardian,
Z
10 January, http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2006/jan/10/usnews.comment.

Zc[o
arn]

zca
o
[rn]

Zc[o
arn]

zca
o
[rn]

Zc[o
arn]

zca
o
[rn]