Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2004/05/24

[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]

Subject: [Leica] Susan Sontag on Iraq Photos
From: timatherton at theedge.ca (Tim Atherton)
Date: Mon May 24 19:04:47 2004

> >> Cover story in yesterday's NYT Magazine entitled The
> Photographs Are Us.
> >> It is much more a piece about the U.S., Iraq and torture than about
> >> photography, but she makes some interesting observations about the
> >> photos. Similarly, Sarah Boxer had a Times column yesterday on the same
> >> subject.
> >

Here's another take on the photographs and their power (or maybe not) -
interesting none the less - even if it's by a notorious pinko:

Rummy's weird Fotomat defense
I didn't get it till I saw the pictures!

May 14, 2004  |  To hear Don Rumsfeld tell it, even though the Bush
administration had been told back in January about the abuse and torture
going on at Abu Ghraib -- and that there were photos documenting it -- the
idea that this might be a very bad thing didn't really hit home until
recently because no one in the White House had actually laid eyes on the
photos.

"It is the photographs that give one the vivid realization of what actually
took place," Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee last week.
"Words don't do it."

Really?...

Even the release of Gen. Taguba's damning 53-page report detailing the
"systematic and illegal abuse of detainees" wasn't enough to pique
Rumsfeld's concern.

"The problem at that stage," he testified, "was one-dimensional. It wasn't
three-dimensional. It wasn't video. It wasn't color." ...

I challenge anyone to read the Taguba report and say that the nightmares it
depicts aren't chillingly three-dimensional. Even without pop-up
illustrations...

Close your eyes. Now picture what you just read. Still need to see photos
before you hit the roof? I didn't think so.

What a colossal failure of imagination on the part of our leaders.

But even as ludicrous as the "No photos, no fury" justification is, let's
accept the premise that detailed descriptions of chemical light buggery and
electrodes attached to genitals aren't enough -- that Rummy and company have
made such a habit of twisting and spinning and manipulating words, mere
language has lost its power to move them.

Fine.

But since photographic proof is now the prerequisite for moral outrage, why
didn't Rumsfeld demand to see the photos as soon as he was told about them
back in January? If you were in his shoes, wouldn't you have ordered them to
be on your desk within the hour? Of course you would have. But not the man
Dick Cheney just called "the best secretary of defense the Unites States has
ever had."

When asked by a reporter why he never got around to actually viewing the
incendiary photos until the night before he was called on the Senate carpet,
Rummy insisted the problem wasn't his lack of interest; it was the lack of a
good photo developer. Call it the Fotomat defense.

"I think I did inquire about the pictures," he said, "and was told that we
didn't have copies."

No copies? The biggest U.S. military scandal since My Lai and the secretary
of defense can't get any extra prints sent his way?

Memo to Rummy: We now live in the era of digital photos and instant uploads.
"The dog ate my negative" just ain't gonna fly.....

more at

http://www.salon.com/opinion/huffington/2004/05/14/photos/index.html


Replies: Reply from feli at creocollective.com (Feli di Giorgio) ([Leica] Susan Sontag on Iraq Photos)
In reply to: Message from s.dimitrov at charter.net (Slobodan Dimitrov) ([Leica] Susan Sontag on Iraq Photos)