Salon -- were you hurting for a cover story or something? If these photos had been taken last week or last month, certainly they should be posted up immediately. But these pictures are more than 2 years old, and frankly, the editors ought to have had the sense sit on them for a few weeks longer, given the current Danish cartoon hysteria.

Lt. Cally was convicted, but pardoned by Nixon before doing any time. Interestingly enough, Colin Powell was in charge of the military's unsuccessful whitewash/cover up of the incident. The government tried to suppress all information and images of My Lai at the time, and if it wasn't for the heroic efforts of Ron Ridenhour to get the story out, we wouldn't even know about it.

Pentagon papers, My Lai, Deep Throat, Abu Graib...you don't need to explain to us why you are publishing, you will always be doing the right thing when bringing any important information to the light of public scrutiny...even when it is hurtful to our national pride.

These pictures were first published by the Australian media. Since a number of Middle Eastern households and certainly Middle Eastern governmental and academic institutions have internet access, I suspect the people of the Middle East have already seen them. Salon isn't publishing these pictures to stir up the enemy. They're already stired up. Salon is publishing them for Americans to see what atrocities have been carried out in their name. Torturing has consequences for the torturers too. Keeping Americans in the dark about it isn't going to change that. When the next airplane is driven into the next American skyscraper, we might have a clearer understanding for some of the reasons for it.

Finally someone had the courage to come forward with the rest of the story. Why should we not bear witness to the suffering and death that has been caused in our name? This administration is guilty of war crimes and by our silence, the citizenry is complicit in condoning these acts. What will it take for this country to wake up to what is going on?

As everyone in Hollywood knows, you need to ratchet up the violence in the sequel to get the attention of people after the first show.

I don't think these photos will move needle in terms of people's outrage, they will be dismissed and downplayed as before by Hannity, Rush and lesser hosts like San Francisco's own pro-torture theocon, Brian Sussman on KSFO. (http://s88172659.onlinehome.us/2005/06/brian-sussman-why-dont-you-want-to.html) In fact, the very act of showing them will be seen as treasonous by the likes of O'Rielly. Instead of asking why did this happen they will blame YOU for fanning the flames.

I think it will take the videos of boys being raped (which we were told existed.)to make people readdress this issue. To stand up against the torture apologists (and there are a lot of them, sadly) we need to point out the number of people who should NEVER have EVEN been in Abu Ghraib. I think that for every radio host that jokes and says that they are all terrorists who are trying to kill us, we need to identify the non-terrorists who DIED from TORTURE. Yes almost two dozen Iraqis were TORTURED to DEATH. Somehow that little statistic seems to get ignored when shown photos of "harmless" stress positions and men with underwear on their heads. According to the army's own reports

"There were five cases of detainee deaths as a result of abuse by U.S. personnel during interrogations... There are 23 cases of detainee deaths still under investigation..."

--The Schlesinger Report, August 2004

Based on the Taguba report, the Red Cross report and yes even the photographs themselves, clearly more than seven military police were involved.

"The new reports not only decisively prove what was long known, widening the circle of direct blame for what happened at Abu Ghraib to nearly fifty people, including military intelligence soldier and officers (although subsequent disclosures suggest that the number is at least twice that.)"

--Mark Danner, Torture and Truth America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror. p. 27

The fact that this was tamped down to a few people convicted "on the night shift" is astonishing. Photographic evidence PROVES and signed documents SHOW that more were involved than were ever punished.

Must we have a notarized photo of Donald Rumsfeld raping, torturing and killing an Iraq who was rounded up by mistake to get people to take this seriously? Because by signing the military orders and putting in place his policies, he is responsible for those actions as surely as if he committed them himself. To state otherwise is to deny the existance of the military command structure.

I remember during the first Gulf War, when Iraqi draftees couldn't wait to surrender to US forces. I don't think that will ever happen again. People talk about the lives of captured Americans that will be lost, but that's the smaller part of it. The bigger part is we'll have to fight our way through from now on, because even conscripted civilians will fear us. So many more will die because of this.

The question is not why the "new" images from Abu Ghraib should be published now. The question, rather, is why they were not released to the media when the first set of images surfaced. By attempting to keep these pictures under wraps, the military and the government practically ensured that the scandal would come back to haunt them in the future. Attempted cover-ups tend to generate their own come-uppance.

Bravo Salon for publishing the images. As an exercise in free expression, it certainly beats commissioning and printing puerile insults in the name of journalism.

But I still can't help wondering why Salon has never written about prisoner abuse in California. Oh wait, that's because you supported Gray Davis, who treated the term like an oxymoron.

By the way, did anyone notice that the California prison health care system was just placed in receivership by a federal court because the poor level of medical care available to prisoners was judged to amount to a human rights abuse?

Chuck Graner was trained in the American prison system. I hope we can get to a point where we oppose the abuse of ALL prisoners, because that's really the only way we're going to prevent things like this.