The power and consequences of photography...

<p>By now, most Americans and I'm willing to guess that most other

citizens around the globe are well aware of what transpired at Abu

Ghraib by U.S. soldiers. Right now, Spc. Sabrina Harman, the

photographer of these infamous images, is on the chopping block for

her roll of photographing the abuses saying she was a willing

participant and she is refuting that claim. One part of me wonders

why she didn't deal with this on a higher level since she knew it

was wrong and the other part is proud that she took the photo of the

abuse, which was instrumental in helping get the rotten apples out

of our military because their actions put all U.S. citizens in

danger from terrorists. What are your thoughts on this highly

controversial subject matter?</p>

<blockquote><hr><i>May 13, 2005, 1:34AM</i><h1>Photos taken

to 'document' Abu Ghraib, defense says</h1><h3>But prosecutors say

Army reservist played a willing role in the abuses</h3>

By JOHN W. GONZALEZ<br>

Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle<br><br>

<p>FORT HOOD - Spc. Sabrina Harman on Thursday was portrayed by

military prosecutors as a willing participant in numerous detainee

abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, but one of the scandal's lowest ranking

suspects vowed to justify her actions.</p>

 

<p>Harman photographed the abuses to "document" incidents she was

troubled to witness, her lawyer told jurors in opening statements.

He also said the Army Reservist lacked the proper training and

oversight to work in the prison's toughest wing.</p>

 

<p>Facing court-martial charges of conspiracy, dereliction of duty

and maltreatment of Iraqi detainees in 2003, Harman's defense

further asserted that one of the scandal's most infamous images -

that of a hooded Iraqi man standing on a box with wires attached to

his outstretched hands - was a gag accomplished with the supposed

victim's cooperation.</p>

 

<p>"Gilligan was in on the joke," said attorney Frank Spinner, using

the nickname given to an inmate whom guards were depriving of sleep

in preparation for interrogation.</p>

 

<h3>Photos in a new light</h3>

 

<p>Spinner said it's natural for people to view the photos and

say "wow, that looks bad, that looks wrong," but he assured jurors

that a week of trial will put them in a new light.</p>

 

<p>For instance, photos Harman took of a pyramid of naked detainees

shouldn't qualify as abuse because the Iraqis were hooded and

unaware they were being photographed, Spinner said. And it wasn't

abusive to write the word "rapeist"(sic) on the thigh of a sexual

assault suspect, in part because he couldn't read English, Spinner

said.</p>

 

<h3>Clashing version of events</h3>

 

<p>Prosecutors offered a clashing version of events, after admitting

there were problems with training, leadership and logistics at the

Iraqi prison once operated by Saddam Hussein.</p>

 

<p>Abuses depicted in the dozens of photos to be introduced as

evidence "were all beyond the pale and clearly illegal," said

prosecutor Capt. Chuck Neill.</p>

 

<p>"Every charge is supported by photographic evidence," he

added.</p>

 

<p>Soon after jurors were qualified, Neill showed them several large

blowups of photos showing nude Iraqi inmates being humiliated by

smiling U.S. troops.</p>

 

<p>"These are soldiers having a good time at the expense of the

detainees put in their care," Neill said. "Do not play Monday

morning quarterbacks" in analyzing the photos, he urged the jury.</p>

 

<h3>General reprimanded</h3>

 

<p>So far, seven soldiers ranked staff sergeant or lower have been

convicted of abuse-related charges and Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski

was reprimanded and demoted last week.</p>

 

<p>Harman faces 6 1/2 years in prison if convicted on all counts. Co-

defendant Pvt. Charles Graner, the instigator of several of the

photographed abuses, was handed the harshest sentence, 10 years. He

will be called as a defense witness, Spinner said.</p>

 

<p>After Harman is tried, a final Abu Ghraib court-martial will be

held for Pvt. Lynndie England, whose attempted guilty plea ended in

mistrial last week.</p>

<hr></blockquote>

Both photographer and subjects should get a dishonorable discharge on the grounds of stupidity.

<I>"Gilligan was in on the joke," said attorney Frank Spinner, using the nickname given to

an inmate whom guards were depriving of sleep in preparation for interrogation.</I>

<P>You know there is nothing like being deprived of sleep for multiple nights

running, then being asked by thugs (whose language you probably don't speak or

understand), who are armed with billy clubs, guns and guard dogs, who also

control when & how much you get to eat & drink, and when and where you sh!t and p!ss to

stand on a box, put a hood over

your head and then let them then attach wires to your genitals & fingers to make you feel

like being part of a

practical joke. <P>Maybe Mr. Spinner (what a great name for someone trying to put a

"spin" on the facts - this man has a future in politics: someone give him Tom Delay's

phone number!) should try it for himself for a few days.

I would love to see THAT lawyer at a kiddie porn tiral:

 

[re-phrased quote from the story]

 

For instance, photos Harman took (of the children) shouldn't qualify as abuse because the (children) were hooded and unaware they were being photographed, Spinner said. And it wasn't abusive to write the word "rapeist"(sic) on the thigh of a sexual assault suspect, in part because (they) couldn't read..., Spinner said.

 

He has to be f***ing joking!

 

Hunter

Photographing the prisoners breached the Geneva Conventions in any event. But the question remains, who was the intended audience for the photographs? And what was their purpose? (Compare with Lee Miller's photographs of the Belsen concentration camp after WW2). Was it not realised that they would eventually 'leak out' into the press and other media?

The answer to your question, in my mind, is very simple. Wether in politics or business it is not how you play the game, it is where you place the blame. The people that play this game want to be re-elected and need to be seen as moral folks, so they place the blame on the pawns.

 

The photgrapher here is just another pawn and the more pawns you can blame, the better you look.

 

There is tons of evidence that high ranking military - and political - figures knew exactly what was going on and even endorsed it.

 

Wasn't there a movie about this subject? I think it was called "A Few Good Men". Maybe the defence should hire Tom Cruise as lawyer, he'll get Jack "Rummie" Nicholson to confess!

The issue is really that photographs carry a lot of power. When the media latches onto one set of images, they cause people to focus on it as if it is the only thing that is important, until the next shocking image comes along (call this the "OJ Simpson effect").

 

If you look at the media objectively, you see that people are easily manipulated by emotional and visceral images. Rodney King being beaten caused huge riots because it was amplified by the media.

 

If there were images of every crime comitted by everyone, it Iraq, or elsewhere, then perhaps people would not single out individual cases and concentrate all their attention on one issue for months, while allowing all the thousands of other equally shocking or outrageous issues to be ignored.

 

I think the true promise of the "Blogging" movement is that they can make an end run around the monopoly of distribution of images by the media. That may make the power of images become more properly proportional in their effect, since there will not be a bottleneck of network television or media outlets on deciding which images are viewed by the mass of people.

I'll be very interested to see how this trial turns out...SPC Harman's military attorney is a good friend of mine; I actually replaced her twice, once in Germany and again here in Kuwait. Regardless of what did or didn't happen in Iraq, SPC Harman is not evil; I've met her a couple times as she came through Kuwait to attend depositions in Baghdad, and she's a nice, quiet person.

 

One fact that may not make it into court is that, although she is accused of setting up the prisoner with the hood and the wire in the most infamous photo from this whole ordeal, that prisoner actually said that two men hooded him and wired him up. Now that the Army can't find the prisoner, however, this very exculpatory evidence may not be admitted at trial.

 

Dai, you laugh at the argument Spinner makes, and that's your reaction. But don't think for a second that we defense attorneys necessarily believe everything we argue. We have to get creative a LOT to put forth the argument our clients present, and even if it's bull, we have to argue the bull and do it with a straight face. Sometimes we do it because our client is innocent of everything charged; sometimes we do it because they're guilty of only some of the things charged; sometimes we do it because they're guilty of everything but don't deserve to get punished that badly; and sometimes we just have to do it because the law entitles a defendant to a competent defense counsel, even if it's not a believable defense.

 

I was involved in a similar case in Afghanistan earlier this year. An Afghan claimed my client and another soldier had beaten him during questioning, and at first it looked believable and I wasn't looking forward to defending the guy. Then I looked closer and saw a lot of discrepancies in the accuser's story. Then we interviewed him in a pretrial hearing and he started coming up with all kinds of crap that was clearly disputed by the other government witnesses, not to mention our witnesses. The charges were dismissed before they went to trial. So, sometimes it's not just a one-sided story.

I guess the military will hire anyone. Any wonder why we can't seem to defeat

a third world country, after three years and countless billions of taxpayers

money, we have stirred the hornets nest and found out no one likes an

occupier.

Christian D,

 

More power to you for being a military attorney-- I have a good friend who just finished

her time doignthat and it was a difficult job.

Friends, fellow citizens, fellow humans;

 

Let's all get off our high horses, of pride in photography's "power". Let's see closer: an atrocity has happened, even it is recorded on film (file), and more, been broadcast all over the world. What more do we, photographers, expect from the so called power of photography ... yet, see what has happened: only one sargent and one private have been picked responsible and the whole issue is wrapped up ... And you and I are busy of discussing definitions of photography, responsibility, have-to's and must-not-do's ...

"only one sargent and one private have been picked responsible"

 

Not so. A general has lost her star. A colonel has been stripped of his command and fined. Lesser officers and NCOs not directly involved in the abuse, but who were responsible for those who were, have been punished and relieved of their authority. The other military intelligence and military police soldiers who worked in the prison have been held accountable for their actions through the judicial process; perhaps I have lost count, but of the nine soldiers directly involved in these allegations, seven have been punished and only two (SPC Harman and PFC England) remain.

 

The images that were taken in that prison remain some of the most powerful in recent memory. The infamous photo of the prisoner on the box with the hood and wires has been recreated time and time again in newspapers, political cartoons, etc. I think it could be argued that, if these photos had not been taken, the reaction would have been much less severe, but because we can see exactly what these troops did, we are that much more outraged. It's been compared to the massacres at My Lai, Vietnam, and Nogun-Ri, Korea, despite the fact that no one has been charged with murder. I think that says a lot by itself.

 

[Thanks, Ellis! It's a challenging job -- working 6-7 days a week for up to 18 hours a day can get tiring, but it's rewarding work.]

Christian: I just wanted to say thanks for contributing your wonderful post. I watch this war very closely and it's nice to hear about things from a non-media person. And I enjoyed the part about defending your clients as well.

Thank You Christian, for your insight.

 

My Thoughts on the matter are deep and wide. The prison problems don't surprise me and those in the wrong should be held accountable.

I have more problems with the Cuban prison (How can we be an the same island as Castro?) and the deceptions and legal loopholes used to lose people in the system. And of course The way in which we have decided to deal with Iraq. We could have backed the rebels with arms and money and advisors but Noooo......

 

To the point, digital imaging is everywere and it is immediate. It is perfect for the young people of today as it gives them their instant gratification. I don't think the Photographer had a care about anything "higher". It looks like these were shot just as keepsakes to show buddies. I run into people everyday that still have no concept of the power of the digital age.

J

@ Chris Waller, regarding the photos' purpose:

 

I would guess they were just trophies. When the 293rd came back to Fort Wayne, I saw several trophy photos of dead Iraqis in my lab. I also saw a disturbing sequence where several soldiers with scarves and t-shirts tied around their heads "executed" one of their buddies in a mockery of the hostage killings.

All I can say is, how can you expect people to kill, get shot at and see their buddies shipped off home in a box and expect them not to do some crazy things?

 

The penalties handed out to the guilty ones seem way too harsh while the people who put them in the situation in the first place get away with murder. (or receive the terrible punishment of "losing a star")

 

I guess it's all part of the patriotic duty of "supporting the troops"...

<i>All I can say is, how can you expect people to kill, get shot at and see their buddies shipped off home in a box and expect them not to do some crazy things?</i><P>

I think people do take the situation into account. The footage of an American soldier shooting an unarmed and injured Iraqi caused a relatively brief uproar, but when the combat conditions and soldier's state of mind were taken into account, the outrage was tempered and the soldier was found not guilty of any wrong doing.<P>

The soldiers in the Abu Ghraib prison were responsible for guarding unarmed and restrained captives. They were not being shot at. They were relatively secure at the time they photographed themselves gleefully abusing prisoners.<P>

I could ask why anyone finds it shocking that insurgents should behead prisoners or blow up hundreds of civilians after they've seen their country invaded and their friends and families killed. If you can comfortably justify the actions of the guards in Abu Ghraib, are you equally understanding of the behavior of the enemy forces?

I should have made a longer statement. :)

 

In regards to Abu Graib, I would say that I cannot imagine this being operated as your frienly local county jail. By all reports, treating prisoners rough is the norm by making them stand still for hours, sleep deprevation, etc, like in Guantanamo Bay. This is supposed to break their will an make them talk. And no doubt the abusers had been instructed that they were guarding the GI-killing-sister-mudering-9/11-plane-crashing scum of the earth who deserved no respect what so ever. And we all know your average private isn't a rocket scientist by a long stretch.

 

Christian knows a lot more about this than I do, but my guess is that without the publishied photos, if they had been punished at all when a superior found out what had gone on, they would have gotten off lightly with a dishounorable discharge.

 

So it seems to me they are being punished more for taking photos, rather than the actual abuse.

 

Surely, the defandants crossed a line they shouldn't have, but is it worth 6-10 years in jail when those that set them on the path to doing it get off lightly or re-elected? If they want to set an example to other GIs, all they need to do is the discharge. Would you do something you know you will get fired for? Anything more is just an example to the rest of the world how nice the US really is and there are only a few rotten apples. And that makes the defendants the victims here as well.

Christian Deichert Photo.net Hero Photo.net Patron, may 14, 2005; 01:29 p.m.said: "...Dai, you laugh at the argument Spinner makes, and that's your reaction. But don't think for a second that we defense attorneys necessarily believe everything we argue...."

 

As a journalist I know how it works... but it [spinner's reported comments] still is fantastical and hard to fathom unless some quirk of military law (?) allows it as a special circumstance. He seems to argue that if you can do it "in the dark" then it is not a crime... or at least as serious of a crime. In the extreme, and by similar argument, it might be said that a person shooting someone commits a less serious crime as long as the victim doesn't see it coming.

 

Either way I did not comment on guilt, or not, of the accused. The [legal] theory, however, should never be allowed to overtake the facts. That one had me choking on my corn flakes - and I think Spinner did his client a disservice by advancing it quite that way.

 

Hunter

Hunter -- I don't know if I entirely buy his argument either, but I don't know the facts as well as Mr. Spinner or my friend CPT Takemura. Many times when civilian attorneys are brought into the military justice system, they make arguments that those of us "on the inside" find...interesting. Again, though it ain't my case.

 

Bas -- My take on the sentences is, I think the punishments in this case reflect a number of different factors. First, the nature of the photos, combined with the way news now travels everywhere, instantly, created much more of a global uproar than anything we've seen similar to this before. I think this goes hand in hand with one of the Army's long-standing philosophies behind sentencing: deterrent effect. The more soldiers in the Army who know about what these troops are accused of doing, the more the Army may feel it needs to send a message that these actions won't fly.

 

As far as Graner getting 10 years, I think a lot of that has to do with his rehabilitative potential, or lack thereof. At PFC England's sentencing hearing, Graner, who earlier stated that he took the photos for a souvenir, now insists that they were made for a valid purpose, and his reasoning is absolutely laughable. He has clearly made up his mind that he is right and the world is wrong, and I think his unrepentant narcisissm was probably a primary factor in the sentencing decision for his case. If, at his trial, he had accepted recognized the wrongfulness of his conduct and asked for forgiveness, I think he'd be serving less than a dime in Leavenworth.

"He has clearly made up his mind that he is right and the world is wrong, and I think his unrepentant narcisissm was probably a primary factor in the sentencing decision for his case.

 

Judgemental? Hmmmmm! And this has what to do with philosophy of photography?

Well, Thomas, it was an aside from the main topic of how the taking of these photos has affected the lives of these soldiers. Since I am an attorney with the US Army Trial Defense Service AND a photographer, I'm looking at these cases from both of these perspectives. I have to be a bit attenuated to how court-martial panels will respond to different things, because it's my job.

 

When was the last time you argued a case before a court-martial panel? For me, it was last week, and I had a client who had this same narcissistic attitude of "I am right and the world is wrong." Had he carried that attitude into court, he would probably have gotten a much worse result. As it is, despite some very damning facts against him, he was acquitte of most charges against him, and though he still faced a maximum sentence of 78 months confinement and a dishonorable discharge, he was only given 4 months confinement and was retained. In other words, we saved his retirement. So, sure, I'm judgemental at times, because at times I have to be in order to save my clients from themselves.

To further clarify: one of the rules of evidence for sentencing at a court-martial involves rehabilitative potential of the accused. See Rule for Courts-Martial 1001(b)(5). If an accused is unrepentant and refuses to acknowledge the wrongfulness of his or her misconduct (a la Graner), panels and judges tend to hammer them. This from my eperience from prosecuting and defending military clients.

That's interesting; why does someone need to rehabilitate at all when they only commit the crime in a situation they are unlikely to ever be in again? (ie: guarding prisoners in an occupied country)

 

I understand why showing remorse and pleading guilty results in more lenient sentencing, but overall it seems to me military courts still bias their sentences heavily towards achieving another goal (deterence, PR) rather than based on the actual crime comitted and suffering of the victim. And this is worsened when it is a public case like this, thanks to the photo's being spread around.

 

Do you just work defence, or prosecution as well? Or is that kept to seperate people?

Christian Deichert Photo.net Hero Photo.net Patron, may 17, 2005; 10:48 a.m. said: "... If an accused is unrepentant and refuses to acknowledge the wrongfulness of his or her misconduct (a la Graner), panels and judges tend to hammer them. This from my eperience from prosecuting and defending military clients...."

 

This element of trial procedure, usually between a finding of guilt and passing sentence, is NOT limited to US military courts. We see it on TV, as well as in real courtrooms, all the time when a judge will ask the defendant if he/she has anything to say before being sentenced. The criminal system demands some admission of guilt from those found guilty even if it comes after trial. In the British criminal system it is virtually a necessity to see parole before expiration of the total time of sentence. Typically those who make admissions serve 2/3 time and are paroled. There have been several notable cases, however, where someone claiming "innocence" refused to make such admission - they were retained in prison for the full term of sentence - and only thereafter found not to have committed the original crime of which they were found guilty. In those circumstances it becomes a Catch22 for the accused.

 

Hunter