New images of prisoner torture by US forces in Iraq have surfaced after the AP released images they purchased from an online photo-sharing service after Googling for them. The date-stamping shows they were taken much earlier than the notorious Abu Ghraib images, which date from months later.
The site has since password-protected the pages, but the images are still apparently in Google’s image cache. The BoingBoing post is here; they are asking for help from “133t” readers in Googling more images, or finding the original cache. The photo-link leads to a Spanish newspaper site: the first caption reads “New images of prisoner torture have appeared on the Internet” and notes they pre-date the Abu Ghraib images. Later captions identify the US military personnel as “marines estadounidenses,” but the AP article that broke the story identifies them as (apparently) Navy SEALS. Images from the photosharing site (which includes family photos) indicate that the unit may have been Team Five, as patches with the “V” unit insignia are visible. The family member who uploaded the images is reported to be “upset” that the reporter viewed the images, which were not password protected at the time. It seems that quite a few people will be upset with the family member for uploading the images in the first place, owing to security implications and the SEALS’ policy never to reveal identities or locations of its teams and personnel.
In fact, the reporter who stumbled upon the images was actually Googling for news and images pertaining to a separate Navy SEAL unit, Team Seven, now being investigated on charges they abused a prisoner who later died.
The title of this post is a running joke between myself and a friend, but actually this ain’t so damn funny, is it? Because before Abu Ghraib dropped off the radar (to the monotonous chanting of “support our troops!”), a fair number of “133t” Washington flacks dismissed it as an isolated incident perpetrated by an obscure, poorly trained unit.
Not so isolated now, is it?. Not so poorly trained, are they?