A Thousand Words for Every Picture of Torture

The old saying has it that a picture is worth a thousand words. The intended meaning of that saying is that the power of images outshines the dull language with which we describe a world of images. When I cite the saying here, I have a different meaning.

A picture from Abu Ghraib is worth a thousand words, isn’t it?

It is not an easy thing to write one thousand words about any picture, but how easy is it to live within the picture? The pictured ones were swept off the streets of Iraq, often on the basis of little more than a rumor, or grudge, or a whim.

Sometimes, the crime was petty, like a theft. Often, there was no crime at all. For all, however, there was questioning, and before the questioning, there was the softening.

What do you know about Al Quaeda in Iraq? You say that you know nothing, but everybody knows something, these days. Everybody has a connection, somewhere.

Of course, you don’t think you have a connection. You know what your trouble is? No one’s made you soft, yet. The sergeants can find something on anybody. They have dogs to help them look, and six months’ time out to think about what they’ve done. Our captains, our majors, our generals get nothing but our thanks.

Get the picture? I think those high officers, those occupying wardens, deserve a thousand words each.

How many words do you have to give for liberty, for law, for truth? If you search Google for “Desperate Housewives”, you get 26 million sources, each with scores, hundreds, thousands of words for the television drama. On that scale, they don’t seem so desperate.

Desperate, two years ago, the American Civil Liberties Union sued the government to release photographs of the torments of people held prisoner at Abu Ghraib, photographs that had not been made public. This week, the Bush White House, confronted by a district court order, finally surrendered the photographs. Many had already leaked out.

There are over seventy of these new Abu Ghraib pictures of humiliation and depravity. Search. Find one.

Each picture is worth a thousand words. Write them.

It’s an assignment for America, for after-school detention, or for after-detention school. Purge us of silence. Write the thousand words for each picture, and keep looking until you are done.

It is not enough for us merely to see.