Iraq, and who might have faked evidence

[redbird]

Lots of people have suggested that the recent photos, in the Mirror, of British soldiers beating an Iraqi thief are fakes. (The much more damning photos of US soldiers abusing prisoners, by contrast, are almost certainly genuine.) rozk analyzes them, in some detail. After explaining why they look like fakes, she turns to the more interesting question: cui bono?

Not the Mirror. Not the anti-war movement. Not the Islamists. Roz points out that a likely effect of these photos is to make Britain less popular among Iraqis and Arabs, and to drive it closer to the U.S.

In other words, my view is that either the photos are genuine, and just improbably good for squaddie snapshots, or that they are fakes and instruments of US policy in general, and specifically that they are the sort of thing Dick Cheney sets in motion. Which would be a whole can of worms if true and a chance to make even Tony Blair tell Bush and Cheney to sod off.

Investigation is the way to go, and is potentially win-win for the anti-war forces in general, if not for the Mirror, if it's got it wrong.

Comments

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

Investigation is the way to go, and is potentially win-win for the anti-war forces in general, if not for the Mirror, if it's got it wrong. [I realize this isn't your quote]

Something in me recoils from the idea of this being a "win-win" if they're faked.

[redbird]

Roz is posting from the UK: from that viewpoint, if the US government can be shown to have faked these pictures, it might help get the UK out of Iraq.

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

OK. But why would the US government have faked photos that hurt it's goal? I'm not getting something here.

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

It might potentially look better for the US if UK soldiers are implicated in similar activities to US ones?

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

I can't imagine that would be true. If UK soldiers were implicated, the UK would be more likely to pull out of Iraq, which the US can't afford. While I think the current DOD is run by incompetents, I have trouble seeing them as that staggeringly incompetent.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

It's a win for humanity if they're faked, and for the UK, because that means those atrocities weren't committed and weren't committed by UK soldiers. It's also a big potential win for the anti-war movement if they were faked by the US because it shows another level of perfidity of the current regime.

In fact, pretty much the best thing that could be said about those photos is "Maybe they're not real." Nothing good is said about the world if they're real.

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

Nothing good is said about the world if they're real.

Or faked for that matter. While I agree that someone in the UK might think it good to get UK troops out of Iraq, faking photos of torture in order to get to that goal is just wrong.

[timill]

I think that analysis (of cui bono) is over-egging the pudding. Presumably the Mirror will have paid handsomely for the pictures; that's quite enough bono for me to answer the cui.

Probably there will be a couple of cut-outs in the chain, though.

[dhole.livejournal.com]

I have to say, I don't find that analysis very convincing at all.

The reasoning as to why the Mirror wouldn't have faked the pictures is that if they did so, and were caught, it would discredit the anti-war movement, which they've consistently supported.

The analysis doesn't consider the fear of getting caught to play a role in the possibility of the US government faking the pictures.

This is an analysis that rests on the assumption that the antiwar movement is not just more moral, but also, more capable of planning. Further, it assumes that the CIA is less aware of blowback than the Daily Mirror, or, for that matter, than a livejournal commentator.

It's possible that this is a US government ordered fake. But the logic given -- that the only two reasonable posibilities are that the pictures are real or that they're a fabrication made by the US, is, frankly, nonsense.