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

[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.