On Thu, 13 May 2004 04:23:29 -0700, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
Why can't we just create a separate page called (something like) "Images of Iraqi prisoner abuse" or even "Images of Iraqi torture"?
The legal question: Are you the owner of the pictures that you can publish them on Wikipedia unter GFDL?
My personal question: Why do you need pictures to be shown when writing an entry for an encyclopaedia about torture at all? Is this a picture- book for children? Is Wikipedia in need of getting attention on the cheap way showing pictures that are shocking or erotic to the public?
I have tried (but been reverted by user:Rei) to balance the hundreds of thousands of murders under Saddam, and the countless mutilations, tortures and rapes (all kept secret by Iraqi officials) -- with the dozens (at most, hundreds) of similar but usually less serious incidents under Coalition auspices (all being investigated and publicized by American officials and journalists).
I don't want to start a discussion about the second iraqi war, but just a few points:
- It doesn't matter how many people were tortured by US and british soldiers, the effect on the iraqi public is devastating. After the lie on the weapons of mass destruction the claim of the invasion was the freeing of the people and the end of torture of innocent people. Now it was coming to the public that the soldiers of the US and Britain are doing exactly the same at exactly the same places. - You forgot to count the people that were dying because of the UN-embargo initiated by the US after the first iraqi war. News were talking about more than 100,000 people, mainly children and old people, being dying in lack of medicine and other things.
Let's do our best to report how many Iraqis were murdered, tortured, etc. on SADDAM'S watch as well as on Bush's watch.
That's the neutrality of a moderator of a soccer-game. Doing the same on the number of deaths is a little sarcastic I think.
Obviously it's going to be hard to find any pictures of Saddam's victims - one may imagine that possession of a digital camera or CD burner would be difficult for an ordinary Iraqi in the 1990s through March 2003 - and woe to him who says, "Oh, look, I found a CD with a bunch of incriminating pictures".
What's the purpose of putting a lot of pictures ... oh, I said that already.
There hasn't been a single question raised, either by US officials or US journalists, about punishing the people who gave that first disk of photos to CBS. That's a free society in action: find the problems, and fix them.
Interesting fact is that CBS was not publishing them until they found out that other news-stations are going to do so, because they were asked by the Pentagon to not send them.
Regards, Lothar