'Them Damned Pictures'

© Bettmann/ Corbis

An 1872 Thomas Nast cartoon of "Boss" Tweed, who ruled Tammany Hall, the Democratic political machine in New York City. The cartoonist's caption: "Can the law reach him? - The Dwarf and the Thief."

Reuters/Courtesy 'The New Yorker'

A hooded and wired Iraqi prisoner at Abu Ghraib prison who reportedly was told he would be electrocuted if he fell off a box is pictured in this undated photo.

More than a century ago, the notorious William "Boss" Tweed of New York was getting a lot of bad press. "I don't give a straw for your newspaper articles," Tweed said, "Most of my voters can't read. But they can't help seeing them damned pictures."

The pictures Tweed was fuming about were the acid drawings of editorial cartoonist Thomas Nast. Tweed's words have since been echoed by generations of politicians whose oxen were gored via the visual arts. Most recently, the Bush administration has been reeling from the impact of photos of prisoner abuse in Iraq, images shown endlessly on front pages, magazine covers and TV screens around the world.

More than two-dozen prisoners have died in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the story captivating the world press this past week has not been driven by that statistic. The story of abuse has been in one sense public since January. But it was not "picked up" by the news media then because the original allegations were "revealed" in a few dry sentences devoid of description in a daily briefing in Iraq. The storm broke with the appearance of photos on national TV depicting prisoners being humiliated, in at least some cases to prepare them for later interrogation.

Shocking to all who saw them, the pictures were most profoundly offensive in the Arab world. That's why Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he tried to persuade CBS News to delay running the photos until the military investigation had run its course. He said he feared the release of the pictures would "kill American troops" by inflaming Arab sentiment U.S. forces in Iraq and elsewhere.

The pictures were also at the heart of White House discomfort this week. High placed administration officials called selected reporters to say the president was unhappy with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, specifically because he had not told the president about the pictures. When the president himself spoke publicly about the matter and stood by Rumsfeld, he specifically said Rumsfeld should have told him about the pictures.

And when Rumsfeld and Myers came to the Capitol to face angry lawmakers Friday, Myers summed it up succinctly: "The story's been out there; what's different now is the pictures." Perhaps the most chilling moment in Friday's Hill hearings was Rumsfeld's revelation that there were more pictures out there -- including videos -- still to be loosed on the world.

It is a hard fact of public life that a single image can end a career, or move the polls on a question of policy. Scenes of violence from Vietnam, or of starvation in East Africa, have changed history. Sometimes all it takes is a candid of a model on a senator's lap, or a videotape bite of a president getting a hug on a rope line.

Pictures rarely tell the whole story, and they are often unfair. But they tell a story in a compelling way with emotional power. Beyond that they give conflicted people a point of reference around which to organize their feelings. A vague sense of unease becomes a conviction that something is wrong and needs correcting. The general notion that someone is not telling the truth comes into sharp focus.

That was one reason that ABC's Nightline and several print organizations recently ran the photographs of all the hundreds of soldiers killed in Iraq. The stories of daily clashes had begun to blur. Even body counts can become numbing. But running the ranks of photos in memoriam created a stir. Some ABC affiliates refused to air the program. Imagine the response if someone started broadcasting pictures of the far more numerous American wounded, or pictures of the yet more numerous Iraqi dead.

Since March, the situation in Iraq has been deteriorating in alarming ways. The number of American deaths hit a record high in April, while U.S. forces lost control of a Sunni stronghold in Fallujah and a Shiite stronghold in Najaf. The administration stood firm on its June 30 deadline for the transfer of sovereignty, but had no answer when asked who would be in the new government.

Now, the prisoner abuse scandal raises the question of American motives in Iraq. Are we the idealists President Bush described in his primetime news conference in April? Or are we the occupation force decried by al Qaeda?

On a more human, immediate level, the abuse scandal stokes the fear that resistance in Iraq will build rather than dissipate in the months ahead. Even the staunchest defenders of the White House policy are worrying out loud about losing the "hearts and minds" battle, making the entire region more dangerous for U.S. troops and more frustrating for U.S. interests.

Given all this, the abuse scandal offers a timely outlet for many Americans' rage and frustration. It's a chance to be angry without seeming to turn against the troops, the mission or the president. It allows some to have doubts without violating their impulse to loyalty, an impulse with deep roots among Americans and indeed among the citizens of any nation.

Take the example of Congressman John P. Murtha, an old-school, coal-and-steel Democrat from western Pennsylvania and a Marine from the Korean and Vietnam wars. This week Murtha, an outspoken hawk, stood at a TV microphone warning that the war in Iraq could not be won without a far greater commitment of troops.

Murtha may have felt this way for some time, but he went public this week. He could do so largely because the prisoner abuse scandal had shifted the landscape. And once again, it was "them damned pictures."