"It is the photographs that give one the vivid realisation of what actually took place. Words don't do it."
- Donald Rumsfeld, May 7, 2004.

A picture is indeed worth a thousand words. Thirty-five years ago, images of the massacre of civilians in the village of My Lai helped to turn the American people against the war in Vietnam.

This April, the Pentagon got upset at some of the “free press” for publishing photos of caskets of dead American soldiers, fearing that it would weaken the already tepid public support for the war in Iraq. Those photos, though, quickly became irrelevant, with the release of images of ghastly abuse and torture against Iraqi inmates in the U.S.-run prison at Abu Ghraib.

The war-makers in Washington, D.C. are scrambling to minimise the fallout from the pictures, as worldwide condemnation and revulsion spreads.

Donald Rumsfeld, the secretary of defence, once the very picture of neo-conservative swagger, was downright sheepish Friday as he appeared before Senate hearings on the widening torture scandal in Iraq. “Rummy” did his best to appear remorseful and forthcoming, but the scandal’s damage may prove impossible to contain.

The photographs of torture carried out by U.S. MPs and their officers at the Abu Ghraib facility were first aired April 30 on the CBS program 60 Minutes. They depict Iraqis bound, hooded, leashed, and humiliated in numerous simulated sexual positions; a number of the pictures include smiling and mocking U.S. soldiers. Perhaps troubled by visions of emulating his father as a one-term president, George Bush made a hasty appearance on Arab television networks and declared the abuse “abhorrent.” Recriminations and damage control both continued through the weekend.

The husband of the Heinz fortune heiress chimed in, calling for Rumsfeld’s head, and posturing as a more effective war president. The incumbent and his entourage defended their secretary of war and occupation, but appeared not to have ruled out sacrificing a high-level fall guy.

The veteran hawk Rumsfeld — perhaps troubled himself by visions of following former boss Dick Nixon into resignation and infamy — qualified his assertion that he would not quit over the scandal, stating, “If I thought I could not be effective, I would resign in a minute.” Indeed, he admitted that the outrage over the torture would only get worse. “I mean, I looked at them last night, and they’re hard to believe,” he said, in reference to additional, as yet unreleased, photos and video.

The revelations of widespread abuse in occupied Iraq’s prisons could not have come at a worse time for Bush and the Pentagon. A week after the one-year anniversary of the president’s grandiose, aircraft-carrier-top proclamation of “mission accomplished” in Iraq, the U.S. occupation is in its worst shape yet. U.S. forces have pulled out of Fallujah, leaving it temporarily at least under the command of a former Saddam-loyalist. Daily attacks by the resistance continue, and the Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr — currently holed up in Najaf — has threatened a wave of suicide attacks if he is killed or captured.

Apologists for the U.S. Empire are hysterical about the torture scandal, but for all the wrong reasons, condemning the tactical implications of the revelations rather than the acts of torture themselves. Writing from his (benevolent) throne in the New York Times, Thomas Friedman bemoaned the fallout of the scandal, and what it implied for America’s civilising mission in the world:

“We are in danger of losing something much more important than just the war in Iraq. We are in danger of losing America as an instrument of moral authority and inspiration in the world. I have never known a time in my life when America and its president were more hated around the world than today. I was just in Japan, and even young Japanese dislike us. It’s no wonder that so many Americans are obsessed with the finale of the sitcom Friends right now. They’re the only friends we have, and even they’re leaving.” (NYT, May 6)

As for restoring the gratitude of the occupied past and present, Friedman offers a comprehensive plan, emphasising the urgent need for the UN to front the occupation, lest the whole project of Empire begin to unravel.

But no matter how deftly the apologists for war and domination blend in pop culture references, they will prove unable to stem the growing opposition to the U.S. occupation of Iraq. The true picture of imperialism has emerged. All the flowery words about “democracy” and “liberation” have been deleted from the world’s consciousness and — in an ill-advised Kodak moment — replaced with the burned-in image of racist brutality and oppression.

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