Mistaking the Medium for the Message

Air Force General Richard Myers, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, can't stop shilling for the Chimpie-driven disaster that the war on terror has become. In defying a court order to release photographs of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, he thinks that the pictures are more important than what they portray.

Gen. Richard B. Myers wrote in recently unsealed court papers filed in US District Court in Manhattan that it was "probable that al-Qaida and other groups will seize upon these images and videos as grist for their propaganda mill."

Of course, Myers is grinding his own propaganda mill here in saying the pictures will help recruitment. No, General Myers, it's what is shown in the pictures that will help in recruitment.

In other words, the photographs themselves are worthless without the context of an illegal invasion of a country and the subsequent brutalization of prisoners in clear violation of the Geneva Convention. If it hadn't been perpetrated, the pictures would be worthless, you dig?

So far, the highest ranking official to be punished for what are clearly systematic programs of torture in violation of international law is an Army staff sergeant. What Myers probably recognizes is the these photos may reveal to a heretofore unbelieving American public just what we're capable of sinking to, and that is going to blow a lot of minds, excepting, of course, those who are in such deep denial that they still think Chimpie is the Dear Leader.

And once average Americans begin to realize the horrors being done in their name, they'll want justice, and they'll want it to go all the way to the top in order to excise this cancer from our national leadership. Since General Myers currently sits at the apex of that pyramied in the military chain of command, I think he understands the power of those photographs, and his fear has less to do with helping recruitment for Al Qaeda and everything to do with being hauled up for war crimes, which is not a good end for a long military career.