Abu Ghraib

Excerpted from Don’t See Evil: Google’s Boycott Campaign Against War Photography and Alternative Media by Dan Sanchez

What happens when a dynamic company, started by a couple of idealistic friends in grad school, succeeds so wildly that it becomes a mega-corporation that pervades the lives of hundreds of millions? In imperial America, it would seem, it eventually becomes corrupted, even captured. Tragically, that seems to be the unfolding story of Google.

One of the Paris terror suspects was radicalized by outrage over American torture and the invasion of Iraq. The Huffington Post reports:

“The Associated Press said that Cherif Kouachi was tried in 2008 for helping funnel fighters to Iraq and sentenced to 18 months in prison. Kouachi told the court at the time that he was outraged by images that revealed the torture of Iraqi inmates by U.S. guards at the Abu Ghraib prison, according to the AP.”

As for the tens of thousands maimed and slaughtered by America’s hideous bombings in many lands, well, they are called, right on the evening news by announcers in pancake makeup with blow-dried hair in momentarily subdued tones just before moving on to the sports scores, “collateral damage.”

We gather tonight knowing that this generation of heroes has made the United States safer and more respected round the world.
—President Barack Obama, State of the Union address, January 24, 2012

This may ultimately come as no surprise, but yet another party connected to the torture and abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib circa 2004 may get off with little more than a slight taint on their reputation.

By Dr. Kevin Barrett | Press TV | May 19, 2013

The USA, once one of the most free countries on earth, is no longer free. It is rapidly becoming a militarized gulag society – a giant open air prison.”
Nearly 1,000 American military bases occupy every corner of the planet. US troops have killed more than a million people in various countries during the past decade. Officially, this is all being done in the name of “freedom.”

Director Kathryn Bigelow’s cinematic valentine to dogged CIA sisters doin’ it and taking out Osama Bin Laden for themselves, Zero Dark Thirty, was controversial long before it was released last December. Initially there were rumors the film would be released two months before the 2012 election, ideally placed to give Obama a Bin Laden-killing bump.