The Gamut

The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette: New photos: 'What we saw is appalling'

Pence has called on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to release all the photos and videos. He said nothing he saw Wednesday changed his view that making them public now would be better than having them leak "in drips and drabs. The slow release over time would be much more harmful to the U.S. reputation in the world and dangerous to our troops."

I couldn't agree more. But beyond that, even if the pictures are kept under lock-and-key. Even if we never get to actually see them, isn't the idea of what might be on them just as bad or worse?

There is a scene in Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs in which a policeman's ear is cut off. Tarantino shot the scene two ways and test screened both approaches. In one scene, the audience watched as the policeman's ear was hacked off. In another, the camera pans away just as the knife is placed to the cop's ear and we hear the officer's anguished screams. This is how the scene appears in the final version. We know what happened, but imagining it makes it more memorable, more horrific, and more effective.

Is that what this administration wants these prison torture pictures to be? Memorable for what we were not shown but were forced to imagine?

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