...and more Abu Ghraib

It's been known for a long time that the photos that surfaced back in 2004 were just the tip of the iceberg at Abu Ghraib; many more were seen by investigators but never made public. Last night, though, SBS's Dateline program screened more of them.

There's a transcript available on the Dateline site, but SBS is hard to access today (quite possibly because of this story) so I've pasted a few excerpts here:

( Excerpts (no photos here) )

The photos SBS screened should be here, but the site appears to be overloaded at the moment. As a substitute, this BBC piece has links to some of the material screened on Dateline (video and photos, NSFW due to pixillated genitalia and abusive content). As well as video footage of a man slamming his head into a wall - hard enough that I'm surprised he was able to do it more than once - it includes photos of a hooded & kneeling detainee being threatened by a guard dog close to his face, a naked man hanging upside-down from a bunk bed with his wrists bound, and other odious things. [Edit: Same photos available on the SMH site.] [Edit the second: mordwen has posted pointers to a BitTorrent of the Dateline piece, for those who use BT.]

However, according to SMH coverage: "[Dateline's executive producer] Carey said other images featured prisoners in sexually humiliating acts that were deemed too graphic to broadcast." Considering the stuff they did broadcast, that's pretty bad.

And more idiocy from Miranda Devine

Miranda Devine's latest column discusses the issue of whether men should be involved in the current debate over the Health Minister's drug-approval powers*. For the record, I agree with her that they should be and disagree with her conclusion on those powers, but that's not the bit that annoyed me. This was:

In any case, there is no single female view on abortion. Opinion polls show views on the issue are not split on gender lines. And, despite the hype about a gender divide in the Senate last week, about the same number of men (21) and women (24) voted in favour of removing Abbott's authority.

( Before clicking, see if you can spot the logical flaw. )

*Quick background for non-Australians: the question is whether approval for abortion drugs should be in the hands of the Health Minister, who is an elected representative but not a medical professional, or the Therapeutic Goods Administration, an unelected body of medical professionals that handles all other pharmaceutical approval. The TGA is more likely to approve RU-486 than the current Health Minister, so the vote to remove that authority from the Health Minister is widely seen as a pro-abortion decision.

Me, I think "on moral grounds, should abortion be legal in this country?" is a question for our elected representatives. But "while abortion is legal, should this one specific drug be allowed?" is more a medical decision than a moral one, and should be handled by medical professionals. This vote is on the latter question, not the former.