Errol Morris profiles Sabrina Harman, the woman behind the camera at Abu Ghraib.

There were worse pictures than Gilligan. But, leaving aside that photographs of death and nudity, however newsworthy, don’t get much play in the press, the power of an image does not necessarily lie in what it depicts. A photograph of a mangled cadaver, or of a naked man trussed in torment, can shock and outrage, provoke protest and investigation, but it leaves little to the imagination. It may be rich in practical information, while being devoid of any broader meaning. To the extent that it represents any circumstances or conditions beyond itself, it does so generically. Such photographs are repellent, in large part because they have a terrible, reductive sameness. Except from a forensic point of view, they are unambiguous, and have the quality of pornography. They are what they show, nothing more. They communicate no vision and, shorn of context, they offer little, if anything, to think about, no occasion for wonder. They have no value as symbols.

Of course, the dominant symbol of Western civilization is the figure of a nearly naked man, tortured to death—or, more simply, the torture implement itself, the cross. But our pictures of the savage death of Jesus are the product of religious imagination and idealization. In reality, he must have been ghastly to behold. Had there been cameras at Calvary, would twenty centuries of believers have been moved to hang photographs of the scene on their altarpieces and in their homes?

The image of Gilligan achieves its power from the fact that it does not show the human form laid bare and reduced to raw matter but creates instead an original image of inhumanity that admits no immediately self-evident reading. Its fascination resides, in large part, in its mystery and inscrutability—in all that is concealed by all that it reveals. It is an image of carnival weirdness: this upright body shrouded from head to foot; those wires; that pose; and the peaked hood that carries so many vague and ghoulish associations. The pose is obviously contrived and theatrical, a deliberate invention that appears to belong to some dark ritual, a primal scene of martyrdom. The picture transfixes us because it looks like the truth, but, looking at it, we can only imagine what that truth is: torture, execution, a scene staged for the camera? So we seize on the figure of Gilligan as a symbol that stands for all that we know was wrong at Abu Ghraib and all that we cannot -- or do not want to -- understand about how it came to this.

From the archive:

According to one who was present, Churchill suddenly blurted out: "Are we animals? Are we taking this too far?"

From last month, President Bush:

Frei: The Senate yesterday passed a bill outlawing water-boarding. You, I believe, have said that you will veto that bill.

Mr Bush: That's not -

Frei: Does that not send the wrong signal ...

Mr Bush: No, look... that's not the reason I'm vetoing the bill. The reason I'm vetoing the bill - first of all, we have said that whatever we do ... will be legal.

Exposure

Two years ago, Osama bin Laden warned the American people, “Operations are under preparation, and you will see them on your own ground once they are finished.” Because the danger remains, we need to ensure our intelligence officials have all the tools they need to stop the terrorists.

Unfortunately, Congress recently sent me an intelligence authorization bill that would diminish these vital tools. So today, I vetoed it.

... Limiting the CIA's interrogation methods to those in the Army field manual would be dangerous because the manual is publicly available and easily accessible on the Internet.

Have you seen John Yoo in Taxi to the Dark Side?

Bush on Veto of Intelligence Bill

Elizabeth Rubin's latest dispatch from Afghanistan is heartbreaking -- and essential.

I went to Afghanistan last fall with a question: Why, with all our technology, were we killing so many civilians in air strikes?

After a few days, the first question sparked more: Was there a deeper problem in the counterinsurgency campaign? Why were so many more American troops being killed? To find out, I spent much of the fall in the Korengal Valley ...

As hard as Iraq was, nothing was as tough as the Korengal.

... If you peel back the layers, there’s always a local political story at the root of the killing and dying. That original misunderstanding and grievance fertilizes the land for the Islamists. Whom do you want to side with: your brothers in God’s world or the infidel thieves?

Captain Kearney met as many villagers as possible to learn the names of all the elders and their families. But he inherited a blood feud between the Korengalis and the Americans that he hadn’t started, and he was being sucked into its logic.

It didn’t take long to understand why so many soldiers were taking antidepressants.

... Kearney smiled. He was getting used to the routine between the Americans and the villagers — miscommunication and deception. The encounter felt as much performative, a necessary part of the play, as substantive. And I wondered how Kearney was going to keep his sanity for 10 more months.

A Bloody Stalemate in Afghanistan

A Feb. 16 Page One article misstated the weight of Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the No. 2 US military official in Iraq.

He weighs 245 pounds, not 285.

CORRECTIONS

CIA set up front companies after 9/11 as part of a constellation of "black stations" for a new generation of spies. But after spending millions on such companies, all but two were deemed ineffective and shut down.

The experience reflects an ongoing struggle at the CIA to adapt to a new environment in espionage. The agency has sought to regroup by designing covers that would provide pretexts for spies to get close to radical Muslim groups, nuclear equipment manufacturers and other high-priority targets.

But progress has been painfully slow, and the agency's efforts to alter its use of personal and corporate disguises have yet to produce a significant penetration of a terrorist or weapons proliferation network.

"I don't believe the intelligence community has made the fundamental shift in how it operates to adapt to the different targets that are out there," said Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee.

CIA's ambitious post-9/11 spy plan crumbles

US President George W Bush has given his first interview to the BBC in almost seven years.

Here is the full transcript of his conversation with BBC World News America presenter Matt Frei.

An excerpt:

Frei: The Senate yesterday passed a bill outlawing water-boarding. You, I believe, have said that you will veto that bill.

Mr Bush: That's not -

Frei: Does that not send the wrong signal ...

Mr Bush: No, look... that's not the reason I'm vetoing the bill. The reason I'm vetoing the bill - first of all, we have said that whatever we do... will be legal. Secondly, they are imposing a set of standards on our intelligence communities in terms of interrogating prisoners that our people will think will be ineffective. And, you know, to the critics, I ask them this: when we, within the law, interrogate and get information that protects ourselves and possibly others in other nations to prevent attacks, which attack would they have hoped that we wouldn't have prevented? And so, the United States will act within the law. We'll make sure professionals have the tools necessary to do their job within the law. Now, I recognise some say that these - terrorists - really aren't that big a threat to the United States anymore. I fully disagree. And I think the president must give his professionals within the law the necessary tools to protect us. So, we're not having a debate not only how you interrogate people. We're having a debate in America on whether or not we ought to be listening' to terrorists making' phone calls in the United States. And the answer is darn right we ought to be.

Have you seen Taxi to the Dark Side?

George W Bush's BBC interview

First, the re-branding. Up next: the business process re-engineering.

The CLCs -- Concerned Local Citizens -- are no longer. Just a week ago ... everything revolved around the CLCs. But now, ... with the amazing speed of an acronym-happy military, I've found out that the new, hot-off-the-presses Iraqi-approved term is "Sons of Iraq." SOI (*) for short. Seems that "Concerned Local Citizen" didn't translate into Arabic so well, and the Iraqis didn't like it.

(*) At the risk of crossing the streams, I recall the following exchange, from Bart on the Road:

Father: Martin, here's $10 to invest in the futures market.

Martin: "Soy! Soy! Soy! Soy! Soy!"
Father: "Martin, you're up $1 million."
Martin: "Yes!"
Father: "And now you've lost all but $600."
Father: "You got greedy, Martin."

Another explanation:

The Iraqi government has decided to call members of the Awakening who join Iraqi security forces "Sons of Iraq."

The Awakening Council are members of the Sunni tribes that have declared war on Al-Qaeda in Iraq.

A government source said that the name change came in recognition of the national role of the Awakening members.

The Iraqi Interior Minister announced that it will continue to recruit Sunni tribe members to the police force, subject to the usual checks and examinations prior to joining, until their number reaches 12,000.

Remember Johnny Tremain?

'Awakening' Members Are Now 'Sons Of Iraq'

Andrew Bacevich:

The latest myth is that the "surge" is working. In President Bush's pithy formulation, the United States is now "kicking ass" in Iraq.

By shifting the conversation to tactics, they seek to divert attention from flagrant failures of basic strategy. Yet what exactly has the surge wrought? In substantive terms, the answer is: not much.

First Sgt. Richard Meiers of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division got it exactly right: "We're paying them not to blow us up. It looks good right now, but what happens when the money stops?"

As AEI military analyst Thomas Donnelly has acknowledged with admirable candor, "part of the purpose of the surge was to redefine the Washington narrative," thereby deflecting calls for a complete withdrawal of U.S. combat forces. Hawks who had pooh-poohed the risks of invasion now portrayed the risks of withdrawal as too awful to contemplate. But a prerequisite to perpetuating the war -- and leaving it to the next president -- was to get Iraq off the front pages and out of the nightly news. At least in this context, the surge qualifies as a masterstroke.

Look beyond the spin, the wishful thinking, the intellectual bullying and the myth-making. The real legacy of the surge is that it will enable Bush to bequeath the Iraq war to his successor. Yet the stubborn insistence that the war must continue also ensures that Bush's successor will, upon taking office, discover that the post-9/11 United States is strategically adrift.

According to the war's most fervent proponents, Bush's critics have become so "invested in defeat" that they cannot see the progress being made on the ground. Yet something similar might be said of those who remain so passionately invested in a futile war's perpetuation. They are unable to see that, surge or no surge, the Iraq war remains an egregious strategic blunder that persistence will only compound.

Contrast with Friedman's view that "the GWOT is won, what's next?"

Surge to Nowhere

You might ask, "Who understands the GWOT?"

John McCain -- who, solely because of the grievous blow to Romney, seems to have been almost as big a winner last night as Huckabee or Obama -- flew to Manchester, NH yesterday for an early evening “town meeting.” He was accompanied by his own personal Chuck Norris, Joseph I. Lieberman.

The setting was the nearby town of Derry, which looks like a Lionel Train layout ...

The most interesting exchange came at the very end, and it was about Iraq. The money quote -- the bit that could come back to haunt McCain -- went like this:

Q: President Bush has talked about our staying in Iraq for fifty years.

McCain: Make it a hundred.

That’s the sound bite. That’s the headline. Now let’s look at the context, which I think is worth considering in full.

Click through; it's short and worth reading ... here's the wrap-up:

You have to hand it to McCain. It's impossible to imagine any of the other Republicans engaging in this kind of extended conversation with a citizen. There was more real debate in this exchange than in any of the so-called real debates.

But what the context shows, I think, is that yanking that sound bite out of context isn’t really all that unfair. McCain wants to stay in Iraq until no more Americans are getting killed, no matter how long it takes and how many Americans get killed achieving that goal -- that is, the goal of not getting any more Americans killed. And once that goal is achieved, we'll stay.

Do you think McCain has a "pro-war" sentiment?

A Hundred Years' War?

Stephen Biddle is optimistic about the prospects for peace, but he seems concerned about the Democrats.

Sticking it out to stabilize Iraq and avert the potential consequences of failure is more defensible now than it has been for a long time -- but only if we are willing to do what it takes to maximize the odds that Iraq does not return to bloodshed and chaos.

What does it take? A meaningful outside presence can be needed for a generation.

Iraq: Can We Guard What We've Gained?