Hersh's Abu Ghraib

And she says, you know, one thing I didn't tell you that you have to know about the young woman, when she came back, every weekend, she would go and get herself tattooed, and eventually, she said, she was filling her body with large, black tattoos, and eventually, they filled up every portion of her skin, was tattooed, at least all the portions you could see, and there was no reason to make assumptions about the other portions. She was tattooed completely. It was as if, the mother said, she wanted to change her skin.

And so, they sent me a boy, and I sent him back a murderer, changing her skin. This war is going to reverberate in ways that we can’t even begin to see.

Seymour Hersh breaks the story of Abu Ghraib one year ago. The above is his poetic response to the way the story of American Soldiers returning from the Rabelaisian anti-humane circus that was what became of Abu Ghraib prison under US control.

Hersh speaks about the long term scars of the psyche. What's interesting here is that he's talking about the way that America has to endure Abu Ghraib, much less the Arab world. For Iraqis and Arabs, Abu Ghraib 2004 was something that the Americans did to them; for is, it is something we have done to ourselves.

Many fascinating parallels in the ways that this event will permanently alter our cultural psyche. It's not unlike what Haruki Murakami talks about in his haunting Underground, a collection of interviews showing the diverse and interweaving effects of the violence from the cult Aum Shin Rikyo's sarin attack on a Tokyo subway in 1995. Some of the nearly 60 people Murakami interviews (of upwards of 700 identifiable victims) will forever be scarred: depleted vision, heart palpitations, chronic pain and shortness of breathe. But all of them, and all of the ones he could not reach, are permanently scarred in their minds. Haunted by nightmares and phobias, intense guilt and fear; and yet none of them seem to know exactly what it is that happened, or exactly what it is they can do about it. It is, simply, a weight that will be forever on their shoulders.

Abu Ghriab, a year later, is more than photographs and failures of justice: it is a violent crime against all of us. The fact that so few have been held accountable [ in a week of the Administration's desire for Newsweek's accountability while institutionalizing the "blind eye" method {of course, all while condemning the Old World Other} ] has passed the point of shame and reached into violent, persistent negligence against even ourselves.

Abu Ghraib is, simply, a weight the Administration has placed on all of our shoulders and refuses to take responsibility enough to lift it off again.