[See also the latest update - Part 3]
The last thread is getting too large and unwieldy to navigate now at 300+ posts.
Summary of previous thread
It looks like the Ed Cone story is getting traction in the blogosphere.
- Michael D pointed to his May 10th diary entry regarding a May 7th 'Countdown' MSNBC transcript that mentioned the rape video allegations.
- That NBC story, as far as I can tell, was picked up only by: Boston Herald, SacBee, SF Gate, and CNN for the American media.
- All of these stories were on May 8th. There doesn't appear to be any followup in the major media on that stunning allegation (AFAIK). It does appear as if there was some desperate embargo called for by the administration.
- Hersh hinted at this previously on June 10th 'He said that after he broke Abu Ghraib people are coming out of the woodwork to tell him this stuff. He said he had seen all the Abu Ghraib pictures. He said, "You haven't begun to see evil..." then trailed off. He said, "horrible things done to children of women prisoners, as the cameras run."' (via Brad DeLong).
- Ed Cone has a followup post. He raises some a great question "why has Hersh not published this incredible stuff, and why did the world ignore the speech when it was made last week?"
- The only mention made was in this June 8th article at The New York Sun - " The veteran journalist, who exposed the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, said some of the most heinous actions by American soldiers had yet to be disclosed by the government. Mr. Hersh said the undisclosed evidence includes videos of young male prisoners being sodomized.". This article was referred to by Jim Romensko which is supposed to be followed my mainstream journalists, however they ignored it. Why?
- Salon.com has a better transcription of the video (starts at 1:31) than mine and it's a bit longer. I've included it after the jump. They also pose a lot of great questions that many brought up in the previous thread.
Debating about it, ummm ... Some of the worst things that happened you don't know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib ... The women were passing messages out saying 'Please come and kill me, because of what's happened' and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It's going to come out.
It's impossible to say to yourself how did we get there? Who are we? Who are these people that sent us there? When I did My Lai I was very troubled like anybody in his right mind would be about what happened. I ended up in something I wrote saying in the end I said that the people who did the killing were as much victims as the people they killed because of the scars they had, I can tell you some of the personal stories by some of the people who were in these units witnessed this. I can also tell you written complaints were made to the highest officers and so we're dealing with a enormous massive amount of criminal wrongdoing that was covered up at the highest command out there and higher, and we have to get to it and we will. We will. You know there's enough out there, they can't (Applause). .... So it's going to be an interesting election year.