The pictures were part of the humiliation

From Jim Gilliam's blog

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May 9, 2004 11:01 AM

Seymour Hersh's latest report on Abu Ghraib includes yet more pictures, which I will spare you the details of, but also this revelation -- the pictures were part of the humiliation process, and cameras were constantly flashing.

The photographing of prisoners, both in Afghanistan and in Iraq, seems to have been not random but, rather, part of the dehumanizing interrogation process. The Times published an interview last week with Hayder Sabbar Abd, who claimed, convincingly, to be one of the mistreated Iraqi prisoners in the Abu Ghraib photographs. Abd told Ian Fisher, the Times reporter, that his ordeal had been recorded, almost constantly, by cameras, which added to his humiliation. He remembered how the camera flashed repeatedly as soldiers told to him to masturbate and beat him when he refused.

And then they turned the pictures into screensavers.