The “Human Slaughterhouse” Propaganda Campaign: “Articulating Notions of Public Truth”

Luckily we have real photos from inside Abu Ghraib and they tell a slightly different story.

You will notice the first might have been what Rumsfeld and Cheney would have presented as “the public truth” and the second is simply the truth. Whether or not they were deliberately released to incite fear in the hearts of potential insurgents is not terribly important right now.

Let me make this point very clear: the problem with basing the AI report and this 3d model on the statements by former regime change actors in Syria is more 3 dimensional than one might think. Not only do they have ample motivations to lie about what happened but in fact, the lies they tell might not even register in their minds as lies. Certainly Cheney and Rumsfeld would have a different perception of what life was like in Gitmo or Abu Ghraib. They may lie about what happens in those locations, but ultimately, even if pressed to tell you the truth about what happens there, their understanding of the truth of the facilities would almost certainly be vastly different that the facts on the ground, so to speak. Same holds true with someone held in a prison for a prolonged time. Memory forensic architecture is flawed in this key, unavoidable fact. The way we perceive adverse events in the history of our lives will often become worse over time than they actually were. So even if these “witnesses” were telling what they perceived to be the truth about what they saw and heard, one has to anticipate embellishment, if only by accident of human nature.

What Forensic Architecture claims to do is “forensic practices in articulating notions of public truth” and they get that from the founder of the program, Eyal Weizman who has written on the subject and has done extensive work in the occupied territories of Palestine. I have not studied his previous work or read his book on the subject so I have no idea if he uses it to minimize the criminal efforts of the IDF or expose them more fully. He was on the board of B’Tselem so I will give him the benefit of the doubt.

Like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, Forensic Architecture has done some important work in the past. Work that exposed brutality of those who commit it in the name of globalization and NATO imperialism.

However, it would seem that FA has also aligned themselves with HRW and AI in a totally different way with this effort. Both of those “humanitarian” organizations have long histories of provided aid and comfort to various propaganda efforts in the past. Propaganda efforts designed to help bring about “regime” change or destabilization of nations led by less-than-friendly leaders targeted by the masters of the universe.

Clearly in this case what we have is a “hearts and minds” campaign unlike many we have seen in the past. Along with FA, AI is trying to articulate a notion of the “public truth” which bears little semblance to the truth but which serves perfectly their Geo-political agenda at this particular moment in the 6-year history of the “regime” change operation in Syria.

As I wrote yesterday, Nicolette Waldman is busy running around informing anyone who will put her in front of a camera of this “public truth” which is well written and reads like something she read in college about the work camps in Nazi Germany. Certainly, that is not by coincidence.

I have to wonder just how many folks understand this “public truth” is comparable to the “public truth” that got us into the Iraq quagmire in the first place. Just imagine the work Forensic Architecture could have done with this rough draft that also happened to be manufactured on behalf of a UN meeting (H/T Greg Bacon):