Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld appeared before Congress last Friday to address the issue of Iraqi prisoner abuse by American soldiers. In his testimony Rumsfeld put the blame exactly where it belongs–the media. Said Rumsfeld, “We’re functioning in a — with peacetime restraints, with legal requirements in a war-time situation, in the information age, where people are running around with digital cameras and taking these unbelievable photographs and then passing them off, against the law, to the media, to our surprise, when they had not even arrived in the Pentagon.”

Of course, this was only one quote of many during Rumsfeld’s 6 hour testimony in which he made sure we all knew that the real problem in this situation is not the fact that Iraqi prisoners are being tortured. It’s that somebody took photographs of said torture.

Now one of the big debates is whether the media acted irresponsibly in releasing photos of the torture. Listening to the radio today, I heard the host of one show on the X talk about how the media needs to be held accountable for endangering the troops by making the photographs publicly available. He is now only one of many people I have heard who try to make this situation sound as though it is the media’s fault. Criticizing the media for showing photos of the abuse betrays a total lack of understanding of what is important here. Those soldiers shouldn’t have been abusing prisoners in the first place. That’s the real issue.

Frankly, I highly doubt anything would have been done to deal with the prisoner abuse had those photos not been aired on 60 Minutes II. The Pentagon knew about these abuses as early as January, and until now has done nothing other than send out a memo with a few lines about prisoner abuse in it. The media has done nothing to endanger the soldiers in Iraq. It is the people responsible for these acts that have endangered the soldiers in Iraq. If anything the media is to be complemented for bringing this issue to the forefront so it can be resolved as it was obviously not being resolved by going through regular channels.

According to Rumsfeld, “there are many more photographs, and indeed some videos.” So now there is debate over whether the rest of the pictures should be released. Rumsfeld says that this would only make matters worse, but I disagree. The genie’s already out of the bottle. And more will come out no matter how much the government wishes it wouldn’t. So now there are two options. We can try to keep the pictures secret so that they trickle out a little bit at a time over the next several months, causing more and more furor to build up as each new photo and video is made available. Or we can get it all out at once, and deal with one response, whatever that may be.