Looking at visual images from U.S.-run prisons in Iraq, news watchers now find themselves in the midst of a jolting experience that roughly resembles a process described by Donald Rumsfeld: “It is the photographs that gives one the vivid realization of what actually took place. Words don’t do it. … You see the photographs, and you get a sense of it, and you cannot help but be outraged.”

Yet, unlike most of us, the defense secretary has a vested interest in claiming that the grotesque real-life images have nothing to do with U.S. policies. In Iraq, Rumsfeld has reaffirmed, “I am convinced that we are doing exactly what ought to be done.” Under the circumstances, it would be astonishing if he said anything different. But hopefully most Americans are more willing to consider implications of the fact that the U.S. government has been operating chambers of horrors that run directly counter to America’s self-image as a righteous military force.

In the weeks ahead, we’ll be encouraged to turn away from information surfacing about imprisonment and interrogation techniques that have held sway under U.S. authority in Iraq. Atrocities will be discounted, excuses made, messengers blamed…

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Among the millions of words that have appeared in the U.S. press since late April about abuse and torture at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, one has been notably missing:

Racism.

Overall, when it comes to racial aspects, the news coverage is quite PC — as in Pentagon Correct. The outlook is “apple pie” egalitarian, with the media picture including high-profile officers who are African-American and Latino. Meanwhile, inside the policy arena, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice are frequently in front of cameras to personify Uncle Sam in blackface.

The U.S. government doesn’t drop bombs on people because of their race. Washington’s geopolitical agendas lead to military actions. But racial biases make the war process easier when the people being killed and maimed aren’t white people. An oversize elephant in the American media’s living room is a reality that few journalists talk about in public: The USA keeps waging war on countries where the victims resemble people who often experience personal and institutional racism in the United States.

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On his way to confirmation as U.S. ambassador to Iraq, the current U.N. envoy John Negroponte was busily twisting language like a pretzel at a Senate hearing the other day. The new Baghdad regime, to be installed on June 30, will have sovereignty. Well, sort of. Negroponte explained: “That is why I use the term ‘exercise of sovereignty.’ I think in the case of military activity, their forces will come under the unified command of the multinational force. That is the plan.”

In other words, the Baghdad government will be praised as the embodiment of Iraqi sovereignty while the U.S. military continues to do whatever Washington wants it to do in Iraq — including order the Iraqi military around. Negroponte talked about “real dialogue between our military commanders, the new Iraqi government and, I think, the United States mission as well.” But ultimately, he said, the American military “is going to have the freedom to act in their self-defense, and they’re going to be free to operate in Iraq as they best see fit.”

The disconnect between democracy rhetoric and imperial reality is glaring enough to require some media acknowledgment.

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Taking the stage at a community center in the small Northern California town of Bolinas, a group of four musicians quickly showed themselves to be returning as a vibrant creative force centered very much in the present.

Not that the music of Country Joe and the Fish ever really disappeared. Since the release of the band’s first two albums in 1967 — “Electric Music for the Mind and Body” along with “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die” — many of its songs have meandered through the memories and semi-consciousness of millions of Americans who came of age a third of a century ago.

Now reconstituted with four of the legendary group’s original five members, the new Country Joe Band has just begun to tour. When I saw them perform, midway through April, the music was as tightly effusive as ever, with poetic lyrics mostly brought to bear on two perennials: love and death.

Their new song “Cakewalk to Baghdad” is in sync with Country Joe McDonald’s compositions that stretch back to the escalating years of the Vietnam War.

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Column and FAIR action alert. The NewsHour now has issued a correction based on the response from the action alert.

• Past columns are archived on FAIR’s site.
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