One danger in delaying release of photos depicting American torture is that our "mind's eye" then is free to presume horrors probably far worse than anything human beings possibly could do to each other - proving the old saying that fantasy is whatever in reality would be nightmare.

It didn't take long, even in discussions right here at TPM, for an almost-apocryphal atrocity account by Seymour Hersh in 2004 to begin making blog rounds. In a speech to the American Civil Liberties Union in July that year, Hersh made the charge that the American military committed war crimes far worse than those shown in photos from Abu Ghraib released just that spring to a shocked and disgusted world. And he claimed the Pentagon has tape of them.

"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."

At no point in his talk does Hersh mention whether he actually saw photographic or video evidence of such horrors, although he has maintained, in articles and interviews since, that he has seen all documented material from the Abu Ghraib.

Already, there have been leaked some batches of the 2,000 or so photos at issue, up to now unseen by the world's eyes, which President Obama has decided to delay releasing. These images are sickeningly familiar, with hapless prisoners under degrading duress. However, as the President indicated, disturbing as they are, such depictions of torment are no longer shocking. These are outrages with which we have become familiar, as this agonizing conflict drags on, year after year; that acclimatization to official brutality is one of the most disheartening products of our vast missteps this decade.

Nevertheless, in the past few days, blogs have been alive with speculation that the new photo release may include evidence of the horrors Hersh described five years ago. Interestingly, Hersh has never cited these incidents in any of this writing, and has never mentioned them since, even though his coverage of torture - specifically American revival of it - has been detailed, exhaustive and exemplary.

Could it be possible that he was repeating rumors that had been embroidered and intensified when initial reports of Abu Ghraib abuses were fresh? That's possible. Could evidence still in Pentagon vaults prove these mindbendingly horrible crimes were actually committed by men and women wearing American uniforms, serving our country, saluting our flag? Again, unfortunately, possible.

Since the issue has been raised, however, we need to find out - now - just how bad it was, how severe and inhuman our detour into infamy reached. We must discover whether or not atrocities as grave as these really did occur. If such crimes were committed, we must bring the guilty to justice, and that means all of them, from top to bottom - not just the executive-tier, the memo writers, down to mid-level enablers who OK'd the demented policy and subsequently covered it up - but the perpetrators, as well. Something as awful as the crimes Hersh described must, by their appallingly perverse nature, fall on the heads of the grunts who would have done this.

If there are any.

Inasmuch as this is much more serious, much more devastating even than waterboarding, it is also more potentially damaging as a filmy myth, as a tale fabricated to push an agenda and darkly influence opinion. If it's investigated and found to be a rumor born in the fog of war, an ugly urban legend, then it can't just bubble along like any other fairy tale in our counter-reality bible, a Kennedy "conspiracy" or UFO "coverup". It's too savage, too monstrous, for our veterans to carry its brand guiltlessly. For almost a half-century, American servicemen have been defamed scapegoats of our hypocritical blather and junk morality. 

That's not just the responsibility of government, that this be done. It's the responsibility of the news media to either let us have it between the eyes with the full force of these crimes, or reveal it as a piece of wartime propaganda to be discarded.

Validation would entail something more - more, even than merely prosecuting those responsible. We should backtrack a little, seek out the progenitors of this terrible reapplication of medieval savagery. O.J. mouthpiece and Harvard swell Alan Dershowitz, eminently clever and soulless, began clamoring for "legal torture" warrants to counter an insipid "ticking bomb" scenario back in the early '90s. Hollywood spy yarns like "24" and "Taken" depict applied pain as a useful, if cinematically bloodcurdling, means of getting information quickly. What's the story, there? Did these well-educated, high-income ideas people believe that malarkey? Or are they just compelling sadists, who'd just as soon counsel us, sagely and with gravity, to jump off a cliff - for their kicks.

That's just the beginning, though. We must look at ourselves in a mirror, one connected to our souls. This policy came from the top, to be sure, and Dick Cheney must have been aware of the details if not the actual transcripts of the dark sessions; it's no surprise this man is described by former CIA officer Philip Giraldi as "surely the most evil man ever to hold high public office" in America. But Cheney and the rest were public figures we elected. As early, as the 1990s, reports surfaced of "extraordinary renditions", in which the CIA kidnapped enemy agents and suspected terrorists, sometimes spiriting them off to torture subcontractors like Syria and Egypt. (The first, apparently was in 1995.) This knowledge provoked very little comment, and less outrage. It's a tough world, we told ourselves, and sometimes you must be tough along with it.

But, finally, if the accusations don't wash, if we discover the stories of sodomy and screaming mothers are just stories, we should ask ourselves why we so readily believe tales so dark about... ourselves. Americans serving in uniform didn't drop here from Mars; they are our countrymen. They are us, whether we like it or not. In blog after blog where these issues were discussed, most posters and commenters automatically believed Hersh's account was inarguably true. Discussion centered on what should be done, how the release of such documentary material would affect world opinion, whether or not Obama's decision was correct, and how we could have slipped so far. But few questioned the matter's validity; we just knew it was true.

Why are we so receptive to allegations of our unique, subhuman evil? Especially on the basis of "evidence" as shaky as this.

Of this, we must know.