More Graphic Evidence of Torture -- But So What?

The Sydney Morning Herald has acquired about 60 previously unpublished photographs of detainees being tortured at Abu Ghraib, and a Sydney television station plans to air them tonight.

More than a dozen of them are posted over at Daily Kos. Some of them are similar to things we've already seen; most of them are much more horrific than anything seen by the public before. They're pretty disgusting.

I have to say, though, I would be extremely surprised if even widespread showing of these photographs made any difference whatsoever to public opinion. I don't think it will lower Bush's ratings below where they already are. Bloggers like Michelle Malkin and Jeff Goldstein will still be making jokes about German shepherds being set loose on hooded prisoners; they'll laugh at the notion that any of this is torture; and they will insist that it's all necessary to keep us safe, and they really have no problem with it whatsoever, and you know what? A lot of Americans either agree with them or just don't care. We are living in an age of apathy and indifference. Gone are the days when the release of thousands of pages of classified documents proving that our government has been committing enormous wrongs and lying about it had the capacity to electrify Congress and the nation, and actually lead to the toppling of a president and the ending of a war.

That was then. And this is now.