[http://morris.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/15/will-the-real-hooded-man-please-stand-up/?8ty&emc=ty]
Morris' piece begins:
Every human being has his own particular web of associations for identifying and interpreting reality, which, most often, instinctively and unthinkingly, he superimposes on every set of circumstances. Frequently, however, those external circumstances do not conform with, or fit, the structure of our webs, and then we can misread the unfamiliar reality, and interpret its elements incorrectly…
— Ryszard Kapuscinski, “Travels with Herodotus” (2007)
"It was arguably one of the least newsworthy pictures in the world, if only because it had already been seen by everybody. And yet, on March 11, 2006, The New York Times published on the front page of the first section, upper left-hand corner, a photograph of a man holding the photograph that had been seen around the world. Ali Shalal Qaissi, the man in the Times photograph (below) had told a group of human rights workers that he was “The Hooded Man” or “The Man on the Box.”
Mr. Haj Ali, also known as Ali Shalal Qaissi, also known as "The Hooded Man - Not" ; also known as "The Man on the Box - Not"; also known as "Clawman."My response:
I write from Sulaimania, Kurdistan Iraq. Before arriving here on July 31, I was in Amman, Jordan and spent some time with "Clawman" - who identified himself to me as Haj Ali. One look at the man - he is a huge hulk - and one can see he is not the man in the photo."
When I asked the towering giant if he indeed was the one in the photo, he said he had been advised by his (American) attorney not to answer any questions in relation to the time he spent at Abu Graib. When I pressed him for a response, he said that he was “one of many” treated in this way.
He now runs an Iraqi NGO that originally brought attention to prison issues, but now deals with the more broad topics in relation to "humanitarian" issues.
The following are direct quotes from Mr. Haj Ali:
"It is a new idea that people in Iraq know the war was made by the US. The result is that there are 5 million people displaced within Iraq and 5 million people have left. The US has said it will accept 7000 refugees. We don’t want an alternative homeland. We want human rights resettlement organizations to help us solve the reasons behind needing to leave Iraq. Without security the problems of Iraqis cannot be addressed. There are militias, ethnic identity killings, and there is internal interference by Iranians. Anyone who says the US should leave Iraq is insane. They need to stay at least 3 more years. We would say to the Americans, “leave tomorrow.” But the Iraqi police force consists of 32 militias. Iraqi prisoners pay $50,000 US dollars to stay in American prisons instead of being transferred to Iraqi prisons. In Iraqi prisons they cut off ears, torture and kill. In US prisons all are registered. A lot of people are willing to sell everything to stay in an American prison."
I wonder if Americans can handle hearing such words.
Of course, Mr. Haj Ali said he could not tell me who the donors are to his ethno-unified 65,000-member NGO, and later said he receives no money, only foodstuffs and other goods, which, to date, he has distributed to 23,000 Iraqis.
Putting the question of Mr. Haj Ali’s legitimacy aside, the real crime in all of this was how the press took their time to report on the issues at Abu Graib and instead waited until they were able to obtain the "sexy" images of naked Iraqis. I was present in Baghdad, Iraq as an independent journalist on two occasions (each several weeks long) in 2004 and had close contact with members of the Christian Peacemaking Team.
CPT had a continuous presence in Iraq from Oct. 2002 and after the bombs stopped falling began to document the stories of Iraqi detainees. I was witness to how they desperately tried to get the media to report on the issues at Abu Graib and other Iraqi prisons and were ignored by all of the media outlets - that is, until the naked pics surfaced. Once they surfaced, CPT's phone rang off the hook from the same media outlets that had previously ignored their pleas for coverage of detainee issues.
The everyday stories of Iraqis are not newsworthy to a media that feeds on sensationalism, and a public that only wants to have its own narrow preconceptions reflected back at it.
Continue your intellectual meanderings Mr. Morris. Such philosophical discourse is of certain comedic relief to those of us who have been working here on the ground since before the war. The realities in Iraq are so distant and go so against what most Americans believe to be true as to what is happening here, that thinking about returning to America makes me feel as if I will be imprisoned once again in an idyllic disneyland-esque horror show. Yes, there are terrible things happening in this country. But there are also wondrous, amazing, and positive things being created by incredible people – Iraqi and international alike.
Lorna Tychostup
Senior Editor Chronogram Magazine
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