Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
communication technologies. As such, and despite the apparently
archaic nature of their religious beliefs, Al-Qaeda, if such a thing
exists at all in any real sense, is a paradigmatic product of digital
culture. In many ways it seems to embody the principle of 'rhizomat-
ic' decentered networks that underlie the Internet itself and is also
proclaimed as the basis of new forms of politics by both libertarians
and those in radical opposition to capitalism.
4
Following the attacks in 2001, the elusive nature of Al-Qaeda
made it easier for the United States Government to suggest, with
little or no evidence in support of such a claim, that the terrorist
organization was in league with the Iraqi dictatorship. This, along
with spurious claims about Iraq's supposed possession of 'weapons
of mass destruction', became the basis for making the case to the
United States Senate and the United Nations for an invasion of Iraq,
which took place in 2003. Aware since the Vietnam War of the power
of the media to make the waging of war unpopular with the elec-
torate, the United States Government was careful to control how
journalists and television crews were able to get close to any action.
Nevertheless the ease of use, availability and capacity to be distrib-
uted widely that characterized new media made it possible to
circumvent government control of information.
In 2004 Joseph Darby, a soldier serving in Iraq anonymously
passed a CD-Rom to the Military Police that contained horrifying
images of prisoners being abused in Abu Ghraib prison. Unsur-
prisingly, these images caused revulsion and disgust throughout the
world, and also surprise, among some at least, that representatives
of a supposedly civilized nation could descend to such barbarism.
It was particularly noticeable that these images were not taken
covertly for the purposes of revealing hidden abuses, but by the
perpetrators themselves, in a celebratory and open fashion. Young
soldiers, sometimes women, were photographed, smiling, with their
thumbs up, standing over the stacked or chained bodies of prisoners.
Such behaviour may well be far more prevalent in wartime than we
