ABSTRACT
The most prominent and widely circulated visual images from the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are the notorious photographs of the torture of prisoners taken by American soldiers at Saddam Hussein's former prison, Abu Ghraib. the Abu Ghraib photos demonstrate, military and governmental efforts to control the representation of captivity have proven to be limited in the age of digital spectacle. Footage of captives pleading for their lives and graphic images of execution and severed body parts compromised the US administration's claims of military control in Afghanistan and Iraq, but these could be more or less controlled ideologically through interpreting them as evidence of the brutality of the enemy. Colley's analysis centers on how captivity was central to the British experience and understanding of empire, personalizing overseas events and investing national prestige in the recovery of captives-and, often, in military acts of vengeance against their captors.
