I've been trying to find something positive in the prison abuse scandal, and I thought I had it figured out. But I am disheartened after reading some of the comments here. My positive spin was that there was a lot of loose talk after 9-11 about the merits of torture as a method of eliciting intelligence and even just for the sheer vengeful satisfaction of it.

The pictures from Abu Ghraib prison, I thought, would put an end to that kind of talk. Torture in the abstract is one thing; actually looking at it, even digitally, is something else. Those grim photos seemed to reawaken the fundamental sense of decency and capacity for outrage that is at the heart of civilization. Obviously, however, not everybody got the message.

The real lesson here may be that no outrage emerged until the pictures did. The investigation was announced in January. The Red Cross apparently found problems going back to November. For the last couple of months, Harper's magazine has been printing accounts of prisoners at Guantanamo and of post-9/11 detainees in New York City. Guantanamo prisoners claimed they weren't allowed to pray or move and were subjected to forced injections. New York City detainees -- none of whom was ever even charged with a terrorism-related crime, much less convicted -- complained that their heads were butted into a wall hung with a "These colors don't run" T-shirt. An independent commission found blood on the shirt.

All of this went on with scarcely a public murmur. Much has been made of the fact that digital technology can spread photos around the globe almost instantly. But the converse may be that if there are no pictures, there is no story.