When US commentators like Rush Limbaugh responded to the pictures of torture from Abu Ghraib with the idea that US soldiers were just behaving like frat students, it should say something to us about how people negotiate gendered images, particularly during war. This is an issue that Kelly Oliver takes up in her new book Women as Weapons of War: Iraq, Sex, and the Media. In addition to the men and women involved in Abu Ghraib, Oliver also addresses the media representation of Private Jessica Lynch and female suicide bombers.

In many ways, Kelly Oliver challenges all of us to rethink our understanding and perception of women in the current US war in Iraq and in the Middle East. The media response to Abu Ghraib was instructive in that it tended to demonize the women involved in the torture of prisoners. In a Time magazine story on this issue, one headline read "New reports of detainee abuse at Gitmo suggest interrogators used female sexuality as a weapon." This was in reference to some of the female prison guards dressing up in sexualized clothing to "tempt" the prisoners, but when male prison guards stacked men up naked why did that not elicit gendered and sexualized reporting? When men do it is just old-fashioned torture, when women do it some how their sexuality becomes part of the story.

In the case of Private Jessica Lynch, she becomes the perfect news story because as a woman it means something different that she suffered and was rescued. Beyond the manufactured story of Private Lynch, the author points out that when other US soldiers heard that Lynch was tortured they "really wanted to kill Iraqis." Being a woman and being tortured is worse in men's eyes, because women are not only to be protected, but any violation of a woman's body is unacceptable.

Part of the argument and analysis of the author also addresses recent uses of media during the US occupation of Iraq. Whether it is embedded journalists reporting from the US military point of view or how media images of war torture are distributed, Oliver presses the reader to think about both historical context and how to negotiate images through a gendered lens. When one of the male prison guards (Private Graner) takes pictures of the tortured prisoners and send them via e-mail back home as souvenirs, how do we interpret that? What do we make of US guards who stand smiling in front of tortured prisoners stacked on top of each other? How is this different than people standing in front of a monument and having their picture taken in order to send to friends? How has this technology separated us from the reality of what we are capturing in the picture? Oliver points out that Private Graner actually included in the e-mail picture of the Private England standing in front of the tortured prisoners the comment "look what I made Lynndie (Private England) do."

At one point in the book Oliver makes a plea to readers to become more media literate when confronted with these types of media images and messages. We often think that media images are self-evident, when in fact, quite often people see completely different things. The author cites Angela Davis who says, "So I think it is important not to assume that the image has a self-evident relationship to its object. And it is important to consider the particular economy within which images are produced and consumed." Oliver then goes on to emphasize the importance of seeing images, like those of Abu Ghraib, within a larger context - political, historical and economical.

In the conclusion of the book, Oliver raises the issue of how the images, even those of torture, impact us. Too often, these images, no matter how atrocious, will not move us to action the author contends. She cites journalist Mark Danner who addresses the scandal of inaction when confronted by such images. Danner says, "like other scandals that have erupted during the Iraq war and the war on terror, it is not about revelation or disclosure but about the failure, once wrong doing is disclosed, of politicians, officials, the press, and, ultimately, citizens to act."

The author believes that once we confront our own investment in the violence that these images we can eventually do something to prevent them from happening again. Kelly Oliver's book is an important contribution to the growing literature that has been generated because of the US war and occupation of Iraq. For those seeking to get beyond the superficial reporting and analysis this book is a useful tool in confronting the complexities of war in the modern media world.

Kelly Oliver, Women as Weapons of War: Iraq, Sex, and the Media, (Columbia University Press, 2007).