It’s been a month of iconic images of the war in Iraq: The mutilated security guards being dragged through the streets of Fallujah; the release of pictures obtained by CBS News of US soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib; and similar, even more graphic pictures of British soldiers allegedly abusing an Iraqi thief near the southern town of Basra.

Each of these pictures carries with it a slice of reality, and enormous propaganda potential. Every news-writer eventually wakes up to the power of pictures. Except in the rarest of cases, where extraordinary events are witnessed and coupled with some happily beautiful writing, what we do doesn’t compare with the simple emotive impact of a great picture.

That US soldiers guarding prisoners at Abu Ghraib were being investigated was publicly acknowledged by the military nearly two months ago. The charges against the soldiers were reported widely, including the sadistic and in some cases sexual nature of their abuse. But it was only the release of the pictures, with the soldiers hamming it up like they were at a fraternity party, that turned the abuse into an incident with potentially far-ranging implications.

Having spoken to many men detained at Abu Ghraib, the notorious site of torture and secret executions under Saddam Hussein, allegations of abuse are common, though I hadn’t heard anything as graphic as shown in the pictures. Most complained of being kept in cramped conditions and of being cuffed around by soldiers while under interrogation. When asked about these allegations, US spokesmen have typically dismissed them as the complaints of disgruntled Iraqis, and said US rules prohibit the abuse of prisoners. But from the media side, the clearest consequence of these pictures will be that most of us will be more willing to take such complaints seriously in the future.

The footage of the mutilations of the four security workers from Blackwater – most of them ex-US special operations guys – seemed to demand a US response, at least politically. With promises running as high as US President Bush that their killers would be brought to justice, the marines around Fallujah were thrown into a month-long siege of the town that claimed nearly 100 American and hundreds of Iraqi lives.

Serving and retired officers I’ve spoken with think that the Marine response was dictated, as much as anything, by the footage. To hear or read that four men were killed and perhaps mutilated in a war zone is tragic, but expected. To see the callousness of the act, the horrific consequences, is enough to make blood boil.

What followed was a political decision, not a question of military tactics. Highly trained marines were thrown into a no-win situation – an urban battle that they were more than trained and equipped to win, but not without generating civilian casualties to such an extent as to jeopardize the US position inside Iraq.

And at the end of a month with so much blood spilled, and so much anti-US hatred generated inside Iraq, the fighting has ended with a plan to give control of the city to a former general from Saddam Hussein’s feared Republican Guard – just the sorts of units that the US political leadership had vowed earlier would have no role in the new Iraq. How did we get here? Just like Somalia over a decade ago, pictures.

The fallout from the pictures of Iraqi prisoner abuse by US troops is less clear. Most Iraqis, sad to say, already believe that US forces here are brutal. Though there’s been an outcry in the Arab world, America’s reputation is already about as low as it can get. And the fact that many of the governments from whom condemnation is now emanating were silent while Saddam Hussein did far worse, and far more frequently, to his own citizens, could end up muting their impact.

Photographs have a peculiar power, as my working life in Indonesia (I lived there for 10 years) taught me.

In 1991, documentary filmmaker Max Stahl happened to be on hand when Indonesian soldiers fired on unarmed protesters at a cemetery in Dili, the capital of what was then an Indonesian province. At least 200 Timorese were killed that day, many finished off by Indonesian soldiers at point-blank range. After managing to smuggle the footage out, Stahl’s images led news broadcasts world-wide and gave new life and support to East Timor’s fading independence movement. By the time I was in Dili in 1999, covering East Timor’s UN-sponsored independence referendum, independence was inevitable. Many East Timorese intellectuals believe that without the film footage of the Dili Massacre they wouldn’t have been able to win their independence.

In 1998, a different set of photographs set the world on fire. They purported to show Indonesian Chinese women being systematically raped and killed by Indonesian soldiers amid the turmoil that drove the dictator Suharto from power. The photos, distributed over the Internet, spread like wildfire and led to a global outpouring of sympathy for Indonesia’s ethnic Chinese community. But, as a Wall Street Journal article later showed, the pictures predated the Indonesian violence, and were largely lifted from pornographic websites. That evidence notwithstanding, the pictures continue to circulate widely as evidence of an Indonesian government pogrom against the Chinese (who have suffered severe and periodic abuse in Indonesia).

So what long-term effect will recent pictures from Iraq have? Hard to say. While the pictures of US abuses are unquestioned, there are some early signs that the more graphic and disturbing pictures of British soldiers mistreating a prisoner may not be the real thing. (British media have reported various inconsistencies, including what appear to be a type of rifle and truck never supplied to troops in Iraq.) We’ll find out in the days to come. But one thing is certain: The Internet will give them a life beyond whatever the reality, and people inclined to believe, will continue to believe.