But, but, but... Isn't it the US "cowboy culture" that likes stuff like that, and seeing bloody casualties in hospital beds, and dead bodies on the streets?

Yes but the establishment wants a clean clinical impression to be given and the US networks understand that

Medical people alert: the article asserts one of the tortured informees is still missing fingernails.

My experience (non-torture, I assure you) is they grow back. I've seen three instances of apparent loss of finger (or toe) nail wherein the eventual grow-back is totally complete.

Under what circumstances don't they grow back?

I've had broken fingernails, but not fingernails that were PULLED OUT. I think that may be fundamentally different.

Do european and arab TV stations send camera crews to automobile accidents to film the blood and gore ? If not, why not ?

Nails will grow back if pulled out (Sewing machine, finger, don't ask, it wasn't pretty).

However, if the nail bed is destroyed, it won't grow back. The nail bed is where the nails grow out from...

a slightly different angle....

I was severely pissed that our media decided en mass that they should no longer show the planes crashing into the WTC. It was like they got together and made a decision that us average citizens should not see those images. Are they thinking its too disturbing? Too inflamatory? It should be shown as reminder of the scum we're up against.

I think that every human being deserves a bit of dignity. I thought that the images of the WTC and those diving to their death to be insensitive to the families of those who were killed. I would hate for the entire WORLD to see my brother/sister/mother/etc. jump to his/her death on TV. Just like I was enraged at the AJC in Atlanta for putting the pictures of two dying Iraqis on their front page this week. Like it or not, those men deserved dignity, not disrespect for life. War has cruelty and bloodshed, but reporters are all about gore and shock value. Are we looking for images like that and becoming desensitized to death and destruction?

The media should show the horror of war, so that voters understand how nasty it is.

You can destroy the nailbed by cauterizing it - one of my toenails was always causing problems for me and is now permanently narrower.

the US media is doing the American people a great disservice by showing sanitised versions of the conflict. for one thing, if we are not shown the damage to civilians caused by our own aircraft and soldiers, we are at a loss when confronted with the fact that not everybody loves as. a cycle f miscomprehension is instituted. second, if our own casualties are not shown, we are shielded from the costs of war and are more likely to go to war again because the costs seem acceptable where they might not be.
also, the TV cultures are different. european news will show blood and gore where the americans might not, but then they'll show nudity and expletives as well. in terms of the arab media there are major cultural differences that explain a focus on gore. though by no means are they to be exonerated of bias.

Eupropean TV will certainly show more grpahic images when it suits their purposes; I've seen that personally. If you want to see graphic images of women, children, non-combatants killed and maimed by this war, you can visit Robert Fisk's little shop of horrors on the web, where he delights in using these images for their anti-American propaganda value.
Will he show the pictures from Halaba, where Saddam gassed ~5000 Kurds in 1988?
No.
Will he show the mass graves (when they are uncoovered) from the supression of the Kurdish and Shia uprisings in 1991, where ~150k people (or more) were killed by the Baathists?
No.
Will he show the living Iraqis who have been disfigured by torture?
No.
Think about what you see and what it means, and also what is not seen.

If the networks showed this stuff, it would be inflammatory. Can't have the great unwashed upset. We might actually demand action be taken.

What's outrageous is the belief apparently of the press in this country that it can shout "Freedom of the Press" or the "People have a right to know" then decide that what we should know is not the same as what the rest of the world should know. Now I can better understand how the USA and the rest of the world can see things so differently.... CNN and CNNI show us two sides of the same coin. It is just outrageous.