Torture Photos

In one of the biggest departures from his campaign promises of openness and transparency, President Obama's Justice Department has asked the Supreme Court to overturn an appeals court decision requiring the Pentagon to disclose photos depicting alleged abuse of prisoners in U.S. military custody in Iraq and Afghanistan. The photos had originally been ordered to be released due to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the ACLU.

Solicitor General Elena Kagan is on the record as saying:

“The President of the United States and the Nation’s highest-ranking military officers responsible for ongoing combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have determined that disclosure by the government of the photographs at issue in this case would pose a significant risk to the lives and physical safety of American military and civilian personnel by inciting violence targeting those personnel"

President Obama has stated:

“It's… my belief that the publication of these photos would not add any additional benefit to our understanding of what was carried out in the past by a small number of individuals. In fact, the most direct consequence of releasing them, I believe, would be to further inflame anti-American opinion and to put our troops in greater danger."

So let me get this straight? Abusing detainees is legally ok, but releasing photos depicting the abuse isn't? There is a massive cognitive dissonance in that reasoning.

So far, the government has admitted that the photos depict “soldiers pointing pistols or rifles at the heads of hooded and handcuffed detainees” and one image showing a handcuffed and hooded prisoner and a soldier who is acting “as if” he is violating a detainee with a broom handle. Others, however, are claiming far worse.

According to Major General Antonio Taguba, the former army officer who conducted the official inquiry into Abu Ghraib:

“These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency... The mere description of these pictures is horrendous enough, take my word for it.”

One of the sworn statements given to Mr Taguba from a detainee, which was released due to a Freedom of Information Act request, went as follows:

“I saw [name of a translator] ******* a kid, his age would be about 15 to 18 years. The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets. Then when I heard screaming I climbed the door because on top it wasn’t covered and I saw [name] who was wearing the military uniform, putting his **** in the little kid’s ***…. and the female soldier was taking pictures.”

Either the photos show that Bush Administration is guilty of systematic torture and therefore the photos shouldn't be released out of concern of retaliation against our troops, or the pictures are 99% harmless and should be published. So, if President Obama really believes that we are in the first scenario and continues to block the photos from being released, he must launch an investigation into the previous administrations "enhanced interrogation" program. The President can't have it both ways.

To put an exclaimation point on this insanity, this story was initially broken back on May 10th 2004 by Sy Hersh in The New Yorker. How has this flown so far under the radar that all of the facts still aren't out by 2009? I would guess most Americans still have no idea that nearly 100 detainees have died in US custody since 2002 ...