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 ...

Bush's Legacy

According to a recent poll by The Economist, the Chinese are less tolerant to the use of torture than are Americans. How did the use of "enhanced interrogations" lead to the citizens of a democratic nation being more accepting of torture than those living under an authoritarian regime? We've come along way since George Washington said:

Should any American soldier be so base and infamous as to injure any [prisoner]. . . I do most earnestly enjoin you to bring him to such severe and exemplary punishment as the enormity of the crime may require. Should it extend to death itself, it will not be disproportional to its guilt at such a time and in such a cause… for by such conduct they bring shame, disgrace and ruin to themselves and their country.

As well as:

Treat them with humanity, and let them have no reason to complain of our copying the brutal example of the British Army in their treatment of our unfortunate brethren who have fallen into their hands

Thank you George W. Bush for taking American down this path.

Democratic In-Fighting: Executive Branch

The media has done a good job showing the battles within the Democratic party vis-a-vis Congress, but they also exist within the Executive branch of government. Two examples that haven't gotten the attention they deserve involve torture prosecution and, in a story that is just breaking, antitrust enforcement.

President Obama has repeatedly stated that he wishes to look forward and not open prosecutions of any Bush administration policy, but a few weeks ago Attorney General Holder announced that he is "considering having a prosecutor investigate allegations of CIA torture of suspected terrorists, The Washington Post said." He has, however, also announced that the prosecutions would be limited to those who committed acts that went above and beyond the ones outlined in the famous torture memos and NOT to the architects of the program. This viewpoint has been eloquently challenged by the progressive Democrats in a letter to the AG by Senator Russ Feingold. I hope Holder listens...

Back in May, President Obama's antitrust chief, Christine Varney, announced that the Justice Department “will be aggressively pursuing cases where monopolists try to use their dominance in the marketplace to stifle competition and harm consumers." Apparently, the Bush Administration didn't just stop enforcing the antitrust laws already on the books, but enacted a legal policy that impeded the government’s ability to fight anticompetitive conduct by monopolistic companies in court. Despite the announcement and Mrs Varney making it clear that courts should no longer refer to the Bush administration policy, other departments within the Executive Branch are refusing to go along.

Why can't Democrats get their house in order and govern as one? It's the one aspect of politics that the Dems need to learn from the Republicans. For good or for bad, the Republican party is great at unifying their message and getting their legislative agenda passed. Personally, I suspect lobbying contributions have something to do with it.

Bush 3.0?

Obama, what are you thinking:

"The Obama administration has declined requests from U.N. human rights investigators for information on secret prisons and for private interviews with inmates at the U.S. military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, U.N. officials said, dampening their hopes of greater U.S. cooperation on human rights issues."

Where is the transparency and accountability you ran on? Doesn't the president realize that by refusing access, the US is admitting wrongdoing? Why hide the transgressions of the previous administration?

The progressive wing of the Democratic party is going to have a field day with this. I just hope the Right understands that the frustration is because President Obama isn't being liberal/progressive ENOUGH, and not because we believe he is a lying, unamerican, secret muslim...