I’m going to try to find the Orange article last week with links to photos from an Australian. I did not see the photos, but the article indicated that these might be like photos, not the actual photos the Justice Dept. holds.

We are cowards if we are not willing to look at photos of what we have done.

Gee, I wonder how one gets multiple cigarette burns on his butt in the battlefield? Sleeping too close to a bunkmate who’s a chain smoker?

Nevermind. That story was debunked.

Obama disappoints, again.

HI TEDDY!!!

How was the vacation? We missed you!

Well, that was more of a f’rinstance, really.

(I’m not really here, I’m actually on vacation right now…)

hey there LH

it was great — see you tonight at 8 for Late Night?

Has anyone seen Eli?

the problem is that there is quite likely a segment of the wingnut base that would actually get off on seeing pictures of savage torture. The crueler, the more sordid and the more degrading the better. Yeah! That’s what Jack Bauer would do to those islamofascists! I think Cheney’s probably like that.

I don’t think that justifying release or nonrelease should be based on the likely rethug response. This is, in my humble opinion, solely about the need for transparency, which Obama
promised and which this country desperately needs. Transparency should be an end in itself – this shouldn’t be about the rethugs, who we already know glorifies torture, and this isn’t about the Islamic street, which already has all the reasons they need to mistrust and despise us for the torture that they already know was done.

It is for real. Some of the photos were published a couple of days ago (didn’t save the link, sorry). One was of a man’s butt, with about half a dozen cigarette burns. He was standing upright so I don’t suppose they were bullet holes.

If you’re on vacation, why are you hanging out with us? *g* Hope you’re having a great time.

I agree that great care is absolutely necessary here. Every nation, every religion has its wingnuts. The minute those pics come out, Bin Laden and Liimbaugh will incite their respective dittos to jihad. Fox will deem the next American casualties the result of torture photo blowback. I wonder that Obama even wanted this job.

Huh. I actually did not see that photo.

Having a great time so far, I have a little bit of downtime while my girlfriend is checking her e-mail…

You know, what will cause a bigger backlash? Releasing the evidence photos of the torture crimes we committed and everyone knows we did, or the suddenly-revealed Holy Crusade military briefings?

I’m going with the God Warrior stuff, that is going to push some serious hot buttons in the Middle East.

Oh, and rawstory had a link to a story they did back 2 or 3 years ago when they published them, but I can’t find that link either. The two sources overlapped on most, maybe 8 or 10, but rawstory had a few additional pics.

Which is what makes Obama’s decision so particularly stooopid. The pics are “out there” already, and I’m sure the Muslim world has more of them than we do. In my short abortive attempt to find the rawstory link, I found an old story about how U.S. military flash drives were for sale in Baghdad bazaars, which had photos on them.

Both the Democrats and GOP are fearful of an investigation. Some Democrats may have their moral, if not legal, culpability displayed in public, and they fear the political damage. The bigtime mass audience national affairs media are corrupt and cowardly and spewing BS 24/7.

But I see in Glenn Greenwald’s blog that 64% of the public wants either prosecutions (sorry, strike prosecutions -they want a criminal investigation) or an independent investigation. There is no point in hoping that the country’s decayed political and media establishment will do anything on their own. They will have to forced to something by public pressure. So, important thing is to keep getting good information and analysis out to the public, one way or another.

This is like the Iraq war. Things seemed hopeless for a long time, then public could not be lied to anymore.

To paraphrase Lincoln: you canot fool most of the people most of the time.

Bin Laden and Liimbaugh will incite their respective dittos to jihad.

And what, pray tell have they been doing for the last twenty years? /s

The diito heads need to face what they have championed. The Osama heads have actually suffered it, and much more. Still are.

Heh. Found a link to some of the “unreleased” photos.

it depends what’s in the photos. If they are of women or children how do you think that would play? It might even get people here to “get” it.

What frightens me most is what Digby said recently—that we’re losing the public on this. Good old patriotic Americans are getting desensitized.

Where’s the outrage?

Muslim Mullahs are playing “Rope a Dope” taking the hits and draining our resources.

We need a new direction to avoid thr demise of other Empires.

Transparency and correction is the doorway to change that we can believe in.

Thanks, Eli for update and links.

The pictures will be horrifying and will incite rage in Afghanistan and Iraq. I do feel for our troops in the line of fire and revenge. But I think we are far more ignorant of the abuses than the Iraqi and Afghanistan peoples. They have had a greater taste of military rough-housing, maybe less so during Petraes years, but throughout this tragic history. 1 million Iraqi possibly dead. Yeah, I would say. Another fresh hell for them learning more atrocity with this sadism. But some may be relieved that it is being made public. Which would imply a government committed to STOP it. A government still hiding it, would imply a government not committed to FULLY stop it.

These generals like McChrystal also may be appealing to military to political class cronyism with Obama. The “elite” to the “elite”. Obama wanting to be a trusted Commander In Chief, and one more time throwing the common folk populace under the bus. Some of these generals, especially launched by horrid Rumsfeld have been encouraged and able to do their harsh clandestine operations which have enflamed US relations with the indigenous populations and now do not want to be called on accountability or responsibility. One more time. The American “accountability coma.” Status quo protection to military industrial complex leadership and contracting networks … which kept monitoring at bay. Look at Pelosi situation. Myopic not transparent viewing of their decisions and agenda. And Obama (God bless him, cuz I certainly am not right now) is endearing himself to our military because he does not seem to be enamoured of the glacial progress of diplomacy and such hard work or wants the “big boys club” to trust him. 77% of Afghanistan doesn’t have clean water. Maybe fixing that would help our relationship, rather than drone bombings. I mean, I am no expert but …

And I look over at Israel and its behavior toward Gaza and Obamaco having not a whimper of discomfort from that behavior. Talk about blind codependency vs. reality … and also re military hit em hard thinking … that quote about insanity comes to mind, “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” and also the one about “if your only tool is a hammer, everything becomes a nail.”

Last week on Bill Maher, Naomi Klein and the rest of an all “liberal” panel … they all agreed that we should just move on… investigations would needlessly tie up things, seemed to be the prevailing meme.

I was astonished.

imo, We need an organization to make some hard hitting television commercials.. so we can all pitch in our 5 to 500 bucks and get them on the air. Some sort of main stream push is in order.

What are the chances that some of these photos are pics of children? Were photos made of the abuse of KSM’s children? There were reportedly over 700 juveniles held in prisons in Iraq, some said to be held to threaten/coerce their fathers to give up information.

Obama said there’s nothing especially spectacular about them. Someday we’ll know if he speaks truth.

With justice and immunity for all (all who have senior rank, that is). Anyway, doesn’t that seem oxymoronic?

Backpedal, backpedal Barack. Was the campaign simply an exercise in chameleon-ship? Do the halls of power seduce you now? Country’s on its knees. Put down the friggen kool-aid of the corporate and military and political elites.

“The diito heads need to face what they have championed.”
No chit, but good luck with that.

I think they’re just more from Abu Gharib. See the link at 18; Graner’s in several.

There were over 250 people killed worldwide when a cartoon appeared in a Denmark newspaper. How many lives are you willing to gamble.

Eli is a concern troll.

But then we are back to “national security” considerations being used to cover up illegal activities? It is a catch-22.

Naomi Klein said move on ?

apparently, there’s a lot of that going around

How many will we kill or torture in both the immediate and long term.. if we don’t look at what we have done and stop it?

Incidentally, I’m still not feeling that “anti-American backlash” argument – does Obama honestly think that the Muslim world believes Abu Ghraib was a fluke and not an iceberg-tip?

the ONLY way to regain any kind of trust is to prosecute

the ONLY way to prevent others from doing the same is to prosecute

future generations MUST be shown the example;

“even if under orders, you torture you are a war criminal”

plain and simple stuff right there

obama is proving to be quite not the man we needed for these trying times

not the man at all

If you don’t hold the higher-ups accountable for their illegal deeds, a lot more people will die in the future than 250.

These pictures can be released to judges and juries.

She nodded her head in agreement.. certainly did not protest the sentiment.

eCAHN and others -
I had to leave the Book Salon thread early – did Ricks respond to the question about Obama falling under Odierno’s sway ?

Sure. At least I think I can stay awake!

I don’t remember. He said a bunch of stuff about Odierno, and I can’t remember whether that particular point was addressed.

higher ups and lower downs ecahnomics, everyone must see, when it comes to torture there is never an excuse

No one’s gonna do that unless there is public pressure to do so. Releasing the pics is part of trying to get enough public pressure to force the pols to obey the law.

damn !

Sure, but it’s much more important to get the big fish. And, as you’ve seen, when it’s lower downs who are prosecuted, it’s usually as scapegoats.

thanks for the response – I’ll go over and have a look.

Last I heard there is one “bad apple” of a guard still serving time for Abu Ghraib. Not saying he shouldn’t be … but those who say the guilty have been prosecuted. Really? Since Rumsfeld’s spin? America’s “ethical trainwreck” as Leahy calls it. It deserves to be examined and processed. Mean old hard lefties wanting to dwell on this and not cut extenuating slack for a tragic situation? Sounds like the messenger one more time is hanging fire for acknowledging the seriousness of the problem.

We should rush move on? Systemic corruption and degradation that enabled these atrocities? I think serious exploration is deserved.

Well, the CIA has a long history of toture. So some may be fearful of opening up that really big can of worms. And believe you me, if I were a defendent’s lawyer, I’d try to figure out how to get it part of the trial.

Here’s Nosenko, just one of many examples.

Interrogators from the Soviet Russia division suspected that that Nosenko was a KGB plant and thus Nosenko was seized by CIA officers in Washington and from 1964 to 1967 was held in solitary confinement in a CIA safe house in Clinton, Maryland. Nosenko was also subjected to sensory deprivation and was administered drugs because his CIA handlers believed he was still working in secret for the KGB. Agents also strapped wires to his head, telling him falsely that the device was an electroencephalograph which would allow them to read his mind, while the device was really one that read brainwave patterns. This was a form of psychological intimidation in order to help persuade him to “tell the truth”. He was interrogated for 1,277 days.

Let the troops get out of the cities in Iraq and Obama back from Egypt.

I think that the really devastating photos will be pretty clear. They will show the torture actually occurring (just as the iconic Abu Ghraib photos). Only a few photos of a clinical examination of wounds would be telling…absent hospital records accompanying them saying what happened. Lash marks are pretty telling…but most other injuries require a skilled forensic examination to tell whether it was sadistic torture or some other cause.

But I suspect a lot of these pictures are not merely of the injuries…it’s of the acts inflicting them.

Can of worms … for sure.

Look at Obama playing hardball with the British re blocking their legal mandate to investigate the torture of their citizen. Though was it Greenwald who says the top UK dogs also don’t want Obama to say anything else, since they are compromised with the “detainee” abominations. So was it all kabuki theater internationally speaking?

Maybe the Repubs should put up Keifer Jack Bauer and not Gary Sinise for a presidential contender? American fantasy trust (denial) in covert operational integrity will be restored.

it’s of the acts inflicting them

Those would be located together with the videos

Outrage?
I agree with Digby.
That boat has sailed.

Let’s look at the timing of Obama’s attempt at suppression: going to the Middle East to try and open a new chapter in U.S./Middle Eastern relations. As others have noted, it is a hell of a contradiction to have these come out at the same time. I’m not agreeing with Obama-just saying that he may think its up to our own legal system or process (which he seems to want us to ‘move on’ from …) to deal with. Seems to me that he wants his cake and eat it too. This is where I get frustrated: between the art of the possible (compromise) and standing one’s ground. But, I know I’m not the only person here that has the same frustration.

IOW, what makes Obama think that “looking forward” and trying to get bi-partisan consensus on legislation is gonna be any easier by not or w/o appointing a Special Prosecutor to look into EITs/Torture? Republicans ALREADY want to thwart his agenda while ironically (and happily..) the electorate by and large doesn’t agree with them.

Accuracy should always be the goal. On the other hand, a gunshot can be torture too. Details can always be explained in multiple ways.

At this point, the one danger would be to turn the photos into some sort of TV “smoking gun”. We can learn nothing new at this point–nothing that can change our fundamental knowledge or our clear duty. If, for a instance, a photo of Titan contractors using an Iron Maiden did or did not surface, would it really make any difference?

The Thugs will attempt to make any new evidence appear out of context and impeachable. We need to reassert the context at every opportunity, so that the enormity of the crime and the corroborative clarity of the mass of evidence remains in the forefront.

I am now skeptical about the Obama adminstration’s motives. But a political insider I know made an interesting point: whatever you think Obama intended, the effect of his actions has been fatal for the Bushites. The way in which the Administration has rolled out the evidence–with great show of reluctance and repeated rounds of suspense and revelation–could almost be designed to build the context mentioned above while fqanning public indignation. Every week or two, the White House sadly acquiesces to the courts (no political witchhunts here) and piles another neatly interlocking layer of damning truth on the existing heap. At this point, witholding anything, even for a few days, increases the perception that it will be damning. At best (from a Thug point of view), the pictures will confirm what we already know.

At this point, my source argued, given the steady revelations and the attempts to implicate the Democaratic Congressional leadership, nobody is going to be able to pull an Iran-Contra Commission and immunize away any hope of prosecution. The game is aleady afoot and the play-along-to-get-along set is running out of options. Even a special prosecutor will be a longshot soon–the ordinary Justice Department processes will have to crank into motion and proceed to the inevitable outcome, whether any of the politicos want such an outcome or not.