Unless these crimes are addressed, we are all implicated.

Excellent comment, peterr. Well-spotted.

How do you know that Obama will lose the court battle? what makes you think that the fix isn’t in?

Thanks peterr!

Obama’s avoiding a confrontation with the Pentagon, yes. But more than that, I think his strategy is long-term; instead of reversing Bush with executive orders (which can just be reversed again by some later administration), he wants the Supremes to overrule the Bush doctrine for future presidents. Maybe I’m crediting him with too much, but the guy’s always playing six-dimensional chess, isn’t he?

Gotta run. (Sorry for the hit & run.)

The larger metaphor is that America is the world’s biggest sadist, and we can’t have that kicking around now can we?

Thanks, peterr. It’s been very hard to determine just which pictures were at stake in Obama’s reversal. The information that rape pictures were out there has been around for a long time and many of us thought those were at stake here. That’s hard to reconcile with Obama’s statement that the pictures at stake on the reversal were not particularly alarming. ACLU has been frustratingly silent on clearing this up for us, and they are in a position to know.

Abu Ghraib, and THIS are just two of the reasons I don’t miss President Bush.

It’s a WAG based on the ruling from the Appeals court that smacked the government’s case pretty hard. I think the initial decision not to appeal it to SCOTUS was based more in their legal judgment on the merits of this particular case (i.e., “we’re not going to win”) than on a shift toward more openness generally.

Note, for instance, that the Obama administration has been just fine at asserting state secrets defenses and screaming “national defense! national defense!” in other cases.

Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.

Another apparently shows a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts.

If this is true we need to get our troops out of Iraq now. Obama should just blame Bush say its impossible to keep the troops in Iraq now and publicly arrest Bush for war crimes and turn him over the the Hague (that move might help keep our troops safe).

If that’s what Obama is doing, I wouldn’t call it a strategy.

That’s more of a Hail Mary prayer.

Strategy is something that you create and carry out. Punting this to the Supremes on the chance — chance! — that they’ll do what you hope is a dicey proposition at best.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the Daily Telegraph newspaper had shown “an inability to get the facts right”.

You never heard the Pentagon say one word about Judy Miller’s reporting!

jeez,
If we didn’t invade other countries and have thousands of troops still deployed maybe the best way to protect the troops would be to grow up , put aside bush’s childish adventures and bring all the troops home now. Then obey the court order to release SOME of the photos.

Petraeus and Odierno must really fear going to Leavenworth.

In order to get what they want (namely, to avoid a jail cell), they’re leaning hard on the old right-wing meme, engendered by the Democratic Congress of the 1970s finally pulling the plug on Nixon’s refusal to leave Vietnam, of Democrats as being “weak on Defense”. It’s especially potent with Democrats that have no personal military background, so they’re a lot easier to roll and guilt-trip into hawkdom. They did it to both Bill and Hillary Clinton, and they’re now doing it to Obama.

They’re also no doubt upping the fear factor by saying that “if these photos get out, then half our field commanders will be lost to courts-martial, just when we need them the most to ensure a smooth withdrawal”. The thing is that they’re only delaying the inevitable.

I am not sure what purpose their release would serve other than a legal one and the consequence would be to imperil our troops, the only protectors of our foreign policy, when we most need them

My Bold When we most need them? Then just why did YOU ALLOW THIS TO HAPPEN?
Or are Pentagon Generals that uninformed about what goes on in the countries they invade?
Just who runs the wars the Generals? Or is it the CIA and Blackwater?

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the Daily Telegraph newspaper had shown “an inability to get the facts right”.

Five o’clock follies!

Petraeus and Odierno must really fear going to Leavenworth.

It’s a dreadful little berg; lived there for three years when my father was a student and then taught at the Command and General Staff College.

Oh, you mean the prison. ;)

Could the GOP be opposing the Sotomayor nomination until they get a deal on torture?
Could the GOP concern about Abortion and Racism just be a ploy to rile their Dupes? A ploy that will be forgotten as it has been by the GOP leadership countless times over the years after the GOP gets what they want?

As reports of even more unfathomable atrocities by the Bush Administration emerge and confidence in elected leadership is severely tested, will the democracy be stable enough to survive?

No.

Yes. Yes. And a ploy to raise cash from their base.

Democracy might, However government by Cronies who cares if they are qualified they support me that might be in trouble.

The GOP seems to rule by fooling some of the people all of the time with emotional appeals to Lizard brains. Then they hope for low turnout elections and hope that will be enough.

I am very upset that Bush, Cheney, Rove and other former administration thugs are given so much press coverage and the opportunity to recreate the record on their suspected, but obvious, deviance while running the country. Obama is so wrong to voice his thoughts about ‘not looking back, look forward’. Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush, at a minimum, got their hooks into the country under Nixon; they continued under Bush to downgrade America.

Why do the press and the talk shows give them time? Rather, overwhelm the airwaves and newspapers with a search for the truth. Obama is so wrong to allow this malfeasance to go unresolved – it will ultimately undermine his presidency.

Mr. Holder, do your job for the good of your country or the spawn’s will go on, and on.

Ah, but of course the Pentagon is making squawking noises with bogus stats claiming that freed Gitmo detainees are just ITCHING to allegedly resume their terrorist ways! So guess what most Americans who don’t read blogs are seeing?

Scott Horton is confirming the Daily Telegraph story.

(rimshot)

That’s it. Somebody in DoD has a conscience and won’t let Betrayus and Odiouso get away with these atrocities.

This passage was telling:

Whitman has used this sort of bludgeoning attack on news organizations before. Ask Michael Isikoff at Newsweek. When Newsweek’s April 30, 2005, issue ran a brief Periscope piece referring to an internal report’s description of an incident in which a Quran was thrown down a toilet, Whitman launched a dramatic attack on the publication, pressuring it to retract and apologize. The report had, it later turned out, been correct. In 2007, the ACLU secured, through a Freedom of Information Act request, a copy of a 2002 FBI report which documented a prisoner’s charge that his Quran has been thrown in the toilet; five other cases of mishandling Qurans were reported, although the Pentagon insisted that none of them amounted to desecration.

The most prominent victim in the past of Whitman’s disinformation may have been none other than Barack Obama. On the campaign trail, in Austin, Texas, candidate Obama said he had gotten a message from an Army captain in Iraq who described how his unit had been shorted in munitions and equipment. I learned from reporters that Whitman started a whispering campaign with the Pentagon press corps telling them (not for attribution) that he didn’t believe Obama’s claims were true. Whitman’s game, however, was stopped by ABC reporter Jake Tapper, who tracked down the captain, interviewed him and fully verified the account.

I think that in this case, Obama’s suffering from the same malady as Carter and Clinton: The perceived “need” to counter conservative-fueled public perceptions of Democrats as “weak on Defense” (because the Pentagon will never forgive them for ending Nixon’s war six years after he said he would) leads Democratic presidents, especially those with no military service history, to be utterly roundheeled dupes for Pentagon shysters.

Check out Marcy’s take on the whole “Gitmo recidivist” nonsense, which the Cons and their Pentagon moles started flogging right after Obama signed his Gitmo closure order:

Call me a cynic, but any video released just days after Obama became President and two days after he signed an order to close Gitmo ought to be treated with caution. We’ve seen way too much explicit propaganda in the last eight years to take this as face value.

And guess what? Looks like the people behind the videos are indeed using their Pentagon moles to lie to and fool Obama on this issue.

The contents of these photos are no surprise to our enemies overseas, and suppressing them has the opposite the inteded effect voidced by the Administration.
Sunlight is required to bleach the stain.
Our troops are not the “protectors of foreign policy”. This circular argument collapses upon itself.
Military force does not determine policy, it impliments it.
And unless our policy is to torture and abuse other nations, we need to correct errors in the implimentation in an unambiguous and transparent manner.

Are they “fooling” Obama, or is he a willing participant in these games? If someone is not fired over this imbroglio, then we can assume that Obama is a willing participant.

Torture is a universal acid. It destroys everything in a society that it touches. Whatever clean image Obama has is about to be sullied for the rest of his administration. The torture genie is out of the bottle. If he doesn’t take care to destroy it, and not think he can finesse it, trick it back into the bottle, then he will suffer the fate of all politicians infused with hubris, self-love and self-deception.

What a shame, because we really do need leaders now. The time for him to turn this around for his own sake is amazingly brief, perhaps days, perhaps even hours, for these pictures could be leaked at any time (and I’m talking about the Abu Ghraib photos, not necessarily the ACLU FOIA photos, though those will be bad enough).

A taste of what those Abu Ghraib photos portend: if these aren’t the worst, I shudder to think of what we will see.

Bush apologists argue that these photos represent abberant behavior by a small fraction of U.S. troops (aka “bad apples”) and not the official policies of the Bush administration.

But, at the release of the unanimous report of his Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Carl Levin said:

“Authorizations of aggressive interrogation techniques by senior officials resulted in abuse and conveyed the message that physical pressures and degradation were appropriate treatment for detainees in U.S. military custody,”

Per Politico:

Levin said it was still a “question” whether senior Bush administration officials “should be held accountable.” He called for Attorney General Eric Holder to name a retired federal judge or some other “distinguished individuals” to look at “what steps, if any, should be taken” against high level officials.

In other words, there is sufficient basis for concern about the connection between these atrocities and Bush Administration policies to warrant a Justice Department investigation.

The suggestion in The Early Morning Swim below that Conyers will be another Rushbo basher who crawls back to The Fat One begging for forgiveness is probably wrong. I have a feeling that the Congressional leaders are finally realizing that standing up to the right-wing nuts like Limpbaugh is a good thing, and that groveling before him just shows how weak they are.

I think Powell was the first to challenge the crazy wingers, and that more and more Republican leaders are starting to realize that bending to the will of the rabid 25% of their base is not necessarily a winning strategy!

What do others think?

But they have no military experience either, a fact that was always finessed in the media, while it damned Bill Clinton, a Rhodes scholar for student deferments, they send virtually nothing of Cheney’s multiple deferments for studying at what, Wyoming State? For pete’s sake, they’re just covering their backsides, while the democrats of the 70s tried to end our first ‘war from hell’. Iraq is our second one.

I think you mean Cornyn (head of the RNCC), not Conyers (D-MI).

The photos the Obama administration seeks to block the release of are pictures of abuse and arguably torture of captives held in locations other than Abu Ghraib. They are NOT the sensational rape and murder pictures that we’ve been hearing about for years.

When the Pentagon (and White House) “denies” the Telegraph report — as they will no doubt deny the Horton “confirmation” of the Telegraph report — they are denying that the pictures in question in the ACLU FOIA request that the Administration seeks to block release of show rape and murder.

They do not.

These are not the “other Abu Ghraib” pictures that Sy Hersh and others refer to. So far as I know, the Pentagon and Obama Administration aren’t saying anything about THOSE pictures, and I don’t know who has sued in Federal Court to obtain release of THOSE pictures.

When the ACLU requested pictures are released (as I’m fairly confident they will be) they will seem surprisingly tame. What’s in those pictures is described in this report:

http://www.pubrecord.org/tortu…..hheld.html

They show soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan holding guns to the heads of captives with bags over their heads, captives in “stress positions,” a dead native who is said to have launched a rocket propelled grenade at an observation tower, etc.

There are also apparently other pictures of similar forms of abuse taken elsewhere in Iraq and Afghanistan, and those other, similar, pictures may be part of the release that has been ordered by federal court.

But these are NOT the pictures of rape and murder from Abu Ghraib. And as far as I know, neither Obama nor the Pentagon has said anything about release of those pictures.

I don’t want to see these damn pictures, I just want a jury to see them. The people so grievously mistreated deserve the compassion of anonymity. Obama is within his rights as CinC to appeal and will follow the courts instructions should they lose that appeal. In the meantime a bit less waving of the bloody shirt might be in order. Please.

The specific photos that the ACLU has been fighting the DOD, Bush, and now Obama to get released are small in number, but as the DOD recently told Judge Hellerstein,

As the Government has now determined that it will not seek certiorari of the Second Circuit’s decision, the Department of Defense is preparing to release the 21 photos at issue in the appeal and 23 other photos identified as responsive. In addition, the Government also is processing for release a substantial number of other images contained in Army CID reports that have been closed during the pendency of this case; these other images will be processed consistent with the Court’s previous rulings on responsive images in this case. The parties have reached an agreement that the Department of Defense will produce all the responsive images by May 28, 2009.

Emphasis added.

Shorter DOD: we’re giving up the 21 photos that were the specific subject of this legal action by the ACLU, as well as another 23 that are related. Also, there are lots of other photos that meet the same FOIA criteria, and we’ll work out what happens with them subject to the final judgment in this case.

Except, of course, that this letter was written before Obama decided to appeal the case to SCOTUS after all.

The rape photos exist, and by fighting the release of these 21+23 photos, the WH and DOD are trying to prevent the release of the “substantial number” of others — the ones the Telegraph quotes Taguba on.

Thanks for the clarification. So, it seems this is an Obama preemptive strike to stop the release of other photos, perhaps there being something in this “substantial number of other images” that would really be disturbing. Could that included the AG photos/videos we have not seen. Where are those photos? I presume DoD has them, so they would become “responsive images”?

In their letter to Hellerstein, the DOD says they have them — they’re in “closed Army CID reports.”

The ACLU FOIA suit was for information including images about prisoner abuse at locations OTHER THAN Abu Ghraib. The images ordered for release and those additional images being prepared for release are from Army criminal investigation files of abuse that fits the “FOIA criteria” — meaning at locations OTHER THAN Abu Ghraib.

The rape and murder pictures AT Abu Ghraib that Taguba and Hersh and practically all of Congress knows about are NOT part of the ACLU FOIA release the White House now says it will fight.

It’s important not to conflate these sets of pictures in the public mind, because once the ACLU FOIA pictures are released (which I think we can reasonably expect to happen), and there’s no rape and no murder in them, the public will think, “Well that’s all there is, and that hysteria was about nothing.”

No one in an official capacity is mentioning the other Abu Ghraib pictures, but practically everyone on the internets is conflating those pictures with the ones the ACLU was suing for.

Not wise.

Keep the two sets of pictures separate.

The arguments the Obama administration is making, however, are precisely the ones they will have to make on those other pictures. That’s why they’re fighting hard here.

Your point about not conflating the groups of pictures is well taken, but your assumption that the rape and murder pictures are limited to just Abu Ghraib seems dubious. The overarching image that is emerging is not that this was a localized set of bad apples, but an overall approach to detention throughout the theater of operations.

If I had to bet, I’d bet on there being rape photos from beyond AG before I’d bet on them being limited to AG.

I am much disillusioned with our President. I think that moral courage is definitely in order at this point.

But, in this case, what he is doing may be wise. By forcing this seemingly unwinnable case to its final, irrefutable legal conclusion, Mr. Obama is, wittingly or unwittingly, doing more to destroy the Bushist legacy than he could by simple Presidential fiat.

Remember–this whole mess turns on the idea of an absolute, imperial Presidency and a law that is no more than what the President says it is.

If Mr. Obama simply brought the DoD to heal by exercising his power as commander-in-chief, the real issue would be obscured. The Republicans would try to make political hay of it and muddy the waters, as they have on Guantanamo funding. Then, later, when memories have dimmed, a future President could reverse Mr. Obama. The most pernicious claim of Bushism–the idea that the law is the simply the will of the President–would become established as a precedent. Obstruction of justice would become an inherent power of the Presidency, followed, no doubt, by torture.

But if an immensely popular President with a big Congressional majority makes a public spectacle of being dragged kicking and screaming into court, loses, and is forced to do something that he says he does not want to do, somethng that, he says, impinges on the inherent powers of his office, then a precedent is set. The President bows to the courts and the letter of the law. Not even the suspect wiggle room created by Gonzales et all remains. The linchpin of the whole shabby Bush structure is definitely judged to be so much smoke and mirrors.

This could be the beginning of something.