As blogged previously, the Obama administration is blocking release of photos documenting torture in Iraq and Afghanistan by US forces - ironically, just as Obama speaks against censorship in China. The CPB says, "We think someone with access to the photos should simply leak them on the web, saving tax payers a load of cash and letting people know just what it is our twin occupations are really about."
A call to leak photos documenting torture in Iraq and Afghanistan
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*sigh* sometimes I wonder if we'll ever see any real change from one president to another....
If the torture were still ongoing and the public wasn't widely aware of it, I would support releasing the photos as a way to shame the administration and shackle them with some accountability.
However, there are no allegations of torture stemming from the current administration, and releasing these old photos today would almost certainly inflame hatred against the United States, incite violence and cost lives.
Exactly what benefit justifies that price?
Is everybody really that naive? Really?
Does everyone think that the USA has just started Torturing?
Well guess what?
WE DO ... we torture, we have tortured our adversaries for probably as long as we have been a country. What about our tortured people? What about the truck drivers and other contractors? They get their heads cut off. Their children will be able to google their fathers death. What about them. Are their torturers different because they are religious zealots, freedom fighters? Please.
So spare the rest of us your righteous indignation.
If the Bush administration had done its job instead of mucking it up and kept all of this secret like previous administrations have done then all of you bleeding hearts would be complaining about something else.
These pictures should not be released. What would be the reason? Accountability? The Taliban and Al Queda will be calling us butchers and torturers and killers of women and children as they wipe the blood of innocent people off their knives. How about the torture of women in Afghanistan who get acid thrown in their faces because they go to school?
No, they are different because they are the bad guys... is this impossible for you to comprehend?
We want to be the good guys, and the good guys win without torturing. You are welcome to join forces with the torturers you seem to admire - go ahead and be just like those head-choppers and "freedom fighters" since that seems to be your goal, to reach the lowest possible moral point.
Might as well release them, because sooner or later someone is just going to photoshop or stage even worse photographs, and put them out for the world to see. The people that the will attack American soldiers will do so whether those pictures are true or lies.
@Drew
I think we ought to shine a bright light on these "old" human rights abuses so that we don't forget what happened and so that we strengthen our resolve to punish those responsible. I think that's the best way to prevent prevent similar abuses in the future.
BTW How do we know that prisoner mistreatment is no longer occurring?
there is how American policy makers showed there arrogance & hypocrisy..shame on these cowards bast@@@ds... the killars of humanity teach others the human rights.....
now they are also shouting at the trials of innocent 9/11 suspects shouldn't get fair justice in the courts of US soil...
Hey that's great Drew, if you don't catch them red-handed then they get away with it. Awesome society you're proposing there.
"What about our tortured people? What about the truck drivers and other contractors? They get their heads cut off. Their children will be able to google their fathers death. What about them. Are their torturers different because they are religious zealots, freedom fighters? Please."
please what? invade my country and i will be glad to kill you if i get half a chance. contractors? you think that one should respect the lives of employees and mercenaries of an invading force? you deride freedom fighters yet american culture glorifies them when it seems fit (see red dawn, rambo or even the fkin star wars).
americans (and all their allies) have no right being in iraq or afghanistan. iraqis and afganis at least have an excuse for torturing americans what with bombing the shit out of their country and all. what's the american excuse for torturing people?
war is a messy affair and people get killed. kids will google their parents' deaths it's inevitable. but you have no moral high ground in this war, you are the one who started it for god's sake.
Anyone leaking the photos in the USA will be prosecuted for child pornography.
wow, i can't believe all the vowels here. not complaining, just saying.
does it not strike anyone else as odd that the party line is that THE TRUTH will inflame hatred against americans? by this logic, the worse the crime, the less we should ever know of it. contrast this with germany's cultural embrace of the holocaust. much less likely to happen there again.
i guess, yeah they'd hate us for it (i am an american). and they'd be right to.
what about apologizing, convicting those responsible, and withdrawing from their countries. maybe they'd learn to forgive us.
I would think that all these documents are both access logged and watermarked - so 'just leaking them' isn't as straightforward as people seem to think. Even if you were to leak a second generation copy (photo of a photo) you could still be placing yourself in serious jeopardy (because funnily enough, amoral torturing scum aren't going to take being outed and shamed lying down - what's one more corpse?).
"Exactly what benefit justifies that price?"
Honesty, transparency, a willingness for a nation to own up to its own mistakes instead of sweeping them under the rug and pretending we're without stain.
Sure, this administration doesn't torture, we just continue to render folks to countries that have torture, so we can keep our hands clean.
Hey, you know what else incites and inflames people? Invading and occupying their countries.
So we don't do it again in the future
Actually, as the guy who posted that to CPB, I think it's fair to say that history as clearly shown that even when "they" get caught they still tend to get away with it more times than not. There is power in releasing information only in that it helps accumulate a little more anger in the general population and that once the tipping point is reached, change is possible.