I have a question for you (or anyone else that cares to answer it): What is wrong with the Obama Administration taking the position that the pictures will endanger our troops and should not be released and exhausting all legal avenues to fight for their point of view? If they can convince the SCOTUS that they are correct, is this wrong? I believe that they are making a reasonable argument and I’m content for the SCOTUS to be the final arbiter on this matter. Even if this is being done purely as a delaying tactic (and, to be clear, I don’t think that this is the case) to avoid releasing the photos at a particularly volatile time (Pakistan, N. Korea, Iran, etc.) I think that this is a responsible move by the administration. The president reversed his decision on releasing the photos after being asked to do so by his top generals – should he have ignored the generals? I see this as yet another sign of an intellectually engaged president who is willing to change his mind when he is persuaded that it is the correct thing to do – one of the main reasons I voted for him (in my mind, the worst characteristic of President Bush was his refusal to change his mind ever, even in the face of overwhelming evidence). I also think it is ridiculous to attach greater blame to President Obama or equivalent blame to everyone in congress who voted for funding the war (I’m looking at you BVM). As Mespo72^3 and Mike S. pointed out, the logical conclusion is that we are all guilty in this case (unless you haven’t paid any federal taxes in the last 8 years…). I think that (especially in cases like this) it is important to apportion the blame and culpability carefully. From what I’ve learned, the real villains in this story seem to be Yoo, Addington, Bybee, Gonzo, and Dick the war criminal. I would not even be shocked if President Bush did nothing that he should be prosecuted for (my guess is that he was negligent in relying on the legal opinions of these (fill in appropriate derogatory phrase of your choice), but it seems to me that the criminal acts were the issuing of reprehensible and completely wrong legal opinions and memos and putting pressure on the lawyers to issue opinions supporting predetermined positions (which I’d bet came from Dick the war criminal, not his little buddy). To say that a member of congress who voted to continue funding our army while it was in the field is just as culpable or that President Obama is more culpable than these #@$%ers is logically equivalent to saying that every crime should result in the same punishment (say the death penalty). The only punishment that I believe it is appropriate to advocate for these other people is to advocate that people not vote for them because of these votes when they run for re-election.

Don’t get me wrong, I completely support your position. This is just one of many government crimes of the past decade that should be openly investigated, from top to bottom.

I didn’t vote for War-Funding and these links will be remembered by the mothers and other loved ones of the murdered and maimed in the illegal Wars.

Those who voted ‘Aye’ on War-Funding in Congress Killed and Maimed Our Troops and Funded Torture!

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/vote.xpd?vote=h2008-432

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=110&session=2&vote=00162

These and All War-Funding Votes in Congress Killed Our Troops and Funded Torture!

“Those who Funded the War Killed Our Troops –…”

****************

Ah, that would be all of us since it was tax dollars. Where should we report for execution, oh keeper of morals?

Upon entering the Senate in 2005 through April 2007 Obama voted for every war-funding bill that came before him. On 6/26/08 Obama voted for passage of H.R. 2642, the Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2008, a war- funding bill. Obama, despite his anti-war rhetoric, has cast at least 11 votes for war-funding bills.

The list of War Criminals includes all those in Congress who voted to invade Iraq, those who voted to fund the war and the continuing occupation and all the political, civil and military leaders of America responsible for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They have all conspired in War Crimes against our country and internationally.

Obama is a fascist, murderous imposter who should be arrested and removed at once from the Office of President. Obama and co-conspirators have been guilty of War Crimes for years in “these Wars of Aggression which caused the death, maiming and displacement of millions in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the death and physical and mental scarring of thousands of American soldiers.” Obama approved funds which were used to buy bombs and bullets to murder and maim tens of thousands of Iraqi, Afghan and Pakistani children.

On following video a mother speaks to Ari Fleischer and the Freedoms Watch ad campaign.

I would got to rebel reports for a good examination of the history regarding General Taguba’s statements. It appears that political pressure is at work in this situation. Go back to the entry of last Thursday and move up the tread to see what you think.

As to Obama. First he told the ACLU that he could not release the pictures because they would be involved in prosecution. This story changed, almost overnight, to be they would harm our troops while he simultaneously claimed they weren’t that big of a deal anyway. None of these statements can be simultaneously true. I cannot believe that these 44 photos are innocuous while everything else coming from Abu Ghraib is really horrific. That just doesn’t make sense.

The pictures should be released, period. They bear witness to the crimes of our govt. We must not shrink from the knowledge of what was done in our name.

‘Taguba says the Telegraph story got one important fact right: He said he does support Obama’s decision to fight the release of the images subject to the lawsuit, even though he has not seen those images. “No other photographs should be released,” Taguba told Salon, because he worries additional images might threaten the safety of U.S. troops.’

So the guy that said these comments causing this whole firestorm now wants these comments to be forgotten because they might threaten the safety of US troops? WTF?!?!?!?

On CNN’s Late Edition on December 16, 2001, Senator Levin said that “The War against terrorism will not be finished as long as [Saddam Hussein] is in power.”

As Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Levin said during a hearing on September 19, 2002 that “We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the world.”

The story at this link is the problem with being too quick to accept news stories, whatever the source, as being whole or even partly true. The possibly incorrect story then becomes the focus of debate as if it were true and somewhere along the line the truth gets lost. This is why it is my preference to state my own opinions, without trying to lend them credibility by links to stories that support my theories.

The Bush/Cheney Crime Family and the Republican Party perfected this technique by releasing fabricated stories and then debating the fabrication, rather than the truth behind it.
The original story’s cited about the General gave a totally different impression, than his position here.

It is a supreme U.S. Crime too as the international law is part of our Constitution.

Actually, we still don’t know what’s in any of the photos as they haven’t been released. It would seem strange that these 44 pictures would be substantially different from the others that General Taguba saw. Be that as it may, here is what Bill Moyers wrote about torture and prosecutions for war crimes. It’s worth reading. One of the most important points is contained in the last paragraph. There were brave people who stood against torture. They suffered for it, but they took it on, no matter the price.

“…No political party would dare make torture a cornerstone of its rejuvenation if people really understood what it is. And lest we
forget, we’re not just talking about waterboarding, itself a trivializing euphemism for drowning.

If we want to know what torture is, and what it does to human beings, we have to look at it squarely, without flinching. That’s just what a powerful and important film, seen by far too few Americans, does. Torturing Democracy was written and produced by one of America’s outstanding documentary reporters, Sherry Jones. (Excerpts from the film are being shown on the current edition of “Bill Moyers Journal” on PBS — check local listings, or go to the program’s website at PBS.org/Moyers, where you can be linked to the entire, 90-minute documentary.)

A longtime colleague, Sherry Jones and the film were honored this week with the prestigious RFK Journalism Award from the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights. Torturing Democracy was cited for its “meticulous reporting,” and described as “the definitive broadcast account of a deeply troubling chapter in recent American history.”

Unfortunately, as events demonstrate, the story is not yet history; the early chapters aren’t even closed. Torture still is being defended as a matter of national security, although by law it is a war crime, with those who authorized and executed it liable for prosecution as war criminals. The war on terror sparked impatience with the rule of law — and fostered the belief within our government that the commander-in-chief had the right to ignore it.

Torturing Democracy begins at 9/11 and recounts how the Bush White House and the Pentagon decided to make coercive detention and abusive interrogation the official U.S. policy on the war on terror. In sometimes graphic detail, the documentary describes the experiences of several of the men held in custody, including Shafiq Rasul, Moazzam Begg and Bisher al-Rawi, all of whom eventually were released. Charges never were filed against them and no reason was ever given for their
years in custody.

The documentary traces how tactics meant to train American troops to survive enemy interrogations — the famous SERE program (“Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape”) — became the basis for many of the methods employed by the CIA and by interrogators at Guantanamo and in Iraq, including waterboarding (which inflicts on its victims the terror of imminent death), sleep and sensory deprivation, shackling, caging, painful stress positions and sexual humiliation.

“We have re-created our enemy’s methodologies in Guantanamo,” Malcolm Nance, former head of the Navy’s SERE training program, says in Torturing Democracy. “It will hurt us for decades to come. Decades. Our people will all be subjected to these tactics, because we have authorized them for the world now. How it got to Guantanamo is a crime and somebody needs to figure out who did it, how they did it, who authorized them to do it… Because our servicemen will suffer for years.”

In addition to its depiction of brutality, Torturing Democracy also credits the brave few who stood up to those in power and said, “No.” In Washington, there were officials of conviction horrified by unfolding events, including Alberto Mora, the Navy’s top civilian lawyer, Major General Thomas Romig, who served as Judge Advocate General of the US Army from 2001 to 2005 and Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Couch, a former senior prosecutor with the Office of Military Commissions.”

Furthermore, it says something about Obama. It’s inconceivable that he does not know about the photos that he wasn’t going to release. Now he is not just complicit in covering up prisoner humiliation, but prisoner rape as well. Did we really elect this guy?

Obama’s claims are technically correct, since he was only going to release a limited subset of the photos that did not show any rape, not the ones that did. Of course, this does not change the fact that there was rape at Abu Ghraib.

http://www.reuters.com/article/mediaNews/idUSN3040902820090530

Obama is much smarter than bush. He engages in many of the same policies as bush, but tries to do so under cover of law. For example Holder has said we can do preventative detention as long as it hangs on a ruling of Congress or some other part of the international law of warfare. However, in the case of war crimes, there is no cover of law, however tennuous that “cover” may be. These investigations must proceed, both from a legal standpoint and an ethical one. I defy one person who says these crimes should be ignored to stand up and renounce justice for anyone they love who has been criminally harmed. If you believe the person you love should have justice and have it in a timely fashion, and you have any consistency to your ethical principles, you will demand the same for the victims of our govt.’s systemic torture program.

I urge people to see, “Tortured Democracy”. This is what our govt. has become. If we will not take a stand to stop our govt. from engaging in systemic torture and violation of the rule of law, then we should just hang it up and become a corporate dictatorship and be done with the whole thing.

It is x rated.

http://blogdredd.blogspot.com/2009/05/mother-of-all-enemies.html

You don’t know your U.S. law. Funding a War of Aggression is illegal = War Crimes! Funding the War funds Torture!

During the Nuremberg trials, the chief American prosecutor, Robert H. Jackson, stated: “To initiate a War of Aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other War Crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

The Bush administration atleast constructed a bogus legal framework to operate within. Obama, because he atleast pays lip-service to domestic and international law (and yes, you “New World Order” fear-mongers, it applies to us via our voluntary participation in treaties) is perhaps more guilty of breaking the law than those in the Bush administration.

Did I vote for Bush? No. Did I vote for Obama? Of course. But this guys going to finish the job of shredding the Constitution the Bushies started if he doesn’t grow a pair and prosecute. And don’t tell me it’s all up to Holder.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090615/holmes

Based on my experiences, we still don’t know the truth, which goes way beyond the warrantless wiretapping of American citizens, in my opinion. Let’s find out what Cheney, the CIA, the NSA and other government agencies are hiding — let’s find out what illegal operations are still in progress. As John Dean has said, “This is worse than Watergate.” It is. Someday perhaps the whole truth will be known. Let’s continue to push for “the whole truth.”

Here is a link to information on the photos:

http://rebelreports.com/post/114305443/mr-obama-rape-of-prisoners-is-not-particularly

How about filing it under Still Stoned after all these years.

http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/torture/levin-cia-torture-documents-cheney-wants-dont-prove-squat/