Suzanimal
12-15-2014, 06:16 PM
The Obama administration is withholding hundreds, perhaps even thousands of photographs showing the U.S. government’s brutal treatment of detainees, meaning that revelations about detainee abuse could well continue, possibly compounding the outrage generated by the Senate “torture report” now in the public eye.
Some photos show American troops posing with corpses; others depict U.S. forces holding guns to people’s heads or simulating forced sodomization. All of them could be released to the public, depending on how a federal judge in New York rules—and how hard the government fights to appeal. The government has a Friday deadline to submit to that judge its evidence for why it thinks each individual photograph should continue to be kept hidden away.
The photographs are part of a collection of thousands of images from 203 investigations into detainee abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan and represent one of the last known secret troves of evidence of detainee abuse. While the photos show disturbing images from the Bush administration’s watch, it is the Obama administration that has allowed them to remain buried—all with the help of a willing Congress.
The president may have entered office promising a new era of transparency—and was even prepared to release at least 21 of the photos in 2009. But Obama pulled back at the last minute at the urging of his top commander in Iraq, who worried the graphic images could generate a backlash against U.S. troops.
“We’re not dismissive of the fact that some people could react badly to the publishing of the photographs,” said the ACLU’s Jameel Jaffer, the lead lawyer in a decade-long legal dispute with the government over the photos. But this does not mean, he continued, that there should be a “massive heckler’s veto that terrorist organizations can wield over the public’s right to know.”
“The public has a right to know what happened in these military detention facilities,” Jaffer added, “in the same way it has a right to know about what happened at the CIA black sites.”
“The public has a right to know what happened in these military detention facilities, in the same way it has a right to know about what happened at the CIA black sites.”
The photos depict the ways that Americans were treating detainees when they were captured and transported, and the way they were treated in U.S. custody. Former Sen. Joe Lieberman has stated that the government had nearly 2,100 photos from these investigations into mistreatment of detainees.
The ACLU first filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in 2004, demanding government information on both the military’s treatment of detainee treatment and on detainees who died in U.S. custody. The case wound its way through the judicial system. And in September 2008, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit ordered the release of a 21-photo subset.
By April 2009, Obama was preparing to disclose those images. An ACLU lawyer at the time called it “a sign that [the Obama administration] is committed to more transparency."
Obama seemed willing, even though the photo trove contained horrors, according to former administration officials, military records, and news accounts at the time.
Some depict U.S. troops posing for “trophy” photos with dead bodies; others, with rifles and pistols held to live detainees’ heads. (At least one soldier serving in Afghanistan tried to excuse his actions by saying he was “joking”; another called the pictures “something cool to remember our time there.”) A third soldier described a different photograph depicting her “as if [she] was sticking the end of a broom stick into the rectum of a restrained detainee.”
A number of these pictures were later revealed to be from the notorious Abu Ghraib detention facility, where U.S. troops famously abused their Iraq captives in the early days of the Iraq War. But the remaining photos are not from Abu Ghraib—they came from investigations into detainee abuse from all around Iraq and Afghanistan.
Top officials—including then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen—were horrified by the images of alleged abuse that extended far beyond Abu Ghraib.
“Despite our best efforts, a misguided and misled few have managed to tarnish that reputation and breach the very trust we have worked so hard to earn. I am appalled by even the suggestion that someone in an American uniform would behave in such a way,” Mullen later wrote in a memo to America’s military service chiefs and combatant commanders.
“We haven’t all absorbed or applied all the lessons of Abu Ghraib,” he added.
In May 2009, however, the president had an abrupt change of heart. Obama went to the South Lawn of the White House, and told reporters, “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.”
The decision stunned Obama supporters who had believed his assertion that his administration would be the most transparent in history. What caused the president to change his mind?
...
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/14/the-detainee-abuse-photos-obama-didn-t-want-you-to-see.html
Some photos show American troops posing with corpses; others depict U.S. forces holding guns to people’s heads or simulating forced sodomization. All of them could be released to the public, depending on how a federal judge in New York rules—and how hard the government fights to appeal. The government has a Friday deadline to submit to that judge its evidence for why it thinks each individual photograph should continue to be kept hidden away.
The photographs are part of a collection of thousands of images from 203 investigations into detainee abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan and represent one of the last known secret troves of evidence of detainee abuse. While the photos show disturbing images from the Bush administration’s watch, it is the Obama administration that has allowed them to remain buried—all with the help of a willing Congress.
The president may have entered office promising a new era of transparency—and was even prepared to release at least 21 of the photos in 2009. But Obama pulled back at the last minute at the urging of his top commander in Iraq, who worried the graphic images could generate a backlash against U.S. troops.
“We’re not dismissive of the fact that some people could react badly to the publishing of the photographs,” said the ACLU’s Jameel Jaffer, the lead lawyer in a decade-long legal dispute with the government over the photos. But this does not mean, he continued, that there should be a “massive heckler’s veto that terrorist organizations can wield over the public’s right to know.”
“The public has a right to know what happened in these military detention facilities,” Jaffer added, “in the same way it has a right to know about what happened at the CIA black sites.”
“The public has a right to know what happened in these military detention facilities, in the same way it has a right to know about what happened at the CIA black sites.”
The photos depict the ways that Americans were treating detainees when they were captured and transported, and the way they were treated in U.S. custody. Former Sen. Joe Lieberman has stated that the government had nearly 2,100 photos from these investigations into mistreatment of detainees.
The ACLU first filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in 2004, demanding government information on both the military’s treatment of detainee treatment and on detainees who died in U.S. custody. The case wound its way through the judicial system. And in September 2008, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit ordered the release of a 21-photo subset.
By April 2009, Obama was preparing to disclose those images. An ACLU lawyer at the time called it “a sign that [the Obama administration] is committed to more transparency."
Obama seemed willing, even though the photo trove contained horrors, according to former administration officials, military records, and news accounts at the time.
Some depict U.S. troops posing for “trophy” photos with dead bodies; others, with rifles and pistols held to live detainees’ heads. (At least one soldier serving in Afghanistan tried to excuse his actions by saying he was “joking”; another called the pictures “something cool to remember our time there.”) A third soldier described a different photograph depicting her “as if [she] was sticking the end of a broom stick into the rectum of a restrained detainee.”
A number of these pictures were later revealed to be from the notorious Abu Ghraib detention facility, where U.S. troops famously abused their Iraq captives in the early days of the Iraq War. But the remaining photos are not from Abu Ghraib—they came from investigations into detainee abuse from all around Iraq and Afghanistan.
Top officials—including then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen—were horrified by the images of alleged abuse that extended far beyond Abu Ghraib.
“Despite our best efforts, a misguided and misled few have managed to tarnish that reputation and breach the very trust we have worked so hard to earn. I am appalled by even the suggestion that someone in an American uniform would behave in such a way,” Mullen later wrote in a memo to America’s military service chiefs and combatant commanders.
“We haven’t all absorbed or applied all the lessons of Abu Ghraib,” he added.
In May 2009, however, the president had an abrupt change of heart. Obama went to the South Lawn of the White House, and told reporters, “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.”
The decision stunned Obama supporters who had believed his assertion that his administration would be the most transparent in history. What caused the president to change his mind?
...
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/14/the-detainee-abuse-photos-obama-didn-t-want-you-to-see.html