Defense Department, Detainee Photos | 04/24/2009 12:25 pm
Defense Department to Release Prisoner Treatment Photos. How Bad Will They Be?
If you think the torture debate is subsiding, think again.
Not only is the controversy over who knew what and when still swirling around waterboarding and other "enhanced" interrogation techniques, but the Defense Department has now agreed to release at least 44 photographs of alleged abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan by U.S. personnel.
The photos were part of military investigations at detainee facilities other than Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The photos will be released May 28 — a legal win for the ACLU, which filed a Freedom of Information Act request for records pertaining to those "enemy combatants" detained at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan.
Defense officials told The Chicago Tribune they are concerned the release of the photos — some of which show military personnel pointing weapons at detainees — could incite a Mideast backlash, even though they’re not nearly as bad as those released in 2003 of treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Those included pictures of naked prisoners being led around on leashes, and snarling dogs, among others.
"The U.S. government’s detention of hundreds of prisoners at Bagram has been shrouded in complete secrecy. Bagram houses far more prisoners than Guantánamo, in reportedly worse conditions and with an even less meaningful process for challenging their detention, yet very little information about the Bagram facility or the prisoners held there has been made public," said Melissa Goodman, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project. "Without transparency, we can’t be sure that we’re doing the right thing – or even holding the right people – at Bagram."
Read more about: Abu Ghraib, abuse, ACLU, Afghanistan, Barack Obama, Enemy Combatants, FIOA, Guantanamo Bay, Iraq, News, Obama Administration, Pictures, torture, US, war on terror
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195 Reader Comments (so far…) Sign In or Register to comment
Proud? Obama has just single handedly damaged our intelligence gathering ability and undermineded our Military. 4 former CIA directors, including Obama’s own Leon Pannetta has said that this is NOT a good thing to do.
Obama is just attempting to inflame the left so that he has their support for more money grabbing, power grabbing policies. He is putting political decisions before our National security. He is an inexperienced leader and a narcsissist that can not see beyond his own interests.
Now is not the time. Our Nation is in danger from people who do not give a good damn about anything other than to kill us.
Kelly in Texas,
Torture is not intelligence gathering.
Torture is a war crime.
And as far as money grabbing, you should look at the prior adminstration.
According to?
NP
I appreciate what you are saying, and I am opposed to torture. When my son was in Iraq last year they found and rescued Iraqis that had been kidnapped and were being tortured by Al Queda. There were children’s fingers nailed to the wall. It was incredibly upsetting to our guys that found those chambers. Disgusting. Blood all over the walls, words painted on the wall with the people’s blood. Totally serious dehumanizing practices. Then they would take the victims and sometimes bury them alive or hide them in underground tunnels for ransom. Then they would abuse the family until they paid the ransom on their child or family member. My son wouldn’t even tell me the worst of it, but he had a very hard time with it.
My concern is, more pictures being released will only fuel similar actions on the part of the Taliban and AQ. Not just more attempts to kill Americans, but more attempts to torture and kill civilians. What will the ACLU gain by that? How much transparency will there be about the unintended consequences of the ACLU’s hunger for power? I wish there would an honest person in the media that would do a study about how the violence increased after Abu Gharaib? How long we have been stuck over there because of refueling insurgencies? I just wonder. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe the ACLU getting what it wants is more important than those peoples lives. I don’t happen to think so.
They politicize it to no end, and recruit with it as they did after Abu Ghraib. There will be no end to it and we will never get out of there. What is the objective? Isn’t the greater objective to get our people out of there and not have to spend so much money on warring? They will run it on television 24/7 as they did before. Do you have any idea how many people died because of those pictures that were released before. My son and my nephew were over there at the time and people they shared their food with then turned on them and began shooting from the windows of their homes when they saw a soldier. You must remember, 99% of the soldiers did not do that type of stuff, yet they get killed for it. They just want to do their patrols without trouble, finish their deployment and get home to be with their families.
Many people are uneducated and will be told that this is all new stuff. Not things that happened back in ‘03 and connected with Abu Ghraib. The uneducated over there tend toward superstitious. The effort that our military has made to work with them - is greater than at any other time in history. It should not be thrown away. Trust me, many people will believe it is new stuff because the mullahs will politicize it that way. I hope they have the sense to want peace for their country.
What if the ACLU is wrong about all of the intended consequences and the Middle East once again falls into 50-100 deaths a day, can we prosecute the ACLU?
They already ARE politicizing this. And showing the world that the BUSH policies are not AMERICAN policies is the best thing we can do to to promote Democracy in the world, to be able to demand good treatment for our own people and to be able to speak out again for human rights.
We allowed fear to put us in this terrible situation, we cannot allow fear to keep us there. Unless we openly investigate and deal with our war crimes, they will ALWAYS be used against us and we will be at more risk in the world and continue to decline in our standing around the world. You are operating from an assumption that the rest of the world is not far ahead of us on this curve… they know about what we’ve been up to and they ARE using it against us, for recruitment and you can believe they will use it to justify mistreatment of our troops if they’re captured.
Also, unless we investigate and get to the bottom of exactly what happened and who was involved, anyone who wants to use this against us is free to exaggerate and make stuff up and we will have no proof that they were wrong, because we did not investigate and make it official.
DeBurca
They will use anything. There was a story in the Mid East the Obama was going to start another war over there because of his father’s brand of Islam. Obviously totally untrue, but there is a large group that distrusts him. I heard he made great progress with many leaders in the Mid east at the conference he went to, that is great, I hope it will work and I don’t have any reason to believe that it won’t. But the mid East is a hornets nest.
You have to explain your statement "You are operating frin an assumption that the rest of the world is not far ahead of us on this curve… they know about what we’ve been up to and they are using it against us…." I am missing what you are trying o say.
What makes you think they don’t already mistreat our troops if captured. I know a lot more that what I would like to about what they do.
Your third paragraph just seems like a watered down argument to me. Anyone can use anything they want at any time and the media will make it real. Revealing this stuff will have no impact on that.