Nothing Can Be That Sacred . . .

that it can’t be prosecuted.

no evidence can be that well hid,

that it can’t be uncovered.

I am, of course, referring to the McClatchy story about why the Obama administration did an about face on the decision to release “detainee abuse photographs from Iraq and Afghanistan.”

In the days leading up to a May 28 deadline to release the photos in response to an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit, U.S. officials, led by Christopher Hill, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, told Maliki that the administration was preparing to release photos of suspected detainee abuse taken from 2003 to 2006.

When U.S. officials told Maliki, “he went pale in the face,” said a U.S. military official, who along with others requested anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.

The official said Maliki warned that releasing the photos would lead to more violence that could delay the scheduled U.S. withdrawal from cities by June 30 and that Iraqis wouldn’t make a distinction between old and new photos. The public outrage and increase in violence could lead Iraqis to demand a referendum on the security agreement and refuse to permit U.S. forces to stay until the end of 2011.

Maliki said, “Baghdad will burn” if the photos are released, said a second U.S. military official.

A U.S. official who’s knowledgeable about the photographs told McClatchy that at least two of them depict nudity; one is of a woman suggestively holding a broomstick; one shows a detainee with bruises but offered no explanation how he got them; and another is of hooded detainees with weapons pointed at their heads.

Some of the photos were of detainees being held in prisons, while others were taken at the time a detainee was captured.

“It was not so much the photos themselves, but that the perception that they would be Abu Ghraib-type photos,” added the senior defense official, who said U.S. officials were worried “about the potential street consequences” of making the photos public.

Iraq is scheduled to hold a referendum by July 30 on the accord, which calls for the withdrawal of all U.S. troops by the end of 2011. If the accord were rejected, the U.S. would have to withdraw from Iraq within a year of the vote or by the summer of 2010.

IMO we have been in Iraq  about six and a quarter years longer than we should have been.  So it is long past time to get out.

Any why can’t we prosecute some of the perpetrators in the photos?  Is it because the feelings among the preps is so rampant through out the military that we’d have courts-martial forever?

It is high time we began cleaning house.

Explore posts in the same categories: Human Rights, War Crimes