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.

This Is Good News

Via TPM and McClatchy that Women’s Health Care Services, Inc in Wichita, Kansas will open to provide health care for women next week.  Only by closing their doors do the terrorists, the women-haters the right-wing religious fanatics win.

It does take real courage, not only for the doctor but also for the rest of the staff (read: lower paid) to go to work at a place that has seen so much hate and violence directed at it.

According to the NY Times:

In 1986, a bomb exploded on the roof of his clinic here, Women’s Health Care Services. In 1991, some 2,000 protesters were arrested outside during summer-long protests; in 1993, Dr. Tiller was shot in both arms by an anti-abortion activist while driving away from the clinic. Protests continue there almost daily.

On March 27 of this year it took a jury just 45-minutes to acquit Dr. Tiller “of charges that he performed 19 illegal late-term abortions in 2003.”  Forty-five minutes is barely enough time to elect a jury fore person and go to the bathroom.  Sounds like a witch-hunt to me.

So, to Re-Cap: Women can still receive safe health care that is still legal in the state of Kansas beginning next week.

“The need of the moment is not one religion, but mutual respect and tolerance of the devotees of the different religions.” Mahatma Gandi