A senior administration official told FOX News that President Obama told his legal advisers last week that he did not feel comfortable with the release of the photos because he believes they would endanger U.S. troops, and that the national security implications of such a release have not been fully presented in federal court.This is a good decision and I applaud President Obama for putting the welfare of troops in the field over whatever PR benefit he originally thought would accrue from releasing the photos in the first place. People died from the false Newsweek story that we were flushing Korans down the toilet. Imagine what could have happened with release of such photos.
"Obama would be the last to excuse the actions depicted in these photos," the official said. "That is why the Department of Defense investigated these cases, and why individuals have been punished through prison sentences, discharges and a range of other punitive measures.
"But the president strongly believes that the release of these photos, particularly at this time, would only serve the purpose of inflaming the theaters of war, jeopardizing U.S. forces, and making our job more difficult in places like Iraq and Afghanistan," reads a statement from the White House.
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Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Good sense prevails
President Obama has decided that his efforts to ingratiate himself with leftists by trashing the Bush administration is not worth endangering our troops and has decided not to release photos of enhanced interrogations in response to ACLU's Freedom of Information request.
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War on Terror
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5 comments:
My analysis. This is win/win/lose/win for Obama (and I disagree with most of his decisions).
Win - he looks like he's taking charge and saving American lives.
Win - he'd like to be transparent but can't be because of Bush.
Lose - he's let down the base.
Win- how heroic of him not to take orders from his base.
Terry Gain
Yes, what a heroic action to conceal the actions of torturers working under orders from the highest levels of the Bush Administration.
A major misstep by Obama. The more evil the torture, the more important it is to get it out in the cold light of day, to make it harder for presidents to order this evil again.
The forces ranged against our soldiers already know the tactics we used on them. It is the American public who are being kept in the dark here. Anyone celebrating the cover-up is complicit in the war crime.
The photos don't endanger the troops.
The evil actions that the photos show endanger us all.
The photos must be published, so that the evil is exposed, and the evildoers punished, and this sorry crime discouraged from ever happening again, the next time we get a stupid or malicious president.
I agree that the photos should be withheld. Obama said he would release them and promised more transparency, but he also pledged to listen to his generals, and this seems to be their advice. There should be an investigation by an outside prosecutor to at least try to control the political games and bring accountability to anyone, repub or dem, responsible for disgracing our nation.
Interesting, though, that some of the same arguments "liberals" used for not condoning torture and abuse are the same arguments conservatives are using to protest the release of the photos - that it would increase the number of terrorists/terrorist attacks against our troops and our country. This is proof that torture is bad policy (besides being immoral) and Bush/Cheney were miserable failures as leaders.
I'll give the president credit for exercising "good sense" when this decision fades away. But my cynical side, borne of the president's campaign and his political background, makes me think he's merely set himself up to play both sides against each other. Again. By saying he's decided not to release the photos, he's shown conservatives how "moderate" he is. But he has told his Justice Department to appeal the court's ruling. If the appeal decision now orders him to release the photos, he can do so and tell conservatives he tried to be "moderate" about matters, while simultaneously showing the Left that he's never going to cave in totally to those right-wing nutcases.
If this photo dump is forgotten by fall, I'll be pleasantly and very surprised.
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