Gates has decided — no torture photos for you!

(9 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Good old Robert Gates, good friend of the Bush family, a player in the Iran/Contra scandal, the man who wanted to bomb Nicaragua in 1984, and former head of the CIA and now Obama’s ruler of all things Military Industrial Complex, has decided for us, that we shouldn’t see the infamous torture photos that have for so long been hidden from our view.

You know, the ones of soldiers raping and murdering and torturing children in front of their parents, those nice nasty bits of American Empire which salted the wound we’d cut in the breast of Iraq, that led to the brutal murder of the five mercenaries whose charred corpses were hung from the bridge?    Which led to the destruction of Fallujah, where American soldiers then shot families in their sleep, left the bodies to be eaten by dogs, burned people’s flesh off their bones with white phosphorous, and shot unarmed people who were swimming across the river to escape the carnage?

Yeah, it’s all part of the big picture, and we’re not allowed to see it.

Why?   Well, the “official excuse” is that it will put American soldiers in danger.  

Wait a minute, I thought we were at “war”, and occupying a country that doesn’t want us there.  Aren’t they by default ALREADY in danger?    Oh, no, they’re perfectly safe now, but if the American people see these photos, they’ll be in MORTAL DANGER!    Be afraid, be very afraid!

The people who would be in danger from these photos being released are people like Robert Fucking GATES, that’s who would be in danger.  And his buddies in the Bush family, and Donald Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney, and all the other so-called “leaders” who pulled the trigger on these war crimes, and made us all complicit in a reign of terror and death and murder and torture upon a people who had nothing to do with any attack upon the United States.

But I disgress.   Here’s the story:

Secretary Gates signs order barring release of torture photos

See, that’s all you gotta do, just sign an “order” and you’re done with it.   No photos for you, taxpayer!   You don’t get to see the human suffering your tax dollars caused, oh no, you can’t handle the truth!


Pursuant to new powers delegated to him by Congress, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has executed an order blocking the release of photos depicting the torture of detainees. In doing so, it becomes highly unlikely that the Supreme Court will further consider making the photos public, as a lower court had ordered.

In a new supplemental brief [PDF link] filed with the high court, the administration’s attorneys argue that the new law Congress passed to allow Gates this authority effectively exempts the photos from the Freedom of Information Act, therefore invalidating an earlier lawsuit.

“It now seems likely that today’s action will put an end to the issue, making it unnecessary for the court to hear the case,” MSNBC reported.

I’m amazed nobody seems to have discussed this, anywhere that I see.   This used to be a big deal for us.   Now?    WTF is going on?


“In order to withhold the photos, Gates simply had to certify, as he did in the court filing, that ‘public disclosure of these photographs would endanger citizens of the United States, members of the United States Armed Forces, or employees of the United States Government deployed outside the United States,'” Mother Jones reporter Nick Baumann noted. “In other words, their release had to endanger someone, somewhere. And in the unlikely event that Gates had to stretch the truth to make that certification, it wouldn’t matter, since there’s no provision in the law that allows any court to review Gates’ determination or rule on whether it was truthful.”

So let’s be sure we have this straight.   Pretty much nobody in the American government wanted these photos to come out.   Because with a few exceptions who I could count on the fingers of one hand, pretty much EVERY MEMBER OF CONGRESS voted for these war crimes.    They all supported these Wars of Agression from Day One.

So what do the guilty parties do?   Why they pass a bit of legislation enabling the War Criminal War Secretary to simply sign an order that renders the photos “unshowable”.

End of story.

Nice work if you can get it, being a Congressperson and all of that.   Do you find laws to be inconvenient?   Be above the law!   Make up your own damn laws!  

And the truth shall forever be buried.

Fallujah:

Fallujah:

25 comments

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    • Inky99 on November 15, 2009 at 07:43
      Author

    that we were never gonna see those.

  1. The administration undoubtedly has its reasons for withholding the photos. It’s certainly possible that the release of more photos could help terrorist recruitment or further enrage anti-American sentiment abroad. But make no mistake. The new FOIA exemption that the Obama White House sought and obtained has one obvious result: shielding evidence of government lawbreaking, abuse, and torture under the Bush administration from public scrutiny. So much for Obama’s claim that “transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.” There’s a name for what the Obama administration did on Friday. It’s called a coverup.

    MotherJones.com

    • TMC on November 15, 2009 at 09:03

    in charge of the evidence..genius..pure criminal genius. And Obama signed the appropriations bill it was attached to..so much for restoring the rule of law..Even if the Supreme Court decide to look at the case, my money is a 5/4 to let Obama hide those pictures. Obama, Holder, Gates are all now complicit in Bush’s war crimes.

  2. It’s like Vegas for sadists.

    Of course you also realize that since torture is now one of those things we Just Don’t Talk About(tm), this is going to make the Pet Sacrificial Goat circus trial in NYC that much more… expedient.

  3. … just like in the parallel universe in Vaterland.

  4. The drumbeat on torture became a little waylayed because of all the concentration on the health care reform issue.  But we should never ever cease pushing on accountability and every exposure possible.

    The truly asinine aspect is that the world knows we tortured and have probably seen more photos than we have (Australians have quite a number of them).  The Iraqis, themselves, said they had absolutely no problem with their release since they had lived through the shock of literally witnessing the tortures.  So, it’s just more (unlawful) BS! Do Gates, et al. truly believe that if we don’t see these photos that will somehow alleviate the reality of them and the war crimes?  Always an attempt to delude themselves and us!

    The ACLU had this to say:

    “We are disappointed that Secretary Gates has invoked new legislation to keep the torture photos secret,” said Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU National Security Project. “These photos are an important part of the historical record and they are crucial to the ongoing debate about accountability. In withholding the photos, Secretary Gates has cited national security concerns, but no democracy has ever been made stronger by suppressing information about its own misconduct.”

    and the ACLU intends to press forward:

    The ACLU plans to file a responsive brief. The organization had previously sent a letter to Secretary Gates urging him not to exercise the authority to suppress the photos in its case, stating that the photos “are of critical relevance to an ongoing national debate about accountability.”

    “The government’s argument for suppression of the photos sets a dangerous precedent – that the government can conceal evidence of its own misconduct precisely because the evidence powerfully documents gross abuses of power and of detainees,” said Alex Abdo, a legal fellow with the ACLU National Security Project. “This principal is fundamentally anti-democratic. The American public has a right to see the evidence of crimes committed in their name.”  

    Prosecute BushCheney.org  What you can do!

  5. What if photos, which were extremely graphic re-enactments of the horrors reported through various channels, went viral on the net?  Perhaps photos that are even more graphic than those which Gates & Company are hiding from us?

    If they were received from an untraceable source, the websites posting them could add the disclaimer that they are still attempting to determine the authenticity of the photos that they have received and perhaps ask if anyone seeing them may have actually been present to witness the acts depicted in the images.

    Might the government then consider releasing the actual photos as a means of damage control?  

    I know, this would be a moon shot, but who knows?

  6. and Gates gets to ignore the freedom of information act,

    and arrangements with lobbyists for Health Insurers and Pharma are sort of done in the back room, making the live CNN hearings of healthcare reform unnecessary etc.

    Not quite the transparency I was promised. But there must be some unseen, clever political considerations behind these actions that will be revealed to us later?

    • Arctor on November 17, 2009 at 20:18

    in his statement on the photos that these represented the actions of only a few rotten apples! Let’s be fair and recall that the only folks responsible for all the torture, rendition, and murder have been punished: Lynde Englund and Charles Grainer! Obama’s work here is done folks, relax! Let’s look forward, no?

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