SHOULD ALL THE TORTURE PHOTOS BE RELEASED?

Obama Trades Our Principles For Cheneyism
By Steve Hynd

A lot of people as writing about Obama's decision to flip-flop on the release of hundreds of photos of abused and tortured prisoners at the hands of the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan. So far, most blog posts on the subject listed at Memeorandum are by wingnuts cock-a-whoop at such an obvious example of the White House doing a backflip into their court. But my friend David Neiwert at Crooks And Liars gets it exactly right in exposing not only Obama's bad decision but their support for it.

[Obama will] now be using up [his] political capital to defend Dick Cheney and his merry band of torturers. Now, that's a lovely prospect, isn't it? I'm sure Cheney will repay him generously for the effort.

It would be nice, though, if someone took the time to point out once again that the very fears about Arab reaction to these photos, and the consequences for our soldiers in the field -- not to mention the radicalizing effect it has, effectively creating future terrorists -- are exactly the main reason why torture doesn't, can't, and never will keep us safe. And why Cheney and Co. utterly failed to actually keep Americans safe, not just during their tenure, but for the foreseeable future.

I have to wonder, along with Neel at Unqualified Offerings, if the any of these supressed, incriminating photos were of new Afghanistan commander Stanley McChrystal's old command at Camp Nama in Iraq, where he condoned and co-operated in abuse and torture from 2003 to 2006. In a law-abiding alternate-dimension Obama administration - i.e. the one we thought we were getting - that would be reason enough to nix McChrystal's appointment, no matter how brilliant a commander he might be. Promoting criminals rather than throwing them in jail is itself an act of criminal complicity, surely. But instead I'm nearly certain the subject won't even come up at his confirmation hearings.

People, you've been sold a pup by the American Tony Blair, as I feared from the very first. We were told to Hope (tm), but instead we've got a neo-interventionist Imperial presidency just as nasty as Bush's, but with a smiley-face mask. As Andrew Sullivan writes:

From extending and deepening the war in Afghanistan, to suppressing evidence of rampant and widespread abuse and torture of prisoners under Bush, to thuggishly threatening the British with intelligence cut-off if they reveal the brutal torture inflicted on Binyam Mohamed, Obama now has new cheer-leaders: Bill Kristol, Michael Goldfarb and Max Boot.

And you know what the worst of it is? I honestly believe that any of the other primary choices offered by the two major parties would have been even worse as occupants of the Oval Office. We don't just need better Dems, we need better alternative parties and a better electoral system which lets those parties stand on an equal footing with the Big Two who co-operate in obstructing third party efforts at every turn.