Where are the Rest of the Abu Ghraib Photos?
Matt Welch, writing at Reason Magazine, says we will never see the remainder of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse photos. The ones that were going to make us all sick to our stomachs:
The images, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Congress, depict "acts that can only be described as blatantly sadistic, cruel, and inhuman." After Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) viewed some of them in a classified briefing, he testified that his "stomach gave out." NBC News reported that they show "American soldiers beating one prisoner almost to death, apparently raping a female prisoner, acting inappropriately with a dead body, and taping Iraqi guards raping young boys." Everyone who saw the photographs and videos seemed to shudder openly when contemplating what the reaction would be when they eventually were made public.
What's the excuse? Officials have provided two reasons:
[the] "unwarranted invasion of privacy" and the potential impact on law enforcement.
The ACLU is planning a court challenge to the Administration's non-compliance with its FOIA request for the photos:
We've seen virtually no criminal investigations or criminal prosecutions," says ACLU staff attorney Jameel Jaffer, who plans to challenge the nondisclosure in court. "The vast majority of those photographs and videotapes don't relate to ongoing criminal investigations; on the contrary they depict things that the government approved of at the time and maybe approves of now."
The ACLU is still hot on the torture trail. Yesterday it released an Army memo that suggests that Lt. Gen. Sanchez perjured himelf in the torture probe.
The ACLU said that a memo sent by Lt. Gen Sanchez flatly contradicts sworn testimony given by him before the Senate Armed Services Committee, in which he denied authorizing highly coercive interrogation methods.
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