The torture photos

(catching up on the last couple of weeks’ news..)

I’m still undecided about Obama’s decision to withhold the release of photos of American interrogations. His rationale is that the photos would risk American lives does resonate with me- I’ve heard from plenty of sources that the Abu Ghraib photos were great recruitment tools for Al Qaeda (and similar groups), and more photos wouldn’t help. This is a major reason I’m so opposed to torture- it does help our enemies. Torture memos don’t have the same visceral effect of photos, and they are more easily taken out of context.

On the other hand, photos may be necessary to fully understand the crimes committed. “Use of dogs” and “human pyramids” don’t sound so bad, but the photos from Abu Ghraib give a more accurate portrayal what happened. Obama claims that the pictures don’t depict anything we don’t know about, but is it a good practice to let the executive decide what evidence should be released when investigating executive crimes? (I know it’s not the same executive, but I think the point is still relevant.) This is suppression of evidence of war crimes, but I think there’s a lot of evidence already.

One thing I had to consider was this: what if Bush had made the same decision? I’m pretty sure that I’d be outraged by it. I thought about this for a little while, as it seemed to make my lack of outrage seem rather flimsy. There are some key differences, though:
1. While Obama has incentives not to have to investigate torture, Bush’s incentive would be far more direct and dramatic. This would essentially be the defendant deciding on what evidence was admissible.
2. This is happening /after/ the torture memos were released. The memos are far more damaging that the pictures would be (most likely) and the lack of photos does not prevent an investigation from taking place.