The Obama administration is supporting Sens. Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman’s Detainee Photographic Records Protection Act of 2009.
As Greenwald states, (this bill)
literally has no purpose other than to allow the government to suppress any “photograph taken between September 11, 2001 and January 22, 2009 relating to the treatment of individuals engaged, captured, or detained after September 11, 2001, by the Armed Forces of the United States in operations outside of the United States.” As long as the Defense Secretary certifies — with no review possible — that disclosure would “endanger” American citizens or our troops, then the photographs can be suppressed even if FOIA requires disclosure. The certification lasts 3 years and can be renewed indefinitely. The Senate passed the bill as an amendment last week.
…What kind of a country passes a law that has no purpose other than to empower its leader to suppress evidence of the torture it inflicted on people? Read the language of the bill; it doesn’t even hide the fact that its only objective is to empower the President to conceal evidence of war crimes.
That this exact scenario is now happening in the U.S. is all the more remarkable given that the President who is demanding these new suppression powers is the same one who repeatedly vowed ”to make his administration the most open and transparent in history.” After noting the tentative steps Obama has taken to increase transparency, the generally pro-Obama Washington Post Editorial Page today observed: “what makes the administration’s support for the photographic records act so regrettable” is that “Mr. Obama runs the risk of taking two steps back in his quest for more open government.”
While I understand that Obama entered the Oval Office following an administration that greatly expanded executive power and was criminal in its considerable violations of the Constitution and rule of law, the increased use of ”state secrets” justification is complete bullshit. Merely saving the government from embarrassment or preserving political capital are not appropriate reasons to sacrifice transparency and disclosure. Greenwald continued…
What makes all of this even worse is that it is part of a broader trend whereby the Government simply retroactively changes the law whenever it decides it does not want to abide by it. For decades, we had laws in place authorizing citizens to sue their telecommunication carriers if the telecoms allowed government spying on their communications in violation of the law, but when it was revealed that the telecoms did exactly this, the Congress simply changed the law retroactively so that it no longer applied. For decades, we had laws imposing civil and criminal liability on government officials who engaged in or authorized torture, but when it was revealed that our government did that, the Congress just retroactively changed the law to protect the torturers. And now that courts have ruled that our decades-old transparency law compels disclosure of this torture evidence, the Congress is just going to retroactively change the law — again — this time to empower the President to suppress that evidence anyway.
The debate over whether there is value in disclosing these specific photographs is entirely misplaced. That isn’t how open government works. The burden isn’t on citizens to prove that there is value in disclosure. Everything that government does is supposed to be transparent to the public unless there is a compelling reason for secrecy — and the whole point of FOIA always has been that mere embarrassment, the mere fact that information reflects poorly on our government, isn’t a legitimate ground for concealment. That’s a critical principle for open government. This new law explicitly guts that principle. It institutionalizes the pernicious notion that secrecy is justified where disclosure would reflect badly on the Government and thus “endanger” American citizens and/or our troops.
Combine all of this with the increasingly disturbing spectacle taking place in a California federal court in the Al-Haramain case — where the Obama DOJ is on the verge of being sanctioned by a federal judge for defying the court’s order to make available documents relating to Bush’s illegal eavesdropping activities — and the infatuation with excessive presidential secrecy, the linchpin of government abuse, appears alive and well in the new administration. Is there really anyone who wants to argue that defiance of a federal court’s order and enacting a new law authorizing suppression of torture evidence — the disclosure of which is compelled both by courts and FOIA — are remotely consistent with anything Obama said he would do, or remotely consistent with what a healthy democratic government would do?
As I said, Obama came into office after 8 years of utter incompetence, indifference and mismanagement. I wouldn’t be surprised if he found elephant dung under some shredded documents when he opened the top drawer of his desk in the Oval Office. Though it’s obviously way too early to judge the administration, I think he is generally moving this country in the right direction. He has been proactive in areas from health care (SCHIP) to civil rights {of some} (Lilly Ledbetter Act) and has appropriately engaged the foreign community. However, for someone who has a background teaching Constitutional Law, I am incredibly discouraged by his administration’s continuation and (in some cases) expansion of Bush-era policies in the areas discussed above.
Unlike some liberals, I was under no illusion that Obama would be the leftist-ideologue, elected to swing the pendulum 180 degrees. He never presented himself as that guy during the campaign. But as a self-proclaimed pragmatist (and student of history), he should realize that sweeping the past 8 years under the carpet only ensures that these transgressions will occur again, giving this nation the proverbial “black eye,” and ultimately eroding the fundamentals of our democracy and making this country less safe.
yeah I disagree.
Our government, and by extension the American People, tortured detainees in Iraq, in Guantanamo and in rendition sites throughout the world. We know this, it’s well documented, photographs have been shown time and again of the inhumane conditions and torture techniques our operatives implemented. How many more times do we need to release photographs to illustrate that fact.
I WILL play the security card here because it’s relevant. Think about how this plays in the real world and I suspect that’s exactly what Obama did. Photos are released, this inflames terrorists or would be terrorists and the next time one of our soldiers or citizens is captured, the recent release of photographs gives them justification to torture or kill that soldier or citizen. I’d like to protect the lives of our soldiers and the security of our country. And no, I don’t think we’re sacraficing the rule of law nor our American values by not releasing these photos. We tortured, we’ve admitted to it, how many more times do we need to hammer the point home with graphic images. we don’t gain anything by releasing, we only stand to be less secure and our soldiers less safe. You have to take that into consideration and I don’t think you are.
If I found out my wife was cheating on me and someone sent me the pics to prove it, I don’t need to see new photographs a few years after the fact to remind me again with graphic images that my ex-wife had the mailman’s dick in his mouth. I got it the first time.
If photos were to emerge that shows evidence that we still are torturing, under the new admin, then this is new evidence and should be brought to light. But these are photos that are in addition to ones we’ve already seen about tortuous acts we’ve now come to acknowledge. They serve no purpose but to reinforce negative and false perceptions of terrorists and would be terrorists, to reignite tensions, to recruit terrorists, to put our soldiers in greater danger and make our country less safe.
The last sentence should have read:
They serve no purpose but to reinforce negative and false perceptions terrorists and would be terrorists have of the U.S., to reignite tensions, to recruit terrorists, to put our soldiers in greater danger and make our country less safe.
What’s the saying…”the horse is already out of the barn.”
The “security” excuse is running a little thin. Everyone knows we tortured. Everyone knows about Abu Gharaib. Even the goat herder in North Waziristan who has never heard of Hannah Montana knows about Guantanamo and the CIA “black sites.” We know they used these war crimes to recruit other terrorists. They know we tortured. They know we have detained people for years without charging them. That’s why people like you and me were so pissed with the Bush Administration when these stories emerged. We know these policies make us less safe.
Despite the fact that no news network still has a full-time reporter in Iraq or Afghanistan, it’s clear our troops are still in danger. Shit, over 20 were killed in Iraq last month. These pictures won’t change that. Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney repeated that same “endangered” excuse for 7 years, whether it was the Patriot Act, Guantanamo, warrantless eavesdropping, etc. At this point, it’s not for them to decide. As the article states – it’s not about these specific photographs. It’s about transparency.
We know the sycophantic press core won’t dig into these stories. Their joint culpability for deaths in Iraq is clear. They didn’t for Bush and they won’t for Obama. David Gregory has an “objective” panel of 4 D.C. insiders on to discuss whether the DOJ or Independent Investigator should investigate the torture policies of the Bush era. All 4 said “no,” putting words in our mouths saying the “American people want to move forward.” On CNN, Jon King lobbed softballs to Cheney, who took credit for preventing “numerous” terrorist attacks after 9/11. Of course, King doesn’t ask the logical question: “If you’re going to take credit for preventing all these post-9/11 attacks, shouldn’t you take some of the blame for not preventing the worst terrorist attack in our history?” Obama may take some dark comfort knowing that apparently the first terrorist attack is just a practice.
But I digress…The point I was going to make is that these pictures will eventually come out. Many more torture memos will come out. The question is whether you want them to painfully trickle out over the next 5 years, or put the available information out there in the open (minus the info that truly needs to be kept confidential)? Obama needs to give the DOJ the encouragement to investigate (or appoint an independent investigator). Right now, he is hindering the process. The Bush Administration’s war crimes need to be exposed – from Cheney and Rumsfeld to Yoo and Addington, on down the line. If democrats like Pelosi, or that hypocrite Jane Harman are somehow culpable, so be it.
This country’s ruling elites need to be held accountable for their criminal behavior. It’s that simple. This is not a liberal (or conservative) ideal. This is not vengeance. This is about America, our Constitutional democracy, and the Rule of Law. It’s about accountability so these transgressions don’t happen again. It’s not about THESE pictures, it’s about the BIG picture.