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.
It's been said with regards to the Watergate scandal and the
Nixonian presidency that the cover-up was worse than the crime. A month
after Nixon resigned, his successor, President Gerald Ford pardoned
him, and many observers believed his technically-less-than-one-term
administration never recovered from that action.
"The cover-up continues," a New York Times editorial declared on Sunday.
The United States Supreme Court granted a request Tuesday to delay
its decision on whether the Obama administration may continue to block
the release of images depicting the torture of terror war detainees in
U.S. custody.
The decision to delay comes as Congress and the Obama administration
appear to have agreed on the passage of a new law that would delegate
all authority over the photos to the Secretary of Defense, effectively
removing the courts from the process.
WASHINGTON - Congress is set to allow the Pentagon to keep new pictures of foreign detainees abused by their U.S. captors from the public, a move intended to end a legal fight over the photographs' release that has reached the Supreme Court.
MEMORANDUM FOR: The President
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
SUBJECT: Accountability for Torture
We
write you, Mr. President, as former intelligence professionals to voice
strong support for Attorney General Eric Holder's authorization of a
wider investigation into CIA interrogation. We respectfully disagree
with the direct appeal to you by seven former CIA directors to quash
that wider investigation.
WASHINGTON - The United States Supreme Court will hear the U.S. government's appeal on a lower court ruling requiring the release of photos showing the abuse of prisoners held in overseas facilities.
The government is appealing a 2008 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit which ruled that the government must release the photos to comply with an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit.
I've written several times before
about the amazing quest of Binyam Mohamed -- a British resident
released from Guantanamo in February, 2009 after seven years in
captivity -- to compel public disclosure of information in the
possession of the British Government proving he was tortured while in
U.S.
When a U.S. federal court sentenced Chuckie Taylor, Jr., in 2009 for the crime of torture of his fellow Liberians, the Department of Justice proclaimed,
"Our message to human rights violators, no matter where they are,
remains the same: We will use the full reach of U.S. law, and every
lawful resource at the disposal of our investigators and prosecutors,
to hold you fully accountable for your crimes. ...[T]orture will not be
tolerated here at home or by U.S. nationals abroad."
The single most significant event in shaping worldwide revulsion
towards the violence of the Iranian government has been the video of
the young Iranian woman bleeding to death, the so-called "Neda video."
Like so many iconic visual images before it -- from My Lai, fire hoses
and dogs unleashed at civil rights protesters, Abu Ghraib -- that
single image has done more than the tens of thousands of words to
dramatize the violence and underscore the brutality of the state
respon
