Torture photos and videos

The fight still goes on about the new Abu Ghraib photos that the government refuses to release. The latest reason is that their realease would cause "riots." (I can't find the damn link now, so trust me).

I was going to write more on this, but The Poorman does it well enough for me for now.

The ACLU has evidence that the torture taking place in US and affiliated facilities around the world has been approved directly by the imperial President, based on his supra-legal wartime powers. These photos depict illegal actions ordered by the government because we are at war. The government now believes that these photographs and videos need to be suppressed because we are at war. If they believe this strongly enough, and if the court - as seems almost certain - disagrees, they may for the first time publicly invoke that ability "inherent in the President" to set aside the law, which has previously only been invoked in private.

As I've said before, my personal preference would be not to release the photos. My personal preference would also be that these photos didn't exist, and that we had never invaded Iraq, and that I had a pony. As someone who pretty much got everything he could ever want once famously observed, "you can't always get what you want." We don't live in a world where potentially damaging images can be suppressed, because this is the only way (well, one of the only ways) to put an end to the infinitely more damaging policies which the images illustrate....