I've already posted via the original article from the War Room, but feel compelled to say that, as an historian, this is just appalling to hear. Because if those photos are not release, and soon, most of them will likely never see the light of day. We've already seen the CIA ADMIT they destroyed 90+ hours of documentary evidence of government actions. God only knows what else has wound up in the shredder. Obama had one chance to come clean full and fast, and he has not only botched that chance, he has actively worked to undermine all substantive efforts to get the truth about these actions out in the open. He gave us a taste of the policy in the released memos, although I'm sure there is more to that which is been kept hidden. But the activities, he hides. This can only be because he intends to perpetuate those activities, no matter what smiling drivel he says in public.

Let's face it: Obama is now the enemy of our Republic, just as Bush was. He is intruding in a court case to try and surpress evidence, and has threatened our closest ally in order to surpress evidence in a British courtroom. Why I said "perhaps pointless" in my title was not out of any lack of respect for Glenn or fear of reprisals, but out of a growing understanding that the people are no longer sovereign here, and if Abu Graib and Gitmo and Bagram and the lies surrounding the invasion of Iraq haven't shocked Americans into action, nothing will. They will sit in front of their plasma TVs and shrug. They will say it was all a past abberation, that we should just forget it, that other countries do it, too, and silently thank their puny vision of God that they are rich and safe in the greatest nation that has ever been.

I do. Can you imagine if one of them was raped in front of his mother, in order to get them to talk?

Do you have a conscience?

Are you Christian?

Are you even a human being?

I mean, lack of empathy or a conscience is a sign of severe mental illness. Or don't you believe in hell?

You are laboring under the impression that this message about torture is getting out, and that people know what happened. It hasn't, and they don't. If these pictures show clear, unambiguous torure (and chances are, they do) then getting them out is absolutely imperative so that people cannot lie and say these things were nothing, or never happened. Of course, just like Holocaust deniers, you'll have a few screwballs who deny it anyway. But we need every bit of this stuff to be in public view if we are ever to convince the American people that these terrible things actually happened and that something ought to be done about it (like enforce our own laws and treaty obligations).

Let me be blunt: does anybody really need to see those horrific pictures that came out of Buchenwald or Dachau? Would you spare us by taking them out of history books and replacing them with written descriptions? Don't you think that the power of those images, and the fact that Germans were forced to tour the camps and witness what was done, helped to make it unlikely that shit like that would ever happen in that nation again? And that everyone everywhere would all be damn sure that it did happen, and who was responsible? I mean, Bush killed his tens of thousand, and Hitler his millions, so they are not close to being equivalent. But we are a democracy, and they were a dictatorship. We are supposed to have higher standards. Do you really believe that the American people will be as convinced of the horror of what happened, I mean if rape was employed, if we release a written description which will NOT be repeated verbatim on the news or printed in full in most newspapers, if anybody still reads newspapers? Will that have the impact we need it to have if these things are ever going to be repudiated and punished? Think about it.

"Are you seriously suggesting uncut audio/video footage of rape and sodomy should be displayed over the airwaves accessible to billions of homes worldwide with the very real possibility that children will view them?"

If given a choice between my children seeing this offal, and my children growing up in a country where these things are done in their name with impunity, I'd take the risk my kids see it and pray for my country to witness these alleged atrocities and act accordingly. I see no other way for this stain to be purged than for us as a people to come clean and atone for what I was brought up to believe are sins.

As you should have noticed from the comments below what I had clearly placed in quotes. I appreciate the good work you do here, but you should have read the whole thing before you reemed me for saying what I didn't say.

I mean, the Constitution vest the power to set up all courts below the Supreme Court in the CONGRESS, but that would imply that this lying sack gave a damn what the Constitution said.

Let's face it: the government has acted in such illegal and immoral ways that they can no longer even have a hope in hell of convicting dead-on guilty people in any honest court anywhere. So they need dishonest courts. So Obama will supply us with them, stocked with serving military officers who have lost friends and subordinates, in our imperial shenanigans, are predisposed to think of those dragged before them as enemies, and are under no illusion that they are expected by their superiors to hand down gulity verdicts.

Pragmatism at its best! Or, should I say, ugly, amoral expediency.