Showing these pictures will strengthen the resolve of those who want to prosecute, but probably also those who really do hate Americans. True, Glenn, there are already plenty of reasons for Afghanistanis to hate Americans. Let's give them more. How are we going to solve the problem of the Taliban and Pakistan and the nuclear weapons that the Taliban might get hold of over there? (That really is a mushroom cloud scenario - except this time a plausible one.) I don't know that Obama's right in the way he's handing all of these issues, but he's sure got a lot of thinking to do - and none of these issues are being considered very carefully here.

There is more to be accomplished and more resolve that needs to be strengthened than just prosecuting the torturers. In order to even find out what has happened, we need the testimony of torture victims. That will only happen if the torturers go to jail. In fact, under international law, that is why they are supposed to be taken into custody during the inquiry. That and so the Dick Cheneys and Karl Roves don't try to pull the government down or threaten it -- like what is going on now. If it takes the pictures to drive it over the top and start that process, then they are of more value than any deterrent effect of not showing them.

We have to prosecute the torturers. Especially the designers of the torture regime. But we can't suddenly pretend that we can just wave goodbye to all of the problems that remain in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan. (And no, I'm not in favor of endless war in any of those places.) If temporarily withholding inflammatory photographs from the public (NOT the courts) is helpful to our people stationed there, then let's not make them public. I can live without seeing a photograph of a rape just as I can live without seeing the dismembered bodies of the victims of the September 11th attack.

The biggest single thing the Americans do in Afghanistan to inflame the public is throw people in prison by the thousands. Showing these pictures will inflame the public, there and here. If it results in stopping the insane export of our prison culture to Afghanistan and Iraq, then it will do more to curb Afghan and Iraqi outrage than any other single thing we could do right now.

Show the pictures. Now. So no one can possibly forget. So no one can possibly split hairs and wonder whether what was done was torture. So that the charge of mass or administrative torture, a crime against humanity, can be finally put on the table, and the press has no where to go with their limp reporting, and the criminals themselves can't find anything that could possibly justify it that wouldn't also justify the worst monsters in history.

It was pictures of the police beating civil rights demonstrators being shown to people far from the pitched battles that put the Civil Rights Movement over the top. It was pictures of the Tet offensive that put opposition to the Vietnam war over the top. It was pictures of the Boston Massacre that put the Revolutionary War over the top. Our troops need a good reason to disobey illegal orders. Ending the impunity for all those involved will be that good reason. That might just save more lives of troops than anything else we can do. And if it gives those who would go to war at the drop of a hat pause to find out they don't have cruelty in their arsenal anymore, even better. People need to go to jail. No pictures makes it easy for Barack Obama and Eric Holder to avoid confronting destiny.