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• Thursday, June 11, 2009 07:27 PM

  Obama gets war funding by personally guaranteeing suppression of torture photos

  Well, this isn't promising.

  http://www.salon.com/wires/ap/2009/06/11/D98OPKB80_us_congress_war_funding/index.html (Linked at sig.)

  Jun 11th, 2009 | WASHINGTON -- After a flare-up over controversial detainee abuse photos, House-Senate negotiators sealed agreement on a crucial war-funding bill Thursday night when President Barack Obama personally guaranteed the photos would never be released.

  To reassure Democratic moderates who had balked at House demands that Congress not interfere in a lawsuit to force the release of photos of U.S. troops abusing detainees, Obama promised to use every available means to block their release. His powers include issuing an order to classify the photos, thus blocking their release under the Freedom of Information Act.

  So first Obama said he'd comply with the court order and release the photos, and then he decided to appeal, and then he decided that he was absolutely against releasing the photos (which he has claimed aren't particularly inflammatory), and then he seems to have relied on senate mentor Joe Lieberman to get a new law in to block the release of the photos, and now having failed there is appealing to the US Supreme Court but apparently doesn't care what the USSC says because he has personally guaranteed that these photos won't be released apparently even if he has to have them made classified.

  Transparency rules!

  (Good thing there's not that much to these photos. Otherwise they might actually go to some trouble, yes?)

  —Roman Berry Read Roman Berry's other letters
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