A senior military officer familiar with the photos told me that they would likely provoke a storm of outrage if released. ... Some show U.S. personnel engaged in sexual acts with prisoners and each other. In one, a female prisoner appears to have been forced to expose her breasts to be photographed. In another, a prisoner is suspended naked upside down from the top bunk of a bed in a stress position. [...] Still other withheld photographs have been circulating among U.S. soldiers who served in Iraq. One soldier showed them to me, including a photograph in which a male in a U.S. military uniform receives oral sex from a female prisoner.
Time was when I was proud of my country, a country that stood for strength, peace, and human rights. Jeebus, was I naive or what?? It turns out that we're not better than any other country. Over the eight years of the Reign of Error © , America willingly and knowingly engaged in war crimes of the sort that those on trial at Nuremberg would have been proud of. Not only did Americans engage in torture that was demonstrably sanctioned by those at the highest levels of government (i.e., the White House), we've also engaged in the most degrading sorts of sexual abuse and humiliation. As a former Army Reserve military police officer, I can tell you that American soldiers who would engage in this behavior know full well not only that this sort of behavior is just plain wrong, but also that it meets the definition of a war crime under the Geneva Convention and the generally accepted laws of war.
OK, so if we accept the premise that torture and sexual abuse of prisoners is a war crime (and of that there should be no real debate), there's only one question deserving of an answer. Why are those who sanctioned and engaged in these activities not being prosecuted? Sure, some of the low-hanging enlisted fruit from Abu Ghraib were prosecuted and convicted (Lynndie England and Charles Greiner among them)...but where were those farther up the command chain? And what about those who twisted and murderized the law in order to cook up legal "justifications" for "enhanced interrogation methods"? Memo to John Yoo, Jay Bybee and their ilk: Yes, I'm talking 'bout you; y'all really ought to be getting measure for an orange prison jumpsuit.
I would agree that releasing yet more pictures of Americans engaging in torture will serve to fan the flames of anti-American hatred. Nonetheless, NOT releasing the photos sends an even worse message- that we have something to hide. Until and unless we're willing to step up and do the right thing by owning up to what has come before, how can we begin to guarantee that our future will look any different from our past? We can't change the past. What we can do is be open and honest about what's already occurred. In doing so, we must commit to, and clearly lay out a plan for, ensuring that these egregious and criminal human rights abuses will not occur again.
There can be no excuse for violating our existing treaty obligations in the name of expediency. Torture doesn't work, not even in the Right's wet-dream fantasy "ticking time bomb" scenario. It's wrong, it's immoral, and, even worse, it's illegal.
I'm tired of having to say thins, but...I'm ashamed of my country....
WE DESERVE BETTER. Lord knows those in our custody certainly do.
