House-Senate negotiators reached agreement late Thursday on a $105.9 billion wartime spending bill after last-minute assurances from President Barack Obama that he will use all his powers to prevent the disclosure of controversial photographs depicting the treatment of detainees held by the U.S. military.
I have read that one of the reasons they are so keen to keep these photos from coming out is that they depict abuses at places other than Abu Ghraib and therefore show just how systematic our torture policy has been, and not, as officials want to portray, the aberration of a few soldiers at Abu Ghraib who have already been punished.
Meanwhile, I repeat…
A crucial CIA Inspector General’s report from May 2004 is expected to reveal some long-hidden truths about the Bush administration’s use of torture.According to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, “This report is sort of the big kahuna in terms of what we have been waiting to see from the government’s own files on torture. That report, which is long and has been described by people who have seen it as ’sickening,’ apparently stopped the torture program in its tracks.”
[...]
“There are three key questions to look for,” [Newsweek’s Michael] Isikoff explained. “Were there harsh interrogations that began before the … legal authorizations? … Did they go beyond what was authorized? … Did it go beyond just finding out about possible plots against the United States to provide other information, such as supplying possible evidence that could be used to justify the war in Iraq?”
[...]
Isikoff emphasized, however, that almost none of this information is being released voluntarily. It’s being slowly pried out through Freedom of Information Act requests, most of them filed by the ACLU, and “it’s become trench warfare — document by document.”
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
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