Why torture photos need to be released...

There has been much debate over whether the Iraqi torture photos and perhaps videos should be released. A judge has so ruled. Here are one writer's thoughts on that and I agree with him.

"The issue is not whether sickos have the right to see such pictures and gloat over them--and no one, by the way, is being forced to go to any media and look at them. The point is that we have a society where the civilian voters and officials very properly control and regulate the actions of those whom we arm and empower to protect us (the military and the police). As such, it is essential in a free society that the people have the right to all the facts whenever improper acts and activities are alleged to have occurred in those government-controlled situations.

We need to find out what happened, who was involved and how high up the responsibility for those actions reaches--and we have to be aware that those involved will use every means they can to cover up, hide, and minimize the improper conduct involved. Many jobs, promotions and careers hang in the balance, and even criminal prosecutions can result. So we need to get everything out there on the table, nothing held back, no "secrets" withheld now and that we find about later to our detriment.

I'll tell you one thing that really troubles me here. How do uniformed American troops get involved in this kind of thing in the first place? Where are their peers, their teammates, their non-com superiors, their officers while this kind of thing is going on in a major way?

There is one thing this Iraq engagement has done, which is unforgiveable in my mind in terms of all of those who have served in the armed forces in past generations and all of those now serving who are not involved in such conduct. This war, for the first time in our history (certainly in terms of the overseas and world image of the American soldier), has placed the American soldier in our handling of captives on a level with, or very close to, that of the Nazi stormtroopers, the Gestapo, the worst of the Japanese offenders in WW II, the KGB in the USSR, and those Viet Cong bastards who tortured and abused our American prisoners of war in Nam. Until the continuing disclosures of things like this coming out of Iraq, the torture and abuse of prisoners, and the callous disregard for the enemy in general, was always something, in the minds of Americans and most of the civilized world, that other people did. Even then, it was only carried out, we believed, by the very dregs of those other fascist and communist and despotic nations.

Now we have Americans, in the performance of their military duties, directly involved in the torture and abuse of prisoners, in the deprivation of rights of captives, and in the mass demeaning of those we have captured or killed. Worse, all of this has been done in ways that by any definition would be called pornographic.

Yes, we need to know all the facts; yes, we need all the pictures; and yes, we damn well better put a stop to this kind of thing once and for all. It is doing more damage to our Flag than all the communist propaganda of the cold war ever thought of doing, and more damage to our Flag and to our nation's image than any hippie-dippie, drugged-out flag-burners in the 60s and 70s ever thought of doing.

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