May 13, 2009
Why, and for what purposes, do you need more photos released?
As an indictment of the Bush legacy? To inflame and already inflamed public? Or just to get your own 15 seconds?
We all know that torture took place. The entire world knows torture took place. The President came out and said it was torture and that it would not happen on his watch. And the already released memos, photos and videos are ample proof of what took place.
So why the need for more?
What is the ACLU really after?
Not the safety of American servicemembers or Americans traveling abroad or civilian contractors in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The photos you are demanding be released will be plastered all over the Muslim caves and hate factories as living color incentive to kill innocent Americans – any Americans – not just the torturers.
The Muslim savages do not kill selectively. They have made that abundantly clear with their acts to date. They made it clear on 9-11. They made it clear in Mumbai. And they make it clear each time they lie and goad their family members into blowing themselves for the sake of a “Holy War” of blind hate.
You want graphic pictures?
Then call the savages what they are: hate-filled human detonators who pray to Allah to help them kill as many innocent people as they can in the name of Islam. And make clear what they do: rape and “marry” little girls, poison them with gas, disfigure them with acid and sell them to settle a gambling debt or opium habit.
You want graphic photos?
How about photos of young Muslim girls’ mutilated genitals, sliced into and hacked off while they were awake and screaming to that very same Allah to make it stop.
You want graphic photos?
How about photos of raped little girls’ genital and anal regions taken the morning after the “consummation” of their Islam-sanctioned “marriage”.
That is the torture the world needs to see. The torture of innocent newborns, toddlers, precious little girls, teenagers and women. The torture of the mothers, grandmothers, wives, sisters and daughters sanctioned and perhaps already carried out by the adult men in those photos.
What are you doing to bring those torturers to justice?
You seek to release proof of their mistreatment and yet ignore the mistreatment they willingly and with forethought and malice inflict.
They chose to get involved. They chose their path to hate, fully aware of the consequences, including possible capture and torture. The women and children they torture have done nothing but be born. And the ACLU-provided propaganda will be used directly to further the photographed’s cause, which includes the continued torture and oppression of innocent women and children.
Are you okay with that?
If so, you need to document it.
If not, you need to drop your demands.
Torture – any torture – is wrong.
There are degrees of mental, psychological and physical torture, but it is all wrong.
The first act is wrong, as is the second, third and all thereafter.
So why the need for more inflammatory photos?
How do you think they will be used to “improve our standing in the world”?
How will they contribute to the safety of your own daughters?
What do you think will happen to the brave American volunteers who are putting their sanity, lives and limbs on the line to keep your daughters safe?
How do you plan on safeguarding their civil liberties, when the photos you are demanding have no inherent benefit and will serve only to incite more hate, which will be taken out on them?
Where is your own hate being directed?
What is it you really want?
There must be something because no rational American cognizant of the consequences of the photos’ release would demand what you are demanding. Consequences that cannot be denied.
You need to explain to The American People, in precise detail, the exact function you think those photos will play. Saying they will “provide visual proof” that the torture was more widespread than thought is not reason enough.
The men in the photographs have already been tortured. Sad, and wrong, but true. Circulating additional photos will not undo what was done to them or prevent what happened in the very last photo. But they will, WITH ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY, lead to more torture that you will have had a hand in.
You.
The ACLU.
Your own selfish demands will have lead directly to more torture – only this time it will be the torture of Americans. Americans who had nothing to do with what happened in those photos.
Is that your goal?
If not, you need to make clear to The American People – before the photos are released – why your needs take precedence over a single American servicemember’s safety.
You need to list the benefits of releasing those photos – before they are released – so that The American People can be perfectly clear of your motivation when they view the first “visual proof” beheading video of a non-torturing American.
And you need to document, in detail, the absolute necessity of those photos – before they are released – so that the orphans of Americans tortured and murdered as a result of your demands can take comfort in reading that justification when they bring wrongful death lawsuits against you.
Freedom of Information in this case comes with a very clear danger, which you need to document your understanding of, on paper, before the photos are released.
You need to document that you understand we are at war and that what you are demanding will be used as anti-American propaganda to directly further the efforts of our enemies.
And you need to articulate, on camera, that you understand the consequences of your demands and have deemed them secondary to your own motives.
This is not enough.
ACLU’s AMRIT SINGH:
These photographs provide visual proof that prisoner abuse by U.S. personnel was not aberrational but widespread, reaching far beyond the walls of Abu Ghraib.
Any sane reasoning human being knows that. There is no need for further proof. The threshold was met with one photo. The Bush Administration is gone and the present one has sworn not to torture. Providing further photographs to the world is not going to change the past and the future has already been decided upon.
Realize, that if you continue on with your demands, it will be you – the ACLU – not the torturers – who will have endangered our troops. That it will have been ACLU-demanded propaganda that caused harm to Americans who volunteered to protect the Constitution you abstractly quote.
If you continue, be prepared to meet with the parents of brave Americans, who will have been tortured, disfigured, beheaded and killed because of your demands.
If you continue, make sure you have the courage to look them in the eye and explain why you found it necessary to force the release of the very propaganda that led directly to their child’s death and/or torture.
And make sure you can prove, during the wrongful death lawsuits brought on their behalf, that you were acting in the interests of their children’s civil liberties and not those of the avowed terrorists and unrepentant murderers of innocent Americans.
The acts of torture have already been cruelly inflicted and documented. They are not going away. And the additional photos can be viewed by whatever agency needs to see them.
But the general public does not need to see them. And the hate-filled indiscriminate killers of non-torturing Americans most definitely do not need to see them.
Just so there is no lingering confusion:
What you are seeking has no legitimate purpose, which means the release of the photos is 100% unnecessary, since ample evidence of torture already exists and the President of the United States has already stated, publicly, on record, and to the entire world – Muslim and otherwise - that there will be no torture on his watch.
What you are seeking will lead, with 100% certainty, to the torture and murder of honorable American soldiers, who had nothing to do with torture of those men in the photographs.
That means you – the ACLU – will be 100% responsible for any and all violence directly resulting from the release of those photos.
ACLU’s Amrit Singh’s justification for release of photos
To the ACLU re: release of torture photos
POTUS re: release of torture photos
ACLU’s Amrit Singh, Anderson Cooper, Kevin Madden re: photo release
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