Einstein said, "The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of those who are evil, but because of those who do nothing about it."
Given a chance, Dick "Darth" Cheney would run with this one. But Einstein was refferring to the Cheney's of the world, not the other way around.
And it' exactly for this reason, that these images must be released.
It should be fairly obvious that Einstein was referring to his homeland. The systematic torture and murder of millions, done in the name of national security, and national superiority.
And, strangely enough, those very murderer's used the excuse that they were destroying evil people. The circumstances, and the numbers are different in this case, but the sentiment is the same. That every accused person is dangerous, and we have to do sick, vile, evil shit to them to get them to expose their evil plans.
I've heard all the arguments, and find them to be lacking. We put ourselves forward to the world as it's good guy, and we act like the bad ones. We condemn other nations, for what we ourselves are doing. And our leadership just keep plodding along like it's an internal argument.
The document's used to put Saddam Hussein to death are not in any way different than these torture memos. Legal opinions and justifications for the unjustifiable. We've got pictures detailing the abuse, or would if the government were serious about severely punishing any and all participants in the evil done in our name. If they were serious about enforcing the treaties to which we are signatories.
Having documents that support evil are nothing new. The Nazi's had them, and were quite copious. Saddam had them, Chechnia, Romania, whomever. Because governments implement evil through legislation. Germany used the Reichstag fire as it's excuse to legislate evil, and Cheney used 9-11.
But if we want to consider ourselves to be the worlds police department, we need to obey our own, and international law to the letter. We can't be that asshole cop on a power trip - we've all seen one or two of those.
And until we put those 'bad cops' in the 4 by 9 cells that they've earned for themselves, we ARE the evil that Einstein was referring to. Those memo's are the malice of forethought, and the pictures are the evidence of the crime.
Humanity is a work of art that unplugs itself on a regular basis. Please, Mr. Obama, plug it back in.