Third Deadline for Government to Release Abu Ghraib Images is Tomorrow
With the debate over torture front and center right now, wouldn't the release of these images and pictures scheduled for tomorrow help resolve the issue for the American public?
The images that Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, had maintained in court papers would aid al-Qaida recruitment, weaken the Afghan and Iraqi governments and incite riots against U.S. troops.
The images that Secretary Of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told Congress contain acts"that can only be described as blatantly sadistic, cruel and inhuman."
September 29, 2005-A federal judge has ordered the release of photos and videos of detainee abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, saying that the photos may answer important questions about government accountability. In seeking the release of the images, the American Civil Liberties Union and its allies said the images are a critical component in the quest for public accountability.
Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein agreed, saying publication of the photographs will help to answer questions not only about the unlawful conduct of American soldiers, but about "the command structure that failed to exercise discipline over the troops, and the persons in that command structure whose failures in exercising supervision may make them culpable along with the soldiers who were court-martialed for perpetrating the wrongs."
The government asks for an enlargement of time, beyond the thirty three days already given, within which to consider whether to file an appeal or to comply with the Opinion and Order of September 29, 2005. As I previously discussed, time is of the essence in a FOIA case. Am. Civil Liberties Union v. Dep't of Def., 339 F.Supp.2d 501, 505 (S.D.N.Y.2004) (Opinion and Order of September 15, 2004) (citing Ettlinger v. FBI, 596 F.Supp. 867, 879 (D.Mass.1984)). In my discretion, I grant one further enlargement to the government, to November 15, 2005.
SO ORDERED.
S.D.N.Y.,2005.
American Civil Liberties Union v. Department of Defense
Do you think there's any chance the Judge's order will be complied with by the Bush Administration?
UPDATE:From Wikipedia
At a Columbia University speech given by Hersh in June 2004, author Rick Perlstein reported
[Hersh] said that after he broke Abu Ghraib people are coming out of the woodwork to tell him this stuff. He said he had seen all the Abu Ghraib pictures. He said, "You haven't begun to see evil..." then trailed off. He said, "horrible things done to children and women prisoners, as the cameras run."[4]
At an ACLU convention in July 2004, he further detailed information he had been given about sexual tortures in Abu Ghraib [5]. He claims that there is video footage, being held by the Bush administration, of Iraqi guards raping young boys in the prison. "The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling, and the worst part is the soundtrack, of the boys shrieking. And this is your government at war."