Note: I've changed the title of this from "Prisoner Abuse Photos Emerge Despite Obama's Bid to Block Them." That title overstated the import of these photos. These appear to be the same as the extremely graphic and not work safe photos that Salon published previously. The larger point remains. The release of damaging photos is very difficult to control and the story won't go away because we would like it to.
The inevitable result of trying to suppress information is that the truth will out, regardless. In this case, an Australian network that obtained images of prisoner abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan has published them.
One picture showed a prisoner hung up upside down while another showed a naked man smeared in excrement standing in a corridor with a guard standing menacingly in front of him. Another prisoner is handcuffed to the window frame of his cell with underpants pulled over his head.
Others yet to be released reportedly show military guards threatening to sexually assault a detainee with a broomstick and hooded prisoners on transport planes with Playboy magazines opened to pictures of nude women on their laps.
The images emerged from Australia yesterday where they were originally obtained by the channel SBS in 2006 in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal. They were not distributed around the world at the time but are now believed to be among those the president is trying to block. [emphasis mine]
They will be distributed around the world now, and not by an American government making a clean break with the past. It's too late now, but the release of these photos by the Obama administration, with a strong repudiation of the policies that led to the abuse depicted, would have allowed the White House to control the story.
Update: As the blockquote says, these are photos obtained in 2006, and the 21 the administration is attempting to block may be among them. That isn't clear, and isn't asserted in the story as clear. The point remains, however, that there are who knows how many damaging photos floating around out there and they will likely continue to be published. And apparently there are others "yet to be released" that are likely to come.