Most do not want them released. What purpose would it serve? We already know they're horrific (at least for some of us). Do we want to see them posted all over blogs, in newspapers... to further escalate tensions? Or do we want to focus on the tasks at hand, healthcare reform, education reform, energy legislation.
But when it comes to the release of photos said to show U.S. military personnel abusing detainees, a national poll says Democrats and Republicans appear to agree.
Nearly three out of four people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released Tuesday do not believe that the U.S. government should release the photos.
The poll suggests that 87 percent of Republicans are against the release of the photos, with 62 percent of Democrats in agreement. Three out of four independents also don't want the photos to be revealed.
"Obama has been getting some pressure from the liberal wing of his party to release the photos, but six in 10 liberals in the poll say that the photos should not be made publicly available," CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said. Read more at CNN
The ACLU makes a good argument:
The photos are a critical part of the historical record. The government has acknowledged that they depict prisoner abuse at locations other than Abu Ghraib, and it's clear that the photos would provide irrefutable evidence that abuse was widespread and systemic.
The photos would also shed light on the connection between the abuse and the decisions of high-level Bush administration officials. As the district court recognized, the photos are "the best evidence of what happened."
In explaining his change of heart, President Obama said that the release of the photos "would not add any additional benefit" to the ongoing public debate about the abuse of prisoners. But the ongoing public debate is rife with false claims, and the photos would expose the truth.
The Bush administration told the public that abuse was aberrational and isolated, and many media organizations adopted this fraudulent narrative as their own. But even President Obama, in explaining his reversal, perpetuated the myth that the abuse of prisoners "was carried out in the past by a small number of individuals."
President Obama's statement was meant to explain why the photos would not inform the public debate, but it only underscored why the release of the photographs is so important. Many Americans still believe that abuse took place in spite of policy rather than because of it. CNN
Obama
also said release of the photos could harm our soldiers.
