Flip-flop watch: Obama will now fight release of “torture” photos
Well, well, well.
Reality bites the White House in the ass, again.
From the administration that was against military tribunals before they were for them and which flip-flopped on a “truth commission” after a public backlash comes the decision to bail on the ACLU and fight the release of detainee “torture” photos after signaling last month that it would distribute them.
WaPo reports on the White House’s newly-discovered “great concern” about the photos.
Allahpundit et al. saw it coming yesterday.
Will Medea Benjamin and the Code Pink screechers be trailing Obama at his next dinner engagement yelling “WAR CRIMINAL” at The Fallen One?
***
Lorie Byrd: “I don’t understand how Obama argues that these pictures would endanger the troops, but that the “torture memos” he released did not. I have to wonder if he now believes he should not have released those memos. If he does regret it, is it because of national security concerns or politics?”
Andy McCarthy yesterday: “If President Obama wanted to refrain from releasing these photos in order to protect the military forces he commands or promote the security of Americans — his two highest obligations as president — he could do so by simply issuing an executive order. The applicable statute expressly allows for it, just as it provides for Congress — now in the firm control of the president and his party — to withhold the photos from disclosure.”
Well?
See what others have said
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Trackbacks
- Obama Backs Off Promise to Release Abuse Photos « Peace and Freedom Promises
- Torture Interrogations: Democrat Hypocrisy Grows… | NEOAVATARA
- Gay Gene [Dan Collins]
- Let’s see – if Obama is Spock, then Bush is Captain Kirk « Jim Blazsik
- Obama: On Second Thought, Let’s Not Release Those “Torture” Pics : The American Pundit
- Obama To Defy ACLU On Release of Torture Photos: Union Tactics vs. Chicago Thuggery? « Quick Daily Hits (Politics and Such)
- OBUTCHER!
- CitzCom
- Obama changes mind on release of ‘detainee abuse photographs’ « Sister Toldjah
- Barack, Channeling His ‘Inner Spock’ « Frugal Café Blog Zone
- Hussein Obama’s latest 180 - No release of Abu Ghraib photos | Fire Andrea Mitchell!
- Wednesday, May 13, 2009: Daily Handpicked Headlines :: Daily Uprising :: Join the Conservative Counter-Revolution!
- Daily Obama Photo Op: Sri Lanka (But The Big News Today Was His Reversal on Detainee Photos) « Peace and Freedom Promises
- Bill Kristol Has A DeLorean « Around The Sphere
- The Torture Witch-Hunt and Flippity-flopping: it's all about Political Convenience | The Common Sense Republic
- Cheney Was Right | The Rude News
- Blast From The Past « Curtis Lowe
- Obama Gets It Both Ways: Detainee Abuse Photos Likely To Be Released Anyway « Peace and Freedom Promises
- Obama Finds Campaign Promises Easy, But Governing Hard | The Great Illuminator
- Obamessiah to address Muslim world from the Kaaba in Mecca — Winds Of Jihad By SheikYerMami
- OK, take NO PRISONERS! « Get Clued
- Obama flip-flop on detainee photos a welcome one « Wellsy’s World
- Obama reverse course on”torture”pictures « Smart and silly
- “Paradiso Guantánamo” and Beauty Queens… Much More Than Meets the Eye « Frugal Café Blog Zone
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oh pleeeeze, let it be so!
But then I woke up.
He is such a tease!
It’s all about – “let’s get Boosh” until they realize it will backfire on them too. Then they will decide they have “more important” things to do. Like ram though their comprehensive health care.
He was for it until, he was against it.
Typical…
but, babbledabble, what does CodeStink have to do that’s ‘more important’?
We know it isn’t shaving or bra shopping.
Will they realize it’s time to squat & fertilize the organic turnips again?
But just think how much “conspiracy fodder” this will give the left.
TOTUS doesn’t like photos – text only.
Obama himself is a danger to our troops.
I, for one, am glad to see that the phrase “bite in the ass” won’t get you censored.
http://www.drudgereport.com/
Off-topic, but have to ask this: Does Timothy Geithner not look like a Star Trek Romulan war lord? Man is that guy creepy.
Reluctantly, I have to say that I can’t throw stones at somebody who is doing the right thing, even if for the wrong reasons.
I’m sorry…
color me skeptical.
I just don’t believe the Justice Dept. under BIG BRO will really pull out the stops to prevent the courts from releasing these photos.
Like Mr. McCarthy said, BIG BRO could take the whole issue out of play by a simple Executive Order.
Any bets…???
It sucks at the top.
Wrong administration…
that was Clinton…
I don’t know why any conservative would have a problem with releasing this information?
I thought you conservatives believed in truth?
Now, there’s even more disturbing information coming out on this subject – they had rooms where they assaulted Iraqi women – I wonder how you Christians will justify those actions?
Gotta’ admit, it’s nice to see Rumsfeld getting screamed at.
Laughed out Loud!
– “Reality bites the White House in the ass, again.”
… glanced up to the title again, expecting to see that it had been written by Doug Powers … Nope, that’s our Michelle!!
You go girl !!
(should have taken a clue from the Hotflops pic; Doug probably wouldn’t have done that …)
Damn!
Thanks for the laugh.
Props to the Bamster for flopping the right way on this. I just hope they put up a real fight.
Zing!
Oh, would you look at that? The resident antagonizing plagiarist showed up.
ILMC said: I want to get more americans killed.
PUT
IT
UP
And, if a berka-clad honey came at me with a homocide bomb…
this Christian would off her without a second thought.
How about you?
And this information came from where? Scott Beauchamp’s reporting for the National Review?
In order to teach the ACLU that there are consequences for reckless action.
Tape the photos to a wall in a room without lights. Then cover the floor with gasoline.
Let all the ACLU lawyers in there… and give them a match. If they want to see the photos, they can light the match.
Consequences
I do believe in truth. I also believe it’s none of my enemy’s business what I do or how I build a thing to protect me and mine. And as for your blatant attempt at Christian bashing, it is neither my compunction nor responsibility, to justify the actions of others. You can wonder all you want. As a Christian, I owe you squat diddly! If they operated outside constitutional law, then they should be punished within the confines of that constitutional law.
Seriously, you just have to laugh at this incompetent puppet we have for a President that’s in way over his head (pay grade) or you’ll go nuts.
The media is not reporting about the real reason for the flip-flop
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/may/12/obama-threatens-to-limit-us-intel-with-brits/
The UK was going to do just like the Obama administration did with the CIA memo’s, but of course they don’t want them to do that. If they release these photo’s they will no longer be able to threaten the UK.
You think the left is upset about this one? Wait until the poor in this country realize that “Hope and Change” was merely “Smoke and Mirrors”…that socialism causes job losses and wage stagnation…that uncontrolled government debt causes painfull inflation. The Liberals will be fighting Conservatives for pitchforks and torches at the hardware store.
“Please Mr. Obama and Joe the Biden, may I have more Dijon on my Cheerios?”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-05-13/how-torture-helped-win-wwii/
Expect another 180 degrees soon. Right after George Soros calls his Puppet Obama and “Orders” him to submit, and release them.
Not just incompetent, but also he’s the Commander-in-Chief of a military he wouldn’t be able to get a SECRET or higher clearance in due to his past association with radicals and felons.
why is Bela Pelosi’s picture on here??
Michelle…can you replace her picture with Ms. CA’s picture??
Source?
ILMC’s overworked, fevered imagination
that would be he/she’s imagination as the source…drunk on the kool aid obviously.
More and more Mr. Mental Giant Obama reminds me of a little boy who has shown up at a construction site with his Tonka toy and wants to be foreman, only worse: Not only has he no clue, he has no clue he has no clue.
Better for him to be smart late (but not too late) than for him to maintain an arrogant stupidity and get people killed. I won’t complain about this flip flop.
I have been laughing my ass off from reading DU Obama fans trying to spin this into a smart move and a good thing for their messiah to have done. And on the other side are the DUmmies who are beginning to wonder if they voted for the wrong guy. What a HOOT! LOL! Buyers remorse is beginning to take hold.
Please, don’t be fooled.
This isn’t even a genuine flop.
BIG BRO knows what he’s doing, and this is a cynical, calculated move.
If I’m wrong, the pictures will not see the light of day.
If I’m right, they will, and BIG BRO will have a fig-leaf to cover his own complicity. He can say that the courts made them do it…
and we all know what respect he has for the rule of law….
I think you are right.
Watching that video, all I could think was just how awful it is to be those two idiots. Seriously, to be so absolutely obnoxious as well as completely wrong in everything they do. Also, hats off to Rumsfeld. I gotta tell you, I would not have had anywhere near the self-control he displayed.
And just how do these wastes of skin keep getting so close like that? How was it possible that they got into that building, let alone allowed to come so close that Donald MUST have been made ill from the unwashed smell of those two ignoramuses.
But no…there has not been a single protest, not a single chant or anything else towards Der Fuhrer since he took office. Where as the shooting of the sicko the other day in Iraq would have brought about any number of morons out of the woodwork to declare Bush a criminal and responsible for the deaths, not a word towards Obama and his minions.
Hypocrisy, thy name is Liberal
Rags, I do believe you’re right!
The same source that said then VP George H. W. Bush flew in the back seat of an SR-71 to the Mideast on a secret mission for Ronald Reagan.
I knew this was coming. I knew that actually finding out what our country was doing the last 8 years was too good to be true.
Between getting other people pissed at the truth of what we’ve done, and covering up what every American voter needs to know, I’ll take the truth.
I don’t know what our president has less of: principles, convictions or balls.
Tell you what, put his picture on the sole of those flip-flops where it belongs and I might buy a pair.
False choice, Red.
Between getting Americans who are in the field defending us against people who want to kill our culture…
and getting pictures published that will fuel your Bush hatred, and loathing our our country…
you would take the pictures.
Cue violin music….
I know I’m probably in the minority, but I don’t care if they release it or not. After all, we already use these techniques in our military training, so it’s not as if any of it is secret anyway. If anything, it’ll become a standing joke in the Arab world. “You’re such a wuss, you’d fold under American torture.” “Oh yeah? Well your mother wears GI brogans!”
D: All of the above.
Wow, Medea Benjamin almost looked like a girl in that video, cute outfit.
If that’s a multiple choice question, I’d pick principles. It takes a lot of balls to try to turn the country into a socialist utopia in 100 days (or promise to give away $100 billion that Congress knew nothing about), and he definitely wasn’t afraid to vote his convictions when it came to infanticide.
Here’s an idea and future solution:
From this day forward, let’s make sure everything we do is something to be proud of…and never have to worry about being embarrassed later.
We can actually fight and win wars without involving sexual perversions, bestiality and sadomasochism.
This way our troops won’t feel a need to commit suicide(I’m thinking of the female soldier who chose suicide over following orders.)and also won’t be sent to prison and labeled a few bad apples for following orders.
Stupid,
false premises,
and larded with lies.
Moonshot is a Moonbat
We have already given the Muslim world enough reason to hate us with the release of the Abu Ghraib photos. What Americans need to know conclusively is whether AG was an aberration (as our leaders would have us believe) or the norm. We have these memos which lay out what was purported to be the limits of our interrogation, but what the limit is on paper and in practice is a very different thing.
He should’ve thought twice before he released the alleged “torture” memos. Too little too late.
But, it’s politics as usual. Gotta keep those left wing libtards happy for election season! Nevermind the safety of the country. Do I feel safer now than I did a year ago?
Heck no.
What were they using before 9/11? Do ya think…?
We do. Americans know, that is…
What, you missed the prosecutions and forced retirements?
There is more evidence that Obama’s birth certificate is bogus then there is that war crimes were authorized by the Bush Administration. There is also more evidence that Nancy Pelosu knew about waterboarding and lied on April 23
So I am sure that you also support full disclosure of Barack Obama’s past, and a full inquiry into Nancy Pelosi’s prior knowledge of waterboarding correct?
Intersting that your intellectual desire for “the truth” is subjective.
As my mother would say in this instance Obama’s alligator mouth got in the way of his hummingbird brain.
Rookie!
Those photo have nothing to do with the hatred of the US by islamo-fascists.
They hate us because we succeed and they continue to fail.
They also hate us because we support the only democracy in that cesspool known as the middle-east. One that they want to exterminate.
They hate us DESPITE the piles of money and other aid we’ve bestowed upon them.
So those photos are nothing but red herrings. Had they never existed, the hatred would be identical.
You won’t ‘win’ anything against the Jihadists then; their very way of life is all of the above.
The first clue is that the post contains no grammatical errors!
Actually, that is doable…
We just stop recruiting in San Francisco…
Then the pretense of holding back these photos must also be nothing but a red herring. If so, why don’t you think they should be released?
A couple of things here…
first: what’s ‘enough’?
second: I can’t be sure, but I think there may have been a few videos of say, soldiers dragged through Mogadishu, Daniel Pearl’s beheading, etc etc before the prison photos were released…
How about the real-time sequence of 9/11 on all broadcast and cable outlets in prime time…?
You’re right! That was an awful mistake, never should have happened, the releasing of those photos.
I’m just curious as to what fueled their hatred for us prior, for the last, what, 200+ years?
If we appease, bow and scrape, Jihadists, like liberals, will just move the goalposts!
Can’t do that. It might upset a liberal.
I guess yours is too if you want to know more about Obama’s birth certificate than how brutally we treated prisoners during the Bush era (and maybe still).
(And yes, I would love to uncover any information that sheds light on what weasels our elected leaders are.)
It’s just an amazing huge coincidence that soldiers at other prisons got the idea all on their own to use the exact same techniques as they did at Abu Ghraib.
I’ll take the words of soldiers over cowards who are too yellow to serve any day…the ones who knew those soldiers were just doing their job but let them be Court Marshaled and go to prison.
I don’t think they were a red herring.
I think they were enormously useful to our enemies.
Mr. Goebbels knew the value of propaganda, and so does the Jihadi thug.
The release of those pictures would not have occurred during WWII. Our press was made up primarily of loyal Americans in those days, and they were part of the war effort, rather than part of our opposition.
Does the prosecution and demotion of military personnel involved with Abu Ghraib (and only directly involved, mind you, since the chain of command was off limits from the word go) — after the photos were made public — seriously tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt that there was no other comparable treatment of detainees. And if you really are that gullible, why should you oppose the release of these other photos?
is that something like herding cats?
PUT UP YOUR EVIDENCE FOR THAT BULLSPIT.
Rags–maybe he was there…
Personally, RSS given what has been done to EACH and EVERY American soldier captured by the enemy since the Iraq invasion, I really do not care how they are treated.
I see rockets from Gaza launched at purely civilian targets, open air markets bombed in Iraq, our captured soldiers executed, sometimes tortured to death and cut up, and terrorists routinely using civilians as shields.
Your response to that? DEAD SILENCE.
General Sherman had it right. The crueler the better, because the crueler it is the sooner the suffering stops. The purpose of the war is to win, not gain the title of Miss Congeniality in the Muslim world.
Frankly, they view Obama’s actions and conclude he’s weak. They are correct.
I really don’t know how in the hell Republicans can still pretend that the press was not 100% gung ho pro-Bush going into Iraq, when even Judith Miller and the New York Times were the virtual mouthpiece for the Bush administration.
The press releases sensitive information not because they want Americans to die (Rush Limbaugh being the exception). The press releases information because Americans need to know what our leaders don’t tell us. The executive office carries extraordinary powers (and incentive) to deceive the American people, and if we don’t have the press letting us know how a Nixon or a W or an Obama is lying to us, then we will never know.
Here’s some things I know…
even as deplorable as the criminal mistreatment of those prisoners in Abu Ghraib was, it was just par for the course in American prisons. That isn’t legal either. It isn’t a hit on the governors of each individual state, either. It isn’t policy; it is a crime. It still happens.
Prison guards tend to be people from the low end of the bell-curve. Not to say there are no good ones, just stating a fact. It was obviously the case with the mouth-breathers in the MPs at AG, who violated military norms in MANY areas.
Prison psychology tends to lead to brutalization of inmates. Sorry, that’s life. And human nature.
The American military goes WAY the hell out of the way to treat people humanely. We’re known for it. That is, we are except by anti-American types like these trolls on this board.
This is all the evidence anyone needs to label you an idiot, with cause.
Here’s my response: if our military in turn electrocutes the genitals of suspects, throws suspects in giant pyramids of nude men, and effectively murders detainees without investigation, then WE ARE NO BETTER.
What’s that? Abu Ghraib is an isolated incident? Then why are you so afraid of releasing these photos? Why is
George BushBarack Obama making threats to the UK to keep them from revealing the details of Binyam Mohamed? Then why won’t we let Maher Arar get his day in court?When we look back at history, it is amazing what foolish and even childish things people said and did on the eve of a catastrophe about to consume them. In 1938, with Hitler preparing to unleash a war in which tens of millions of men, women and children would be slaughtered, the play that was the biggest hit on the Paris stage was a play about French and German reconciliation, and a French pacifist that year dedicated his book to Adolf Hitler.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/05/13/talking_points_96453.html
Dr. Thomas Sowell, one of the best minds alive.
The pictures are supposedly from different prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Since Nancy caved in to the truth and has been outed as a liar, 0 cannot show the pics as crimes or outrage.
Nancy knew, agreed with, and allowed the pursuit of interogation techinques that work…..but only NOW grind against her liberal ignorance of how war is conducted.
0 had to cave to reality and truth, and not release the photos that only show what we have known all along….our enemies, are bad guys.
Oh really?
One section of am MP Company was involved. When an individual soldier reported the abuse, the U.S. Army intiated the investigation and brought charges. Chain of command was off limits? Tell it to these people:
Section leader – Court martialed and imprisoned.
Platoon Leader – Relieved, written letter of reprimand.
Company First Sergeant – Relieved, demoted, written letter of reprimand.
Company Commander – - Relieved, written letter of reprimand.
Battalion Operations officer – Relieved, Court martialed for lying and obstruction
Battalion Commander – Relieved, written letter of reprimand.
Brigade Commander – Relieved, written letter of reprimand.
I believe the Company Executive officer also got the axe. How would you like to be fired and your career ended if you managed an organization of over 4,000 and on group of 10 employees was involved in illegal activities that you had specifically forbidden in writing?
Abu Graib was caused by P*** poor leadership by the Platoon leader, First Sergeant and Company Commander. The section leader who lead these dirt bags was an openly insubordinate soldier who should have been dealt with long before for any number of disciplinary issues.
A detainee with health problems was exercised…and he dies….
THAT is what you call murder?
Again, proof positive you are an idiot. It isn’t name-calling. It’s an observation.
You mean a detainee already determined to have no preexisting medical condition. When the military didn’t want to take even perfunctory measures to determine how he died.
Your trust for our military is simply astounding.
And your sympathy for the devil is expected.
That’s funny. I’ve never heard of a U.S. civilian prison stripping prisoners naked and throwing them in piles of nude bodies.
Again, Dr. Sowell.
As demonstrated here, some people in this country can’t distinguish between actual torture and “enhanced interrogation”. They cannot make the moral distinction between MURDER (a clearly defined term), and a death. They are willing to ASSUME that leaders they hate do things they pretend they would never do, and to impose standards of conduct that simply do not exist in practice…in reality…among real human beings.
And, in terms of our NOT being a suicidal culture, THANK GOD that people DO things that make cowards quail and wring their pallid little hands.
It’s amazing that our military can operate at all. I read someplace that our rules of engagement are stricter than those of NYPD. Most of these detainees should have been interrogated and “accidently” offed on the battlefield, unless they appeared to have enough high value information to ship back to Gitmo for in-depth interrogation. We’ll never get the respect of these people because we’re infidels, but we can damn well put the fear of the American GI into them.
But, as we know, you are an idiot. I expect there are a breathtaking number of things you have never heard of, or will not acknowledge.