Obama Comes to His Senses, Won't Release Abuse Photos

This is what pandering to the far left gets you. An enormous headache and the appearance of being a vacillating jellyfish.

On the upside, you're doing the right thing.

As Democrats appear to be feeling the limits of national security politics, President Obama has reversed course and will object to the court-ordered release of photos depicting the abuse of detainees.

More here.

ACLU SLAMS: “If it’s true that they’re reversing position, we find that wholly unacceptable,” ACLU attorney Jameel Jaffer told POLITICO. “It’s inconsistent with the commitment they’ve made to the court and its inconsistent with the promise of transparency that they’ve repeated many times both before the election and since.”

Jaffer said the ACLU had not been officially informed of the government’s change in stance, which he earlier called an effort to “renege” on the administration’s prior promise.

From Jake Tapper:

The move is a complete 180. In a letter from the Justice Department to a federal judge on April 23, the Obama administration announced that the Pentagon would turn over 44 photographs showing detainee abuse of prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq during the Bush administration.

The photographs are part of a 2003 Freedom of Information Act request by the ACLU for all information relating to the treatment of detainees -- the same battle that led to President Obama's decision to release memos from the Bush Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel providing legal justifications for brutal interrogation methods, many of which the International Committee of the Red Cross calls torture.

It's unclear what step the White House will now take, whether the administration will challenge the release in appellate court with new arguments or whether it will take the case to the Supreme Court.

But the idea that the photos should not be released because they would be a national security risk for US troops is hardly a new argument.

The Bush administration had argued that an exemption from the Freedom of Information Act was needed with these photographs because of the FOIA exemption for law enforcement records that could reasonably be expected to endanger “any individual." The release of the disputed photographs, the Bush administration argued, will endanger United States troops, other Coalition forces, and civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Update: Excitable Andy:

Slowly but surely, Obama is owning the cover-up of his predcessors' war crimes. But covering up war crimes, refusing to proscute them, promoting those associated with them, and suppressing evidence of them are themselves violations of Geneva and the UN Convention.

Take a deep breath.