This is getting absurd, grotesquely so.
On Thursday an article in the Daily Telegraph reported that Taguba, the lead investigator into Abu Ghraib abuse, had seen images Obama wanted suppressed, and supported the president's decision to fight their release. The paper quoted Taguba as saying, "These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency."
But Taguba says he wasn't talking about the 44 photographs that are the subject of an ongoing ACLU lawsuit that Obama is fighting.
"The photographs in that lawsuit, I have not seen," Taguba told Salon Friday night. The actual quote in the Telegraph was accurate, Taguba said -- but he was referring to the hundreds of images he reviewed as an investigator of the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq -- not the photos of abuse that Obama is seeking to suppress.
OK, so these 44 pictures are not the ones showing "an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee," or "sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube." Those are other photographs, apparently.
I don't like this. If these 44 pictures are really no worse than what we've seen before, which are revolting enough, then why would releasing them be especially explosive?
And that leaves open the question of the really dangerous, sickening images. Where are those? Taguba says they exist, and he's seen them, and he's described them, in graphic detail. So, apparently, rape happened. Has anyone been prosecuted for rape, specifically?
There's just too much messing around here. I think it's gotten to the point where it's clear the "worst" images exist -- and one way or another, they're bound to appear, sooner or later.
The issue now is how they are going to appear. Will it be with full disclosure and a transparent commitment to accountability? Or a leak, a scandal, and an embarrassing attempt at a legalistic explanation for what's inevitably going to look like a coverup -- because, good intentions or not, that's what it will be?
I'm not unsympathetic to the argument that a release will put troops in danger, but I also think we're past that point. Taguba said the pictures exist, somewhere. I don't think he's lying. I don't think they can be forever suppressed. Best to expose the shame and show justice was done. If doing so would pose too much danger to the troops, then the troops should be immediately sent home, because then it's not at all clear what they're fighting for, anyhow, something that's already pretty goddamn murky enough. Are Americans who we say we are, or not? That's the question.