Obama's Latest Effort to Conceal Evidence of Bush Era Crimes

by Glenn Greenwald
by Glenn Greenwald

It's difficult to react much to Obama's complete reversal today of his own prior decision to release photographs depicting extreme detainee abuse by the United States.  He's left no doubt that this is what he does:  ever since he was inaugurated, Obama has taken one extreme step after the next to keep concealed both the details and the evidence of Bush's crimes, including rendition, torture and warrantless eavesdropping.  The ACLU's Amrit Singh – who litigated the thus-far-successful FOIA lawsuit to compel disclosure of these photographs – is exactly right:

The reversal is another indication of a continuance of the Bush administration policies under the Obama administration.  President Obama's promise of accountability is meaningless, this is inconsistent with his promise of transparency, it violates the government's commitment to the court. People need to examine these abusive photographs, but also the government officials need to be held accountable.

Andrew Sullivan, one of Obama's earliest and most enthusiastic supporters, wrote of today's photograph-concealment decision and yesterday's story of Obama's pressuring Britain to conceal evidence of Binyam Mohamed's torture:

Slowly but surely, Obama is owning the cover-up of his predecessors' war crimes. But covering up war crimes, refusing to prosecute them, promoting those associated with them, and suppressing evidence of them are themselves violations of Geneva and the UN Convention. So Cheney begins to successfully coopt his successor. . .

From extending and deepening the war in Afghanistan, to suppressing evidence of rampant and widespread abuse and torture of prisoners under Bush, to thuggishly threatening the British with intelligence cut-off if they reveal the brutal torture inflicted on Binyam Mohamed, Obama now has new cheer-leaders: Bill Kristol, Michael Goldfarb and Max Boot. . . .

Those of us who held out hope that the Obama administration would not be actively covering up the brutal torture of a Gitmo prisoner who was subject to abuse in several countries must now concede the obvious. They're covering it up - in such a crude and obvious fashion that it is actually a crime in Britain.

John Aravosis said Obama's logic was "a bit Bushian."  Steve Hynd observes that "Obama Trades Our Principles For Cheneyism."  TPM decalres:  "Obama falls back on Bushisms."  Dan Froomkin writes:  "Obama Joins the Cover-Up."  I'll just note a few points for now about Obama's efforts to keep these photographs concealed:

(1) Think about what Obama's rationale would justify.  Obama's claim – that release of the photographs "would be to further inflame anti-American opinion and to put our troops in greater danger" – means we should conceal or even outright lie about all the bad things we do that might reflect poorly on us.  For instance, if an Obama bombing raid slaughters civilians in Afghanistan (as has happened several times already), then, by this reasoning, we ought to lie about what happened and conceal the evidence depicting what was done – as the Bush administration did – because release of such evidence would "would be to further inflame anti-American opinion and to put our troops in greater danger."  Indeed, evidence of our killing civilians in Afghanistan inflames anti-American sentiment far more than these photographs would.  Isn't it better to hide the evidence showing the bad things we do?

Apparently, the proper reaction to heinous acts by our political leaders is not to hold them accountable but, instead, to hide evidence of what they did.  That's the warped mentality Obama is endorsing today, and has been endorsing since January 20.

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