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Originally Posted by powerclown
Obama has a far left base that is calling, with complete lack of regard or perspective on national security, for documents and photos to be released in an attempt to somehow use it to prosecute officials of the former administration. They want revenge.
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Ensuring that the past (any) president and executive branch upholds the rule of law and US treaty obligations is hardly seeking revenge.
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Of course this wont happen because all the release of documents will do is prove a large swathe of Democrats lied all along about their knowledge and involvement, and in an effort to clear themselves from blame, they will conveniently rationalize the interrogation techniques. In doing so, they will also by default, rationalize its use by the Bush Administration.
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What the documents will prove is that the CIA started waterboarding BEFORE (August 02) any congressional briefing (the first in Sept 02). The docs will further prove that the CIA withheld from the Congressional security briefings the fact that the CIA and DOJ IGs questioned the legality of the enhanced interrogation techniques (EIT).
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Which is of course when and why they were implemented by the Bush Administration and apparently memos so far unreleased describe that the techniques did provide information stopping another attack. The left made another impotent attempt at blaming everything on Bush to remove eyes from Obama's missteps, but all it will do is dig a grave for the Democrats.
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There has not been one memo released that suggests that the use of EIT prevented another attack. In fact, the so-called "second wave" attack on the west coast by Jemaah Islamiyah (the Indonesian group with al queda connections) was prevented in the planning stages, in the spring of 02, BEFORE any use of EITs.
You are confusing Cheney's attempt to protect his ass with the factual information released to-date, particularly the declassified portions of the CIA IG report.
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Now in 2009, releasing the photos will serve no one any purpose other than to get people killed, completely in spite of the outright lie that they'd be used to see if this treatment was of a broader scale and directly sanctioned and called for by former President Bush. I see it as grasping desperately for straws to try and live out the far left fantasies of imprisoning Bush administration officials.
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The illegal invasion/occupation of Iraq got people killed...and was cited as a "cause celebre" for terrorist recruitment...as was the treatment of prisoners in Gitmo, Abu Grahib and "black prisons".
I would prefer that the photos be released in a closed session of the appropriate congressional committees or an independent investigator, along with documents that might suggest such abuses was NOT the work of a few low grade prison guards/interrogators, but a policy that was initiated at the highest level (that would be Rumsfeld/Cheney)
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I do hope if President Obama decides to step out of the corner he has painted himself into, he doesn't release the photos. Because if he does, he and all that called for them should be considered complicit in the outcome after the Muslim world is once again whipped into a frothing rage and decides to go bomb some markets and set up some IEDs.
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Obama cannot unilaterally stop the release of the photos. It will be up to the courts, probably the Supreme Court...and his case will be very weak, considering the ruling of the Court of Appeals.
So... the facts pretty much counter every baseless allegation or assumption in your post.