Post by POA on May 17, 2004 18:29:11 GMT -5
Democrats agree to suppress photos of US torture in Iraq
By Alex Lefebvre
15 May 2004
[excerpts only]
"As evidence of mass torture of Iraqi detainees by US forces continues to emerge, the Senate Armed Services Committee has, through its public hearings, assumed the role of point-man in the effort of the US political establishment to conceal the dimensions of American war crimes and obscure the colonialist character of the Iraq war. True to form, congressional Democrats are playing the crucial role in shielding the chief perpetrators in the Bush White House and Pentagon.
As part of this effort, leading congressional Democrats have joined with the Republicans in suppressing photographic evidence of the torture and abuse of Iraqis being held by US forces. The fraudulent character of the Senate investigation is underscored by the refusal of the committee to even demand that the Pentagon turn over the hundreds of incriminating photos and video clips in the possession of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his underlings."
[skipping ahead]
"Leading Democrats vocally backed the Pentagon in withholding the pictures. Senator Dianne Feinstein of California baldly asserted that there was no need for the American people to see the war crimes that are being carried out in their name, stating, “I think it’s important that we see them so we know what we’re dealing with, but I think the nation has had enough of a sample.”<br>
Democratic Senator Charles Schumer of New York put forward an even more preposterous argument in favor of withholding the photographs. Schumer said he had been inclined to release the photos, but changed his mind “when the military explained to us that to release [the photos] would violate their [the detainees’] privacy and the Geneva accord.” Here the Democratic “liberal” invoked the Geneva Conventions to sanction the suppression of evidence of massive violations of the self-same Conventions!
The agreement to suppress the photos is part of a systematic, bipartisan cover-up of the crimes of US imperialism in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. The Democrats have, for the most part, gone out of their way to demonstrate their readiness to conceal, to the extent possible, the truth from the American people.
Indicative of the politically incestuous relationship between the two parties was an article in the May 12 New York Times extolling the amicable relations between Warner and the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin. The article quoted a political scientist at Rutgers University who compared Warner and Levin to “an old married couple.” The article continued: “Mr. Levin, of Michigan, did not deny it. ‘We’re very close, and we totally trust each other,’ he said, ‘and that’s the key to everything.’ “"