Those pesky detainee photos....

Elmer Fudd Lieberman's horrendous bow-to-executive-power amendment passed the House last Thursday. The Senate will take it up soon, almost definitely this week (and almost definitely pass it). The amendment, tacked onto a Homeland Security appropriations bill (Joe Lieberman is the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee) would give the Defense secretary (Robert Gates presently) final authority to classify or conceal photos or other kind of media that proved America tortured and killed men held for dubious reasons in jails all over the world. It takes away oversight power of the Congress and basically hands it to the president. I mean, the secretary of Defense is a Cabinet member of the president. Of course what his commander-in-chief wants is a concealment of "further embarrassments to the tune of Abu Ghraib. These presidents, these parties are complicit in it now. Just maintain the status quo.

Jameel Jaffer of the ACLU on a large collection of detainee abuse photos, some additional Abu Ghraib images and the rest from Bagram in Afghanistan, being shut from public eye, in the Los Angeles Times today:

Their release would allow the public to understand better what took place in the military's detention centers, and why. They might show patterns that have until now gone unnoticed, and they would surely convey, better than mere text ever could, the cruelty of such practices as stress positions, hooding and mock executions. And disclosure of the photos might also spur calls for a more thorough investigation into prisoner abuse than has been conducted thus far.

The fear that the country's enemies will use the photos as propaganda is not baseless, but it is a mistake to give violent extremists a veto over the FOIA. The argument that the government has made in court -- and that animates the proposed legislation -- would give the greatest protection from disclosure to records that relate to the worst governmental misconduct, because it is those records that are most likely to be inflammatory. Suppressing such records might deprive the country's enemies of propaganda, but it would also deprive the American public of information that is crucial to the democratic process.

I think our credibility hangs in the balance here. But it's not a hot topic....

Why is no one in the Washington media picking up on this? It's too 'been there, done that' for them? "Oh, those messy detainee photos ... ah, gee, I don't know if I wanna cover that one boss," say those celebri-anchors and lazy correspondents that litter our nation's press. Not sexy enough. And they're tired of dragging the Cheneys on their air to defend torture. Maybe.

And no offense to the LA Times, but why were they the ones to run this? Why wouldn't the NY Times snatch this one (assuming the ACLU offered)? And why wouldn't the Washington Post hop at the chance to stack Jaffer's common sense alongside the likes of one of their Opinion pieces today by AHIP execu-lobbyist Karen Ignagni to plead for the sparing of the poor insurance companies?

Oh yeah, with them it's NO soft-on-terror drivel about detainee photos and shielding the poor little public from our wise executive and commander in chief. Bush or Obama.

Our mainstream media is failing us. Stuff like the refusal to cover this monumental issue -- the proof of sheer depravity and sinister behavior sanctioned by our leaders -- is shameful. It won't "put enough eyes on the tube" for them.

So then the ACLU is left alone to challenge these detentions and work their butt off to uphold the rule of law in this country. That shouldn't be on the ACLU to do. That's the press corps's job. When was the last time Chip Reid or Chuck Todd told you anything you needed to know?