Abu Ghraib Decision Guided Obama on Bin Laden Photos

Alexis Simendinger
RealClearPolitics

President Obama wasted little time this week deciding to withhold photos and video images of Osama bin Laden's corpse. In truth, he had some practice. Two years ago he weighed whether to release another set of graphic government photographs -- and the experience altered his views.

Obama came into office promising disclosure and accountability as an antidote to a Bush era marred by Abu Ghraib, waterboarding, secret prisons and warrantless wiretapping. Litigation by the American Civil Liberties Union to compel the government to release chilling photographs of abused and violated detainees at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison continued long enough to land on Obama's desk soon after he was inaugurated. Initially, he believed it was "pointless" to buck the ACLU case brought under the Freedom of Information Act because the organization had already won on appeal, and damaging images had already circulated worldwide. Obama said he would release the controversial photos before a court-ordered deadline.

But Defense Secretary Robert Gates and other advisers stepped in to persuade the president that public release of more Abu Ghraib images would put U.S. military personnel in danger, as well as damage America's image abroad. They pointed to evidence such as the 2004 Internet release of the beheading of U.S. businessman Nicholas Berg in Iraq. At that time, the CIA said the murder was the work of terrorist Abu Masab al-Zarqawi and that he could be heard on the tape declaring that Berg's murder was in retaliation for the mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib.

Obama reversed course.

(More here.)