Torture Photos and Tortured Logic

This Spring, the U.S.
government was on the verge of turning over 21 photographs documenting detainee
abuse in Afghanistan and Iraq. The District Court ordered the disclosure, the
Appeals Court agreed, and the Justice Department decided not to appeal to the
U.S. Supreme Court. But then, abruptly, the U.S. changed
its mind and asked the
Supreme Court to accept the case for review. This week, the ACLU,
along with Human Rights
Watch, the International Center for Transitional Justice, Amnesty
International, and the Reporters
Committee for Freedom of the Press urged the Supreme Court not to take the
case. Though it is exciting when colleagues
get to argue at the Supreme Court, the ACLU’s opposition brief makes it very
clear why Supreme Court review is unnecessary in this case. The government’s
arguments against disclosure in this case range from unwise to laughably
inappropriate. As just one example, the government has argued that disclosing
photographs of prisoners being abused by U.S. personnel would violate the
prisoners’ Geneva Convention rights. Of course, we all remember that President
Bush declared that these detainees did not have any rights under the Geneva
Convention, and it took years of litigation (all the way to the Supreme Court)
to convince them otherwise. The truth about U.S. mistreatment of detainees is
going to come out sometime--better we should get the truth now so that we can
avoid repeating the past.