Dear Mr. Obama,
If you do not release the prison photos from Iraq and Afghanistan, you run the risk of becoming a worse president than the one before you. If you cover up the work of a criminal, according to the American justice system, you yourself become a criminal. You are aiding and abetting. And when you have the man who wrote the report telling the world what these photographs contain, you look even worse for holding them back. Justice is not being served. You are helping cover the tracks of war criminals.
You are disappointing those who believed in you. You are becoming a liar.
You’re becoming everything you said you fought against. Even some of my die-hard republican friends voted for you, because anyone else with a chance of becoming president was vowing to continue illegal wars. Now, you yourself are vowing to continue the wars you proclaimed to oppose. And are aiding and abetting war criminals from being brought to justice, from allowing the truth of what we Americans – we who call ourselves the shining beacon of light, hope and justice in this world – what we Americans did and allowed to happen in the illegal wars we started in countries we illegally invaded.
Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.
Another apparently shows a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts.
Detail of the content emerged from Major General Antonio Taguba, the former army officer who conducted an inquiry into the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq.
Allegations of rape and abuse were included in his 2004 report but the fact there were photographs was never revealed. He has now confirmed their existence in an interview with the Daily Telegraph.
The graphic nature of some of the images may explain the US President’s attempts to block the release of an estimated 2,000 photographs from prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan despite an earlier promise to allow them to be published.
Maj Gen Taguba, who retired in January 2007, said he supported the President’s decision, adding: “These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency.
“I am not sure what purpose their release would serve other than a legal one and the consequence would be to imperil our troops, the only protectors of our foreign policy, when we most need them, and British troops who are trying to build security in Afghanistan…”
If this does not come to light, if justice is not served… we ourselves will find out that we are the terrorists the world is uniting against. Because if justice is not served… it will happen again.
This is not the country I was taught about in school. Where we live now is a parody of that once-great nation. It can be great again, but not by hiding from our mistakes.
You must own your mistakes, or they will end up owning you. Don’t get us owned, Mr. Obama.
And before anyone says “Nothing will ever take America down,” I invite you to study the history of the greatest empires the world has ever known. Notice how that’s past-tense.
Tags: celebrate good obama c'mon!, cover-up, sad