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Saturday, July 23, 2005

What We Did On Our Summer Vacation

Big Brother refuses once again to release the rest of the Abu Ghraib photos, in violation of previous promises to do so.

On June 2, 2004, CCR, along with the ACLU, Physicians for Human Rights, Veterans for Common Sense, and Veterans for Peace filed papers with the U.S. District Court, charging the Department of Defense and other government agencies with illegally withholding records concerning the abuse of detainees in American military custody. Since then, the organizations have been repeatedly rebuffed in their efforts to investigate what happened at the prison.

In June, the government requested and received an extension from the judge stating that they needed time in order to redact the faces of the men, women and children believed to be shown in the photographs and videos. They were given until today to produce the images, but at the eleventh hour filed a motion to oppose the release of the photos and videos, based on an entirely new argument: they are now requesting a 7(F) exemption from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act to withhold law enforcement-related information in order to protect the physical safety of individuals. Today’s move is the latest in a series of attempts by the government to keep the images from being made public and to cover up the torture of detainees in U.S. custody around the world.


Nice. Remember this the next time these people come to you, hat in hand, trying to get you to go along with their Social Security scams or some such -- they think we're all children. They think we can't handle the truth. They are deathly afraid of anything resembling an open discussion of the facts.

Like most insects, they scuttle back under their rocks at the first sign of sunlight. Will we let them get away with it yet again, or are we preoccupied with Judge Cutie? (wish I'd thought of that one)

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