May 19, 2009 – Earlier in this week, President Obama said he would hold back the prisoner abuse photographs that he initially wanted to put to the public’s eyes. This change of heart was shocking and depressing. The ACLU wanted the public to know what happened to the prisoners for six years. In 2003, they want the prisoner photographs to be exposed because of the Freedom of Information Act for records, which also includes photographs. In 2005, the federal judge in recognized Bush’s action of hiding the photographs were negative. In 2008, the federal court generally supported the choice. Bush’s office continued to suppress the photos, Obama was doing the same. The photos were extremely important because for the historical record of showing that they had abused prisoners. This also showed that the Bush’s officials and the photos’ link of identifying what happened to the terrorists. The reason that Obama changed his mind about the photos were that they “would not add any additional benefit”. Another reason that the senior officials were trying to hide the truth from the public because they fear they will be prosecuted in war crimes with their way of interrogating terrorists.
After reading this article, I was upset about Obama’s action. This is basically just clouding the public from the truth. The public has the right to know what the government is doing with government transparency. This is already going against the basic freedom and rights of a human being. Also, with them hiding the truth, there will be more rumours about the United States torturing terrorists. As the rumour grows, this might even cause more terrorists attacks to avenge their comrades. The rumours might actually even worsen the situation of the terrorist prisoner’s abuse. They only want to hide the public from the truth because of high government officials facing war crimes. Those men are criminals and the government is defending them, where is the law? The photos should be exposed and these government officials should be prosecuted. What the United States is doing is equivalent to the Nazi concentration camps, where when Nazis lost the war, they tried to destroy these camps, denying their existence. US seemed to be walking down the same path of trying to cover up any evidence of government torturing prisoners. The United States better stop and continue liberation the world to freedom, or they will turn into the very thing they had sworn to destroy. U.S., turn back while you still can!
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