Obama has been facing some fire lately from liberals on how he has decided not to release the photos of torture conducted at Guantanamo. I'm not really sure what that says about Obama's truthfulness to his campaign words, but I have to agree with the defense secretary, Robert Gates, when he "argued that making [the pictures] public would hand Islamic militants a propaganda coup that could lead to renewed attacks on American forces."
I feel the same way about these pictures as I did Saddam Hussein's assassination photos: there's no real point in showing the pictures. Now that I see a pictures of Hussein's severed head, I believe that he is dead and I feel safer? Hmmm, I believed the government when they said he was dead, and, anyway, a photograph doesn't prove anything in the photoshop age. Also, I thought the pictures of Hussein's dead sons were especially distasteful. I felt no satisfaction upon looking at the dead "enemy", especially since the government did such a poor job convincing the public that Huessein was a threat in the first place.
With the issue of torture, I personally find it an embarrassing part of America's history that should best be left in the past. It does no good to use gruesome photos to instigate indignation/vengeance in both international and American communities. We've already had a decade of anti-American sentiment; let's focus on rebuilding the American image and not reminders of how horrible the Americans can really be. I think it's great that the American government has acknowledged, rebuked, and reformed its treatment of detainees, and personally, I think that's enough. We've already had a thousand words about the subject, and, in this case, a picture is just not worth it.
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