Senators vow veto on release of torture pics

Senators Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham have announced plans to forestall efforts meant to publish torture photos taken from US military prisons.

In a joint statement on Monday, the two senators said that US Congress members need to prevent the release of photos that threaten US troops’ security overseas.

[efoods]They resorted to US President Barack Obama’s earlier remarks in which he opined against the exposure of photos depicting military personnel administering torture techniques on detainees held indefinitely without charge in US custody.

“The president has said that the release of the photos of detainees in US custody would ‘put our troops and civilians serving our nation abroad in greater danger’. We agree with the Commander in Chief.”

“The release of the photos will serve as propaganda and a recruiting tool for terrorists who seek to attack American citizens at home and abroad. We should strive to have as open a government as possible, but the behavior depicted in the photos has been prohibited and is being investigated…”

“Transparency, and in this case needless transparency, should not be paid for with the lives of American citizens, let alone the lives of our men and women in uniform fighting on our behalf in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere,” they argued.

They went on to conclude, “Let it clearly be understood that without this legislation the photos in question are likely to be released. Such a release would be tantamount to a death sentence to some who are serving our nation in the most dangerous and difficult spots like Iraq and Afghanistan.”

“It is this certain knowledge of these consequences of having the photos released that will cause us to vote against the supplemental and continue our push to turn our important amendment into law.”

The United States has kept and tortured hundreds of prisoners at the infamous Guantanamo Bay detention facility, Bagram air base in Afghanistan and secret jails known as black sites around the world.

This article was posted: Tuesday, June 9, 2009 at 12:11 pm

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