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Opinion: Torture debate rages as Pentagon prepares to release 2,000 new photos

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This is not the road that President Obama wanted to go down.

In releasing memos last week that became the legal underpinning for George W. Bush‘s decision after 9/11 to authorize ‘enhanced techniques’ against suspected terrorists, Obama urged policymakers to resist the urge for retribution. In a statement, he said:

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This is a time for reflection, not retribution. I respect the strong views and emotions that these issues evoke. We have been through a dark and painful chapter in our history. But at a time of great challenges and disturbing disunity, nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past. Our national greatness is embedded in America’s ability to right its course in concert with our core values, and to move forward with confidence. That is why we must resist the forces that divide us, and instead come together on behalf of our common future.

But political pressure is mounting in Washington, at least on Capitol Hill, for accountability for the Bush administration’s use of water boarding and other harsh interrogation tactics.

Today, the Pentagon announced that by the end of May it will release 2,000 more photographs of alleged prisoner abuse in Iraq, Afghanistan and possibly Guantanamo Bay. The decision was in response to the ACLU‘s request for 44 photos of military criminal investigations into abuse, but the Pentagon apparently decided it would be best to clean out its files. ‘These photographs provide visual proof that prisoner abuse by U.S. personnel was not aberrational but widespread, reaching far beyond the walls of Abu Ghraib,’ ACLU staff attorney Amrit Singh said.

Yesterday, moveon.org -- ironically formed as a grassroots online political organization to urge Congress to just ‘move on’ from the Bill Clinton impeachment show trial -- are now upping the pressure with ads like this one.

The moral case for prosecution was laid out this morning by the New York Times’ Paul Krugman. ‘The only way we can regain our moral compass, not just for the sake of our position in the world, but for the sake of our own national conscience, is to investigate how that happened, and, if necessary, to prosecute those responsible,’ he wrote.

But there is also an undercurrent of worry about the potential fallout if former Bush officials are prosecuted. Potentially in the cross-hairs: everyone from the CIA officers who conducted the torture to the lawyers who cleared the way to the decision-makers who authorized it -- like Bush, former Vice President Dick Cheney and former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. And then there’s former Pentagon Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Just this week, the Senate Armed Services Committee declassified a report alleging that he approved techniques that led directly to the abuses at Abu Gharib.

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One argument against a truth squad: Whenever Washington gets consumed in a witch hunt -- think Clinton’s impeachment trial or the controversy over Ronald Reagan’s arms-for-hostages scandal -- it cripples government’s ability to focus on pressing immediate issues like the economy.

The other case against unleashing a drumbeat of hearings is political. If the public concludes the investigation is ill-advised -- remember Wisconsin Republican Joe McCarthy’s witch-hunt against communists in the U.S. government in the 1950s -- the party doing the scorching gets tarred too.

Already, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been put on the defensive. She told reporters this week that although the Bush administration briefed her and three other top congressional leaders on legal opinions that cleared the way for the the harsh methods, she was never informed -- as she said she was supposed to be -- that the Bush White House was actually using those methods.

But Republicans seem to smell blood. ‘Nothing should have come as a surprise to her,’ House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio said.

One thing’s for sure: The drumbeat will continue. What do you think?

-- Johanna Neuman

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