Obama's Bad Week:

From Glenn Greenwald:

Monday - Obama administration's letter to Britian threatening to cut off intelligence-sharing if British courts reveal the details of how we tortured British resident Binyam Mohamed;

Tuesday - Promoted to military commander in Afghanistan Gen. Stanley McChyrstal, who was deeply involved in some of the worst abuses of the Bush era;

Wednesday - Announced he was reversing himself and would try to conceal photographic evidence showing widespread detainee abuse -- despite the rulings from two separate courts (four federal judges unanimously) that the law compels their disclosure;

Friday - Unveiled his plan to preserve a modified system of military commissions for trying Guantanamo detainees, rather than using our extant-judicial processes for doing so.

Obama Seeks to Block Release of Detainee Photos

The President today said that he would attempt to block the release of photographs of detainee abuse by American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. His rationale was that these photos could endanger the troops, while adding nothing to our knowledge of what occurred. While he may be correct that the publication of such pictures would inflame anti-American sentiment (though whether the open acknowledgement of such wrong doing by our government would have the same effect as the knowledge of the wrong doing itself is questionable), practical expediency does not seem to be a legitimate reason for this sort of action.

The ACLU had won a motion at the Federal District Court level related to the release of these photographs, and the Obama administration, along with the DOD, had agreed to release the photos, reasoning that they could not succeed in convincing the Supreme Court to weigh in on the matter. Obama's decision today is a reversal of his own position from last month, and is in opposition to the lower court ruling (I am guessing that the administration intends to make an appeal to the high court in this matter).

The long and short of this is that Obama is engaging in a cover-up of Bush-era policies that, by now, are hardly disputable as crimes. He is reneging on his campaign promise of transparency, and is doing so not by appealing to firm legal grounds, but by appealing to national security (the sort of rationale that lay behind much of the Bush administration's attempts at secrecy). By now, the country, and the world, knows that the US engaged in abuse - torture and worse. The release of these photos isn't necessary to prove that. But it would be helpful in establishing the extent to which these things occurred, and could help justify in the minds of Americans the need for investigations. Their release would also signal to the world that the US has changed course, and is attempting to regain its place among the decent, lawful nations of the world. Preventing their release, on the other hand, would be inimical to investigations (and perhaps this is one of the motives) and would signal to the world that the US will, above all else, protect its own, justice be damned.

Commentary by Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Greenwald (as per usual). Chris Cillizza weighs in with whatever it is he does. 

The Nith U.S. Circuit Court has ruled on the Jeppesen case

The court makes short work of the Obama administration's invocation of States Secrets to quash legal actions against the government:

"According to the government's theory, the judiciary should effectively cordon off all secret government actions from judicial scrutiny, immunizing the CIA and its partners from the demands and limits of the law."

The upshot of this is that the court has (re-)affirmed that the only legitimate use of the State's Secrets privelege is for individual pieces of evidence which are evaluated by the courts.

A stirring victory for government accountability and transparency. 

As always, Glenn has more.