A Picture's Worth a Thousand Words

Remember those 87 8x10 color glossy photos with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back explaining what each one meant and the four videos depicting abuse, general nastiness and blantant disregard for the Geneva Conventions and basic human rights? The ones that U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein has been pondering for some time as to whether he should release them to the press?

Well the judge has narrowed it down to 74 photos and three videos saying "those he excluded would have required redactions so great as to render them inconsequential. He said the pictures and videos involve a limited number of soldiers engaging in acts that were 'distasteful to an extreme degree.'"

What gives? Is he keeping them for his personal stash? And isn't the term "distasteful" really just a matter or personal preferences?

But oddly enough, there's been little talk of prosecuting the folks that committed the atrocities, allowed them to happen or encouraged them.

U.S. Attorney David Kelley told the judge that insurgents and
propagandists in Afghanistan and Iraq would claim that a judge's
order to release the pictures was a "deliberate war act" by the U.S.

More to the point, don't you think that the folks in Afghanistan and Iraq who they themselves, or their family members had been raped or sodomized might consider the rape or sodomy a "deliberate war act," rather than the releasing of photos depicting said rape or sodomy? But I'm just guessing.