YOU WILL NOT BELIEVE - AT 7:42:  From the Los Angeles Times, via the Seattle Times:

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration agreed late Thursday to release dozens of photographs depicting alleged abuses at U.S. prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan during the Bush years.

The decision will make public for the first time photos obtained in military investigations at facilities other than the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Forty four pictures that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) was seeking in a court case, plus a "substantial number" of other images, will be released by May 28.

The photos, examined by Air Force and Army criminal investigators, are apparently not as shocking as those taken at Abu Ghraib, which became a symbol of U.S. mistakes in Iraq. But Pentagon officials nevertheless are concerned that the release could incite another backlash in the Middle East.

COMMENT:  Will these Obama people ever learn?  Of course, the ACLU would not care at all if there's another backlash in the Middle East.  The ACLU wouldn't even care if Americans were killed as a result.  This organization, which joined the fringe many years ago, has little to do with civil liberties today.

A prominent ACLU lawyer, one of the last of the decent ones, told me a few years ago how worried he was about what the organization had become.  He reported that there are people on the ACLU national board who didn't even believe in free speech.

At one time the ACLU did some valuable work, and probably still does some today.  I was a member.  So was Douglas MacArthur.  It had members across the political spectrum.  That changed dramatically in the mid-sixties, as the organization absorbed the sixties culture.  There was a mass exodus of members in that time, moving the group sharply to the left.  It has never recovered.

So, now we'll see some new pictures, and the Bush haters will be energized once more.  This from an administration that promised bi-partisanship. 

April 21, 2009