New GOP Phrase For Detainee Pictures: “Terrorist Propaganda Photos”
Get ready to hear Republicans and conservative opinion-makers using a new phrase to describe the unreleased photos of detainees that are at the center of a white-hot political war right now: “Terrorist propaganda photos.”
The House GOP leadership just used the phrase for the first time this morning in a statement they sent to me. The phrase was cooked up in hopes that it will catch on with other GOPers, and it probably will do just that.
I got the statement after asking House Minority Leader John Boehner’s office for comment the news this morning that House Dems have decided to support allowing Guantanamo detainees to be tried in the U.S. Boehner spokesperson Michael Steel emailed:
“We still have not seen a comprehensive plan for how the Administration plans to deal with the detainees in Cuba. That’s what the American people expect and deserve. They don’t want politicians cutting deals behind closed doors to proceed in a slapdash, ad hoc fashion. Certainly not on important issues like bringing these detainees to the United States, or releasing terrorist propaganda photos.”
The phrase is a reference not to Gitmo, but to other detainee photos whose potential disclosure is at the center of a huge political fight. House Dem leaders oppose blocking their release, setting up a major showdown with Joe Lieberman, who wants to keep them secret at all costs.
The new phrase is a reference to the GOP claim that such photos help terrorist recruitment, and signals that Republicans think they can milk this one for all it’s worth. Get ready to hear it again, and again, and…
Update: Edited slightly for, er, taste.
The homepage of this blog is here. RSS feed here. Twitter feed here. Email me here.
These “terrorist propaganda photos” were created by US military personnel.
Boehner just called US military personnel terrorist propagandists!!
Why does John Boehner hate our troops?
Funny how GOPers deem torture photos “terrorist propaganda” while at the same time they insist that waterboarding has saved American lives. Where are the Democrats? If they believe strongly that torture was used in the name of the American people, where is the winning argument that torture has killed American troops? It’s not a difficult argument to make: GOPers insist the photos are “terrorist propaganda”, therefore, torture puts American lives at risk. The Dems are ceding the moral and (true) argument through their silence.
I must admit I am at a loss to explain how to reconcile the idea that torture is a recruiting tool against the US, but releasing these photos would somehow not have that effect. Is the argument that they already know about abuses, and therefore visual proof gives some kind of cloture rather than increased passion?
.
And of course, the reverse argument is also puzzling – that is that torture keeps us safe, but releasing the pictures would be inflammatory – especially since at this point, no one is in a position to deny these abuses were widespread and systemic.
Less secrecy, not more. There are already precedents from the prior eight years giving the presidency the de facto power of a dictator. More secrecy only enhances that. In the long run that matters more, far far more, than speculation about whether releasing photos of torture enhances or diminshes Al Qaeda or other Islamic extremists.
I thought Hillary was against their release? Releasing them only inflames the Arab street – and works against the President’s efforts to bring peace to the Middle East.
Ooo, I can’t WAIT for them to start using this line, precisely for the reason nff said. Granted, s/he was being sarcastic, but there is a serious, underlying point. If the Democrats have any bal–er, spine… they’ll immediately hit back, and hard, on the implications of the calling the photos that.
Less secrecy is always good – but in some ways this looks to me like a fight over nothing – I’d rather be fighting over prosecutions. Pictures are a matter of our knowing what we did but their release doesn’t do anything toward really agreeing to be accountable for it.
In some ways this just pulls this whole issue over into the very most sensational aspects of it. But as I said, transparency is better than not.
Perhaps the Republicans, when they were the government, should have thought of what the result of establishing torture in the prisons around the world would be before they started torturing.
They also might have wondered what the purpose of issuing disposable cameras to the troops was?
Few were concerned when the foreign press was saying that torture was being used on detainees until the first photographs were revealed. Then suddenly torture was a reality.
The Bush Administration seemed to have depended on the American people’s Seasame Street attention span, when it came to the printed reports of torture being carried out in their name.
It wasn’t until the graphic pictures were released that, all of a sudden it could not be denied.
I say again, if the Bush Administration is so concerned that they may be held legally to account for these hundreds, if not thousands of atrocities, they should have thought of that possibility before authorizing it as policy.
The Rule Of Law applies to everyone, doesn’t it?
The “Get out of jail free” card should not be a gutless group of lawyers who rather than respect the law, folded and re-wrote the existing laws against torture, spitting on the Geneva Conventions.
ALL should be tried and jailed if shown to have participated in this internationally shameful eight years of hell.
Top to bottom.
The war criminals from WWII are still being exposed, tried and convicted after 60 years.
There is NO statute of limitations on War Crimes.
“There is NO statute of limitations on War Crimes”
No there isn’t, which is why Obama has time. And this is going to dominate everything until something is settled, which is too bad considering that we already have a huge frakking war on our hands over health care.
I just have to say when you break the law and then say “don’t show the truth because it will make it worse” you are setting up a false premise and pretending that the truth will not come out. These photos will surface and if we put them out we will show the world we will not tolerate this behavior any longer.
We could rename John Boehner’s baby photos “birth control,” but it wouldn’t change what they are.
You know, Germany had a pretty bad world problem after the things Hitler did and they dealt with it successfully by building museums to the awful things he did instead of trying to hide and deny. They showed the worst of it, apologized and committed as a nation to never allow it again. Maybe instead of hiding the pictures, we should build a museum and have remorse and conviction that we’ll never allow America to be tarnished like that again. I think we could take the sting out of the terrorists propaganda if we ourselves condemned it in a very public way. I also think that a whole lot more Americans would be against it if they saw the blood and suffering and degradation that was committed in their name and with their money——–if they saw it blown up in large, living color pictures and hanging in a museum. And if they saw the proof that this wasn’t done just to terrorists. It was done to a whole lot of people who were proven innocent. It was done because Cheney got so scared that he became a man without character.
“Maybe instead of hiding the pictures, we should build a museum and have remorse and conviction that we’ll never allow America to be tarnished like that again.”
.
Maybe we should first finish a museum that honors the memory of the nearly 3000 killed on 9/11?
Terrorist Propaganda Photos; Enhanced Interrogation Techniques; Republicans prefer to use three words where one will do.
why do i miss freedom-fries
A bomb being called and explosive device does not make it any less lethal.
The way they make it sound the detainees were taking pictures of themselves to make us look bad; wow, that logic is breathtaking.
I think the Repubs are right. The photos must be named properly.
Release the REPUBLICAN TERRORIST PROPAGANDA PHOTOS. NOW!
Gee, I wonder who hired and paid the folks who took these pictures.
The GOP needs to get a grip.
“Terrorist propaganda photos” is too bulky a phrase. It’s not going to stick. Secondly, it implies that those who took the photos are terrorists, and that the photos were meant to be used as propaganda. So American citizens, employed by the military, are now terrorist propagandists? (Ouch. Even more awkard).
Boner and mean jean given to us by way of cincinnati ohio..Good grief
Everyone seems to have caught onto the idea that these pictures were products of the US military and the Republicans are either calling our troops terrorists or something along those lines. At least we now have Republican acknowledgement that the illegal, cruel treatment formerly known as torture done by the Cheney/Bush regime is a major recruitment device for the terrorists and that we are NOT safer for having done it.