Congress has now authorized President Obama, at the discretion of his Administration, to prohibit release of photographs taken between 2002 and 2009 showing American soldiers, contractors, and agency personnel violently abusing foreign detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan. This effectively ends a lawsuit before the U.S. Supreme Court in which the American Civil Liberties Union had sought the release of 21 such photos under the Freedom of Information Act. Lower courts, including the influential 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, had ruled against the government's efforts to hide the pictures, but with new authority granted by Congress, which came in a budget bill to fund the Homeland Security Department, Defense Secretary Robert Gates moved quickly to block judicial review of the ACLU case.

Gates went further to block an additional 23 pictures that are rumored to show more abuses contrary to American law and international treaties to which the United States is a signatory.

Among the acts clearly evident in the photos is at least one of a prisoner apparently being sodomized by an American soldier using a broom handle. Other rape or simulated rape photos — along with various alternate demonstrations of brutality, degradation, and violence against prisoners, including mock executions — are said to be in the now-sequestered images.

In signing the bill to keep the photographs of what some allege are American war crimes from being released, President Obama defended the Administration's successful thwarting of the Freedom of Information Act by saying that allowing the pictures to be seen by the public would "further inflame anti-American opinion" and "put our troops in greater danger."

Obama's stance on the evidence of war crimes committed by Americans involved in foreign conflicts flies directly in the face of his declarations and directives on his first full day in office, when he said, "My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government."

More Blackouts to Come?
Rumors cannot be confirmed, but insiders say that Mr. Obama is seriously considering asking Congress to give him the authority to classify a whole series of photos showing other abuses committed by Americans.

High on the agenda would be any photographs showing extra-judicial lynchings of African-Americans by Whites. Although historians and civil rights advocates argue that the photographs are invaluable evidence of past racism in American, President Obama is leaning toward the argument that the horrific photos "further inflame anti-White opinion" in African-American communities and "put White people in greater danger of being called 'cracker' when walking through less-cultured neighborhoods."

Also on the agenda would be photographs from the Holocaust in Europe showing dead, dying, and abused Jews. Again, while historians and many others argue that the photographs are part of a crucial, on-going lesson in the need to control the unspeakably monstrous impulses of societies gone awry, President Obama is receptive to the argument that Holocaust photos "further inflame anti-fascist opinion" and "put hate-mongers like Lou Dobbs, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and certain Ron Paul fans in greater danger of being called freak-show crackpots they actually are."

Decisions on these extensions of the Obama Obstruction of Justice Doctrine have not been finalized, but leading Right-wing legal minds are excited, nonetheless. What liberals thought was going to be a progressive President is transforming before their eyes into a unitary executive with high aspirations to alter the very reality of what citizens see of America when it is doing the noble work of the Empire that will not abide a rule of law that includes accountability for the Empire, itself, and its violent, criminally culpable, failed leaders.