Preaching transparency, condoning cover-ups

With his decision to prevent the publication of further torture photographs from Abu Ghraib prison US President Barack Obama has gone back on his campaign promises, writes the left-leaning daily Die Tageszeitung: "His credibility as the renewer of American policy is showing its first major cracks. Who is going to believe that 2,000 further images, among them snapshots of US soldiers and medical photos of corpses reveal 'not the slightest new insight' for the documentation of torture and abuse, as Obama argues? Bush's successor is clinging to the version that has long been debunked as a fairy tale, namely that the excesses in Abu Ghraib in 2003 were committed by a small group of soldiers without the knowledge of their superiors. By deciding to withhold these images from publication, Obama is resisting the mounting pressure to have the Bush government criminally prosecuted for its human rights abuses. The activists from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) are strongly pushing for such a move, and of course firing angry salvoes at the tranformed Obama, who promised transparency and is now condoning cover-ups."

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