Obama's photo release operation

Adam Brodsky:

IF President Obama were as crafty as, say, Osama bin Laden, you might wonder if his decision last week to release new "torture" photos this month was part of some clever psych-ops scheme.

After all, the decision came only a week after Obama & Co. let loose key memos on "brutal" US interrogation techniques. CIA operatives, the memos showed, had "tortured" prisoners and used sinister tactics designed to exploit fears.

Now the Obama folks will hand out scores of new photos from investigations at US prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So is this some new publicity campaign meant to deter al Qaeda by warning about our "scary" practices? Or to convince terrorists that Obama's no softy? America's enemies will see that they aren't the only ones who can play rough. If they mess with us, this is what'll happen.

If only.

Obama says that admitting "mistakes" makes us stronger. But the new photos will only reinforce our image as morally confused and constrained -- and thus weak. They reportedly show "abusive" conduct by US service personnel but nothing approaching the Abu Ghraib level.

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Consider those tactics: throwing cold water at prisoners, sleep deprivation, slamming them against walls and, of course, waterboarding -- pouring water on a cloth over the prisoner's nose and mouth for no more than 40 seconds.

Will the head-choppers and acid-bathers be deterred by this -- or entertained?

The New York Times describes one technique, "the facial hold," as "essentially what grandma does to a visiting grandchild who misbehaves -- with hands holding the sides of the head as questions are asked."

Huh? Were prisoners supposed to fear being kissed?

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The left insists that we not stoop to our enemies' level, lest we become no better than them. But that's flawed moral logic. "Harsh" questioning is meant to save lives and protect freedoms; terrorists practice butchery to inflict pain, usurp power and drive innocents into submission.

America will never be in the same moral swamp as terrorists, no matter how "harsh" our interrogations, because our intent is to fight evil, not conduct it. And terrorists forfeit any claim to civilized treatment when they abandon it themselves.

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The leftist in this country are wallowing in a moral swamp of their own by conflating the two. They would accept mass murder on a grand scale rather than discomfort our enemies. I think that logic is morally reprehensible.