"First, there was the nothing-to-see-here excuse. In his remarks yesterday afternoon, Obama said the "photos that were requested in this case are not particularly sensational, especially when compared to the painful images that we remember from Abu Ghraib."

"But as the Washington Post reports: "[O]ne congressional staff member, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the photos, said the pictures are more graphic than those that have been made public from Abu Ghraib. 'When they are released, there will be a major outcry for an investigation by a commission or some other vehicle,' the staff member said."

"Obama said the incidents pictured in the photographs "were investigated -- and, I might add, investigated long before I took office -- and, where appropriate, sanctions have been applied....[T]his is not a situation in which the Pentagon has concealed or sought to justify inappropriate action. Rather, it has gone through the appropriate and regular processes. And the individuals who were involved have been identified, and appropriate actions have been taken."

"But this suggests that Obama has bought into the false Bush-administration narrative that the abuses of detainees were isolated acts, rather than part of an endemic system of abuse implicitly sanctioned at the highest levels of government. The Bushian view has been widely discredited -- and for Obama to endorse it suggests a fundamental misunderstanding of the past."

"Obama says he’s worried that releasing the photos might enflame hatred against Americans and imperil the troops.

"But Obama can douse that flame by acknowledging that a previous Administration committed these crimes, that we find them abhorrent, that they will not occur under his watch, and that those who committed the crimes and ordered the crimes will be held responsible.

"The statute says: 'Whoever, knowing that an offense has been committed, receives, relieves, comforts or assists the offender in order to hinder or prevent his apprehension, trial or punishment, is an accessory after the fact.'

"Obama is relieving, comforting and assisting all those who tortured and countenanced torture.

"He is staining himself with the crimes of his predecessor. And that’s a crime."

And Neil Lancaster writes at A Tiny Revolution:  

"Pres. Obama's decision to resist the release of long-withheld images of U.S. torture in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo is yet another self-inflicted injury to the idea that his administration is willing to be "transparent". 

The excuse offered adds insult -- an insult to the intelligence:

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters yesterday that President Obama has "great concern" about the impact that releasing the photos would have on soldiers fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"Puhleeze. His great concern is about the impact on the U.S. public, half of which is already far more interested in accountability for torture than he is, and the other half unwilling or unable to conceive of U.S. torture unless shown pictures.

"The Iraqi and Afghan public don't need five-year-old pictures of torture to loathe and wish harm to U.S. troops: they've lived it, they've heard the survivors' accounts, and they're still experiencing massacres by air strikes, house raids, checkpoints, lawless detention, and the multiple humiliations of occupation. The only things that could dampen their anger are the departure of U.S. troops and trials, conviction and long sentences for higher-ups responsible for the crimes committed against their peoples.