“I can’t understand why no one’s here yet… at least Hillary said she couldn’t make it because she had some other meeting, though she wouldn’t tell me what it was about… you’d think at least my political staff would be here…”
(Via the White House.)
President Obama and Iraqi president Nouri al-Maliki at the White House yesterday (via the Associated Press).
(President Obama and Bo, the new family dog, in the White House.)
(President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton on the south lawn of the White House, via TheRoot.com.)
(CEOs Kenneth Lewis of Bank of America, Richard Davis of U.S. Bancorp, John Mack of Morgan Stanley and Vikram Pandit of Citigroup, among others, in front of the White House on Friday, via the Wall Street Journal.)
(White House photo by Eric Draper)
Remember when Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld testified before Congress a couple of weeks ago about the Abu Ghraib torture scandal?
In a much-belated burst of candor, he told the panelists, “”There are a lot more photographs and videos that exist … If these are released to the public, obviously it’s going to make matters worse.”
The candor was short-lived, however, as the Pentagon/White House chickened out of releasing the newfound evidence.
Didn’t matter. The Washington Post already has it:
In a collection of hundreds of so-far-unreleased photographs and short digital videos obtained by The Washington Post, U.S. soldiers are shown physically and emotionally abusing detainees last fall in the Abu Ghraib prison on the outskirts of Baghdad.Also coming soon to a cable news channel near you, I’m sure.
The new pictures and videos go beyond the photos previously released to the public in several ways, amplifying the overt violence against detainees and displaying a variety of abusive techniques previously unseen. They show a group of apparently cavalier soldiers assaulting prisoners, forcing detainees to masturbate, and standing over a naked prisoner while holding a shotgun. Some of the videos echo scenes in previously released still photographs — such as the stacking of naked detainees — but the video images render the incidents more vividly.
News item: “An internal White House document outlining President Bush’s re-election agenda starts with “War on terrorism (Con’t)” and homeland security,” reports the Associated Press…