The reason is protection of our soldiers. The photos would create horror worldwide. And that alone is enough justification for releasing them. Just as you people are defending torture, the release of the photos would demonstrate just how far this kind of thing goes once it is allowed to start.
What we do to others in other nations, we will do to our own people if those actions are not censored. Remember Andersonville. It has happened here.
Andersonville Prison - Crime Library on truTV.com
A Baby Born in Hell
The condition of
inmates at
Andersonville
(Library of
Congress)In 1864 the Civil War was raging through parts of the South, but actual fighting hadn't reached remote Andersonville, Georgia, where the prison camp, Fort Sumter, had been built. On one particularly hot July evening that year, a Confederate guard from the 26th Alabama regiment stood watch on the parapet of the stockade prison, which was more commonly referred to as Andersonville Prison by the locals, and as "hell" by the Union soldiers and sailors incarcerated there.
The prison was nothing more than acres of open ground surrounded by a stockade fence and earthworks barricades. The destitute prisoners sheltered themselves as best they could, some with makeshift tents, others in shallow holes dug in the dirt, lined with pine needles, and covered with whatever scrap of fabric the men hada tarp, a blanket, maybe a tattered coat. The prison was so crowded that each man had just enough room to lie down.
As dusk gave way to night, the guard looked out on thousands of prone, wretched bodiessome of them nearly skeletons from dysentery and malnourishmentand he thought of Andersonville as a massive graveyard where the corpses were still breathing and graves were yet to be covered.
