In today’s White House press briefing, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was bombarded by questions from reporters about the Obama administration’s decision not to release dozens of photos showing the abuse of detainees by U.S. military personnel. Gibbs argued that releasing the photos would “provide a disincentive for detainee abuse investigation”; people would be afraid to take the photos if they knew they were going to be released. He called the release of the photos “sensationalistic”:

GIBBS: The disincentive is in the notion that every time one of these photos is taken, that it’s going to be released — that nothing is added by the release of the photo, right? The existence of the investigation is not increased because of the release of the photo. It’s just to provide, in some ways, a sensationalistic portion of that investigation. [...]

But the — I think if every time somebody took a picture of detainee abuse, if every time that — if any time any of those pictures were mandatorily going to be necessarily released, despite the fact that they were being investigated, I think that would provide a disincentive to take those pictures and investigate.

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The real disincentive caused from the release of the photos is that it will hopefully caution U.S. officials from ever engaging in torture again. As the ACLU’s Amrit Singh explained, the photographs are “critical for helping the public understand the scope and scale of prisoner abuse as well as for holding senior officials accountable for authorizing or permitting such abuse.”

On April 23, the Justice Department said that it would release the 44 photos as part of a lawsuit brought by the ACLU. At the press briefing the next day, Gibbs made clear that the Obama administration believed it was legally bound to take this action:

GIBBS: The Second Circuit Court ruled in December of 2008 that the photos had to be released. The previous administration lost a court case on that. The Department of Justice decided based on the ruling that it was hopeless to appeal, and a mandate ordering the release of those photos came Monday. And the administration, the Pentagon, and the court entered into an agreement to release those photos.

Additionally, Obama reportedly decided not to release the photos because he was concerned that it would put U.S. troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan in danger of reprisal. But in April, a Pentagon spokesman told the New York Times that while officials were “still concerned that release of the pictures could make the military’s mission more difficult, that consideration was less pressing now, given that Iraq is more stable than it was two or three years ago.”

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In 2006, President Bush proudly described the “alternative set of procedures” used on detainee Abu Zubaydah to extract “information that could save innocent lives.” “I can say the procedures were tough, and they were safe, and lawful, and necessary,” Bush said.

During today’s judiciary subcommittee hearing on torture, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) questioned former FBI interrogator Ali Soufan, who led a successful interrogation of Abu Zubaydah. Whitehouse read a portion of Bush’s speech describing Zubaydah’s interrogation, and asked Soufan whether it was an “accurate” depiction. Soufan said it appeared Bush had been told “half-truths,” and agreed with Whitehouse that he then repeated these “half-truths”:

WHITEHOUSE: Does that statement accurately reflect the interrogation of Abu Zubydah?

SOUFAN: Well, the environment that he’s talking about, yes, it reflects, you know, he was injured, he required medical care. But I think the president — my own personal opinion here, based on my recollection — he was told probably half-truth.

WHITEHOUSE: And repeated half-truth obviously. The statement as presented does not conform to what you know to be the case from your experience on hand.

SOUFAN: Yes. Yes sir. Yes sir.

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Whitehouse also read a portion of the May, 2005 OLC memo that claimed that Zubaydah “identified Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as the mastermind of the Sep. 11 attacks” only “once enhanced techniques were employed.” Whitehouse asked Soufan if this was accurate:

WHITEHOUSE: From your position at the actual interrogation of Abu Zubaydah you know that statement not to be true?

SOUFAN: Yes sir.

Indeed, Soufan and his team nursed extracted valuable information from Zubaydah — including, most importantly, the identify of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — while nursing him back to health. “We were able to get the information about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a couple of days,” Soufan told Newsweek. “We didn’t have to do any of this [torture]. We could have done this the right way.”

Yesterday, the Washington Independent’s Dave Weigel reported that newly Democratic Senator Arlen Specter will speak at a conference entitled “Libel Lawfare: Silencing Criticism of Radical Islam.” Specter is scheduled to deliver the welcome address.

According to the invitation, the “conference is substantially funded by the Middle East Forum, which thanks an anonymous donor for his generosity.” The conference lists no Muslims among its presenters or participants.

Middle East Forum is a think tank run by right wing scholar-activist Daniel Pipes, who is also speaking at the conference. Since 9/11, Pipes has become notorious for trafficking in hoary old Orientalist stereotypes in order to stoke Americans’ prejudice against, and fear of, Islam. Pipes also oversees Campus Watch, a project that keeps tabs on and harasses academic scholars it deems insufficiently supportive of Israel.

In keeping with his stated belief that Arab- and Muslim-Americans deserve to be subjected to “special scrutiny,” during the 2008 presidential campaign Pipes published three different articles questioning whether Barack Obama ever practiced Islam as a child.

Also speaking at the conference is Frank Gaffney, who heads the Center for Security Policy. In February, CSP released a report, The Rise of the Iran Lobby, which claimed that “a complex network of individuals and organizations with ties to the clerical regime in Tehran is pressing forward in seeming synchrony to influence the new U.S. administration’s policy towards the Islamic Republic of Iran.” Among those listed as part of the “network” were Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice, Ambassador Dennis Ross, Council on Foreign Relations Committee president Richard Haas, and the Center for a New American Security, simply by virtue of the fact that “the foreign policy positions of [CNAS's] affiliates correspond strongly to the preferred policy positions of Tehran’s mullahs.” CNAS has contributed a number of people to the Obama administration, including CNAS co-founder Michele Flournoy, who is now undersecretary of defense for policy.

The question for Sen. Specter is, why would he want to share the stage with, and help legitimize, characters such as Pipes and Gaffney who have leveled such baseless and irresponsible innuendos and accusations against both the president and key members of his administration?