Saturday, May 30, 2009

President Obama, the Pentagon, and the leaked sexual abuse photos

By GottaLaff

Earlier I posted about the Abu Ghraib photos and that their existence has been confirmed. I went back and reread the article I linked to. Please go read the whole thing, but this part stood out:

The most prominent victim in the past of [Pentagon spokesperson, Bryan G. Whitman's, who came to prominence during the Bush administration] disinformation may have been none other than Barack Obama. On the campaign trail, in Austin, Texas, candidate Obama said he had gotten a message from an Army captain in Iraq who described how his unit had been shorted in munitions and equipment. I learned from reporters that Whitman started a whispering campaign with the Pentagon press corps telling them (not for attribution) that he didn’t believe Obama’s claims were true. Whitman’s game, however, was stopped by ABC reporter Jake Tapper, who tracked down the captain, interviewed him and fully verified the account.

Bryan Whitman remains on the job in the Pentagon today. But the effort to suppress the shocking photographs is already failing, as they leak to the public and reliable sources verify their authenticity. A senior military officer told me that in the months before the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, Pentagon officials engaged in strange maneuvers to avoiding viewing the pictures. That, he noted, didn’t make the photos any less real. But it apparently made it easier for Pentagon officials to dissemble about them. That process hasn’t stopped.

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