Challenging Release of Detainee Photos Was President Obama's Idea

Today's White House Press Briefing (transcript) was a frustrating affair, despite the cellphone-induced levity. Almost every question had to do with the President's plan to block the release of 44 detainee-abuse photos. This meant a lot of time spent listening to Press Secretary Robert Gibbs repeat himself, as a lot of the questions were repetitious.

There were two things that I found especially interesting when considered together, the first being that the President made this decision, not under pressure from anyone else, but on his own:

Q And did the President come up with this idea of a national security argument, or did someone bring it to him and did he say that's a path I want to go down?

MR. GIBBS: As I understand it, the President, in reviewing this, didn't believe that the case that was being made was the most effective on the grounds of national security.

Q He was the originator of the idea to take this case back and make the national security argument?

MR. GIBBS: The meeting, specifically, was had to bring the legal team in to inform them and others of a change in the way this case would be handled, and the President discussed directly with them the notion that they'd be making a different argument than one that he believed had previously been made.

Then, consider the fact that, while Gibbs would not say that seeing the photographs was what changed the President's mind, this exchange certainly lends to that appearance:

Q To be very clear, the President has seen the detainee photos?

MR. GIBBS: I don't know that he's seen every one of them, but he has seen them. He has seen photos representative of the entire grouping of photos.

Q And when was that? Did that --

MR. GIBBS: I don't know the exact date.

Q When we asked you in April, I think you said you did not think he had seen them.

MR. GIBBS: He had not at that time, no.

So, the President hadn't seen the photos in April, but sometime after seeing them, he announces his opposition to their release. That makes sense, and there's nothing wrong with that.

Except, doesn't this add to the propaganda value of not releasing the photographs? If the impression is created that these pictures are so heinous that they made the President do a 180, couldn't the images conjured in the imagination do more harm than the actual photos?

Perhaps, but the President's argument rests on the notion that the prejudicial nature of these photos outweighs the public good in releasing them. If the court agrees, it would be tough not to conclude that the President is making the right call.

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