The AP reports that a U.S. District Judge has ordered the release of photos taken at Abu Ghraib that the military tried desperately to withhold on the grounds that releasing them could aid al-Queda recruitment.

The judge opined that terrorists have proven that they “do not need pretexts for their barbarism.” He also said that “My task is not to defer to our worst fears, but to interpret and apply the law, in this case, the Freedom of Information Act, which advances values important to our society, transparency and accountability in government.”

The article refers only to photographs; I don’t know whether the videos will be released as well.

Daily Kos has a partial transcription of a July speech by New Yorker journalist Seymour Hersh, who described some of the immensely disturbing photos and videos that he has seen (a video of Hersh’s speech can be found here; it starts at 1:07):

Get ready for a shitstorm of major proportions.

Just as I thought that it was important for Americans to look at photographs of the New Orleans dead, I think it is imperative that our nation take a sober look at this material, no matter how disturbing it is. After all, the abuse was done in our name.

And as a nation, we must be willing to come to terms with the fact that the deranged abuse at Abu Ghraib was not simply the product of a few “bad apples,” but rather was the direct result of the decision, made by those at the highest pinnacles of U.S. power, to abandon the Geneva conventions for detainees in this war — a decision that ultimately puts our troops in the gravest possible danger.

At her trial, the lawyers for Lyndie England were not allowed to present evidence that her actions were the result of systemic problems in the military chain of command:

Her lawyers were forced instead to argue that England had “an overly compliant personality.”

The open question is how compliant the U.S. public will be as the Administration attempts to pin this outrage on grunts at the bottom of the chain-of-command.

As Reed Brody, special counsel for The Human Rights Watch, has argued, there is only one way for our nation to absolve itself:

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