Despite my exuberant and possibly misplaced optimism about the election of President Obama, it appears that it's likely to be business as usual at the Whitehouse. The handouts continue to large corporations which should have been forced to go bankrupt (and today's news emphasizes that much of the taxpayer money used to fuel this munificence will never be recovered). That's politics, I suppose, and America is, after all, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.

But if today's repeat of information about the contents of the unpublished photographs from Iraq is to be believed then the President has lied through his teeth, thereby becoming complicit in the torture scandal by Bush and Cheney. It has been known since 2004 that prisoners have made many accusations of rape and sodomy against US soldiers. President Obama said in a statement on May 13 “I want to emphasize that these photos that were requested in this case are not particularly sensational, especially when compared to the painful images that we remember from Abu Ghraib.” Major General Antonio Taguba, the man responsible for the US army report on the Abu Ghraib atrocities, says that the unreleased photos showed rape and sexual abuse of women and minors.

This lends a whole new meaning to “not particularly sensational”, making it a phrase worthy to be called Newspeak. Being "economical with the truth" is one thing, but President Obama seems to have told a gratuitous lie when it wasn't necessary. Strike one, President Obama. Strike one. I might reluctantly accept that the President's decision to keep the photographs unpublished makes rather more sense in the light of this information, but I can't accept that as a reason to lie about the contents.

Obama's point was that those responsible for the atrocities have been dealt with appropriately. I respectfully disagree, the consequences stopped far too low on the food chain. It really is time that the people responsible were held accountable for the horrendous torrent of death and maiming that they loosed upon the world. Obama is caught in the aftermath, as he is in so many political dimensions. Congress needs to find its balls and teach Bush and Cheney such a lesson that no future presidents would dare to abuse their executive powers in such a way again. One suspects the problem is that many Congressmen are concerned to prevent similar actions being taken against them for their self-serving greed and corruption.

This all makes "government of the people by the people" seem like a joke in very poor taste. Still, at least the USA has the 23rd best education system in the world. It would be nice to think there'd be some money to fix that soon.