A Rather Troubling Newswire Image On The Day Obama Releases Bush Interrogation Memos

Yesterday’s release of those Bush Administration interrogation memos has caused an unusual offering of file photos to be distributed to the newswire.
I’m surprised I never saw this one before. Shades of FEMA ’05, what the image depicts is an “improvised” accounting of detainees recorded on a plywood wall who had been treated at the now-abandoned hospital facility at Gitmo’s Camp X-Ray.

Excuse my fury (and my nomination of the image as symbolic), but was the excuse here — as exemplified by the defense offered by the director of national intelligence at the end of the NYT memos story — that crude measures were necessary to prevent another 9/11 style attack?

In this case, things certainly must have been so dire there was no time even for even pen and paper.

(image: Paul J. Richards – AFP/Getty Images. April 25, 2007. US Naval Station in Guantanamo, Cuba)