Pentagon denies report Iraq prison photos show rape

This denial comes despite the fact that the source of the allegations is a US general, Antonio Taguba, who is extremely familiar with the evidence and is already on the record (in a 2007 interview with the New Yorker) as having seen a video of an American soldier raping a female detainee.

This issue has become a real conundrum for US public relations and "force protection," or so it seems to me. Obama now wants to interdict the release of more of the Abu Ghraib photos in order to protect the lives of US troops overseas. Yet everybody and his grandmother knows that the photos exist, and that they document some horrific acts on the part of US troops. Until the images are actually released, imaginations are likely to run toward the worst, even as the US will be accused of covering them up. I begin to wonder how much the continued suppression of them is really "protecting" US forces overseas.