So everything in your life is an open book? Everything you do, everything you say, everything you write, everything? After all you "don't see how anything in our society is aided by covering things up."
When I hire a professional my main interest is if the professional is honest and competent. After that, I do not get much into how he does his job. I don't need to know that and, quite frankly, I'm generally not qualified to judge that. If there's some question about the work the professional is doing or has done, I take it to other professionals, or at least people whose job it is to oversea the work of that professional.
In this case, the military is the "professional." I served 6 years in the military (Air Force), have a number of friends who are current and past military (most of my friends, in fact), spend a lot of time reading things like military history and some professional military literature and still I'm not qualified to judge most of what they do.
One of the problems with too much "openness" is that folk get the idea that they are qualified to judge, that their opinion should carry as much weight as that of professionals who devote their lives to the subject. And so the nation is filled with armchair quarterbacks constantly explaining why the military is wrong.
And then when you add in that the main sources of the "information" are highly biased, well.... I'll see your "largely military family" and their photos and raise you Time, Newsweek, MSNBC, CNN, TBS, and so on and so forth.
Oh and why should your opinion on why they should be there be given any more credence than your opinion on tactical doctrine when for most people, that too has been carefully crafted by the Media. The main reason to go into Afghanistan was pretty simple: they were sheltering the man who orchestrated 9/11. Iraq was more complex, but you'd never know that from the media: "Bush lied and people died" was the mantra, never mind that the "lies" were the same things Clinton was saying when he was President, that various world intelligence organizations were saying, that pretty much everyone was saying until after the war overthrow of Saddam's regime was over. Then suddenly it became politically expedient (in that it was a useful "stick" with which to beat the current administration in power) to pretend one had never supported it in the first place (Hillary Clinton had more stones than John Kerry in that regard in 2004--he flip flopped on the issue, she didn't).
And, of course, the media never mentions any of the reasons other than WMD for going into Iraq, despite that those reasons were listed in various speeches Bush gave before the war for going into Iraq--the same reasons that led Congress to vote him war powers, essentially authorizing him to do just that.
Pictures? Even if the pictures aren't doctored, simply taking them out of context can "lie with the truth." Example: The Rodney King incident. You've probably seen the video of Rodney King lying on the ground with officers surrounding him beating on him with their sticks. Horrible, I know. However, what I'd bet you haven't seen is the first part of that video--the part that never got any airtime--of Rodney King attacking a female police officer, which is what led to him being taken down and, every time he moved, he got hit. While I, personally think that the actions were excessive once they had that many officers on the scene, I'm not so quick to be sure since I've never been in that situation and certainly don't have to face what a police officer faces daily. And with that reasonable doubt, I'd be unlikely to be able to vote to convict on assault charges. And, it would seem that a jury of their peers who, unlike those who watched the nightly news, did see the full video, agreed with that position.
So Obama is going to release pics of US soldiers "abusing" terrorists. That, right there, tells us that this will be a biased sample. So you see someone lying on the ground with a gun stuck in their mouth. Is the guard just being intimidating or was the guy just taken down because he'd grabbed for a guard's weapon? You see a picture of a guard standing over a naked prisoner. Abuse like at Abu Ghraib, or just the exact moment of the completion of a strip search, where the team has just backed off (or been cropped from the shot) and only that guard happens to be in the field of view, said strip search conducted because the guards had reasonable cause to beleive that the prisoner had obtained a weapon or other contraband.
Lying with the truth. And that's even leaving aside the possibility of doctored photos. And given how the media has outright lied on the subject in the past, how can one discount that possibility?
So, no, I don't see how any such "release" serves any purpose other than attempting to inflame public opinion in furtherance of a witch hunt.
It's called war for a reason. Its the ugliest thing man can do, but it is also a necessary evil. If you get into a fight, do you yell time out when you get kicked in the nuts? NO, you do whatever is necessary to end the conflict, so that YOU are the one who walks away.
