Rumsfeld says White House lawyers are claiming that it is “illegal” to release additional photos of torture at Abu Ghraib prison.
U.S. administration lawyers are advising the Pentagon not to publicly release any more photographs of Iraqi prisoners being abused by U.S. soldiers, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said at the outset of a hastily arranged visit to Iraq aimed at containing the abuse scandal.
“As far as I’m concerned, I’d be happy to release them all to the public and to get it behind us,” Rumsfeld told reporters travelling with him from Washington. “But at the present time I don’t know anyone in the legal shop in any element of the government that is recommending that.”
The government lawyers argue that releasing such materials would violate a Geneva Convention stricture against presenting images of prisoners that could be construed as degrading, Rumsfeld said en route to the Iraqi capital on a trip that was not announced in advance due to security concerns.
I’m sure there’s nothing self-serving in such legal opinions. 
The end of the myth of Saddam
Charles KrauthammerDecember 19, 2003
WASHINGTON — The race is over. The Oscar for Best Documentary, Short Subject, goes to … “Saddam’s Dental Exam.”
Screenplay: First Brigade, U.S. 4th I.D.
Producer: P. Bremer Enterprises, Baghdad.
Director: the anonymous genius at U.S. headquarters who chose this clip as the world’s first view of Saddam in captivity.
[…]
We Americans don’t do it that way. Instead, we show Saddam — King of Kings, Lion of the Tigris, Saladin of the Arabs — compliantly opening his mouth like a child to the universal indignity of an oral (and head lice!) exam. Docility wrapped in banality. Brilliant. Nothing could have been better calculated to demystify the all-powerful tyrant.
