Coming clean or staying dirty

Greenwald:

How can it possibly be that, on the one hand, there's nothing new or revealing about these photos -- nothing we need to see; just move along -- yet, on the other hand, release of these photos is going to single-handedly prompt mass bloodshed and conflagration in the Middle East? Don't those two claims rather obviously negate each other?

We've already given the Muslim world a fair amount to be angry about: invading, occupying and bombing two countries for 6 years and counting; massive (and ongoing) civilian deaths; a torture regime; Abu Ghraib and Bagram; imprisonment with no charges. Does anyone actually believe that it will be release of these new photos -- which we're told are nothing new and quite banal -- that's going to be some sort of triggering event that causes mass Muslim attacks on American troops? Even if that were true, it wouldn't justify suppression -- for the reasons I've set forth here and which two federal courts have formally adopted-- but, given the painfully contradictory claims being made, who actually believes these fear-mongering scenarios?

Either way: the solution to inflaming anti-American sentiment is to avoid doing bad things in the first place and then, if such things are done, imposing accountability when discovered -- not diluting the long-standing laws of open government in order to cover it all up.

UPDATE V: Regarding the Obama administration's attempt to suppress both the CIA video-destroying documents and the torture photos, The Washington Post's Dan Froomkin writes:

"The president who came into office promising to restore our international reputation and return responsibility to government now seems to be buying into the belief that covering up our sins is better than coming clean."

Obama's repeated actions make that statement very difficult to contest.