McClatchy’s Nancy Youseff reports that a principal reason Obama reversed himself on the release of further pictures of detainee abuse is because Iraq Prime Minister Maliki protested there would be major violence in Iraq that would force an earlier US withdrawal.

President Barack Obama reversed his decision to release detainee abuse photos from Iraq and Afghanistan after Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki warned that Iraq would erupt into violence and that Iraqis would demand that U.S. troops withdraw from Iraq a year earlier than planned, two U.S. military officers, a senior defense official and a State Department official have told McClatchy. . . .

When U.S. officials told Maliki, "he went pale in the face," said a U.S. military official, who along with others requested anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.

The official said Maliki warned that releasing the photos would lead to more violence that could delay the scheduled U.S. withdrawal from cities by June 30 and that Iraqis wouldn’t make a distinction between old and new photos. The public outrage and increase in violence could lead Iraqis to demand a referendum on the security agreement and refuse to permit U.S. forces to stay until the end of 2011.

Maliki said, "Baghdad will burn" if the photos are released, said a second U.S. military official.

The article goes on to describe efforts by US commanders to convince Obama to withhold the photos, re-enforcing the arguments from Maliki.

But put aside, for the moment, what this says about the photos. What does it say about our continued occupation?

If the Iraqi people had further photo confirmation of US military behavior, coupled with the apparent failure of US authorities — including the current White House and Justice Department — to hold senior officials accountable, the report says Iraqis would demand the US military get out of their country sooner.

That reaction sounds perfectly rational and morally justified to me. I can’t think of any reason why a self-respecting nation or its citizens should tolerate the presence of foreign troops whose government long ago forfeited any claim that its occupation is/was a moral or beneficent influence and that couldn’t even deal honestly with it’s own egregious misconduct.

But the official US policy is this: If the Iraqis started using more violence to protest our continued presence in their country (and their government’s acquiescence in that occupation), we’d have to remain there and use force to counter the violence.

If this incoherent, boot-strapping rationale is the best we can come up with for our/Obama’s Iraq policy, I’d said its time for us to get out. The issue isn’t just the photos; it’s the unthinking, unexamined presumptuousness of the occupation. We no longer have any moral claim, any valid justification for being there, if we ever had one.

We need to end that occupation; then apologize, come home and, as General Sanchez said on Countdown, try to confront what we’ve done to them, and to ourselves, and ask why/how we let it happen. And while we’re doing this, it is we who need to be looking at the photos, not just the Iraqis.