I really wanted to wait before jumping on Obama’s case, but there’s very little he’s done to let himself off the hook with me. This latest bit of news really has my hackles up because there is a legitimate ground swell of opinion that has now become focused that says some officials in the Bush administration should be held accountable for their illegality on behalf of the US government while they were in office. There is more than enough proof that crimes were committed by Bush officials over the last 8 years….some of those were of the same magnitude as ones we prosecuted the war on terror over, yet Obama doesn’t seem inclined to pursue the matter?!?! What’s going on?
The debate as to whether Bush administration officials have broken international and federal torture laws has played out over the past month in a series of interviews with major media in which Vice President Dick Cheney admitted that he “signed off” on requests by CIA interrogators to waterboard three alleged high-level terrorist detainees. Cheney has staunchly defended the decision and maintained that it was not illegal.
*snip*
Obama has been under intense pressure, as a result Cheney’s public statements, by numerous human rights and civil liberties organizations since he was elected president last November to aggressively probe the Bush administration’s torture and domestic surveillance policies and to prosecute officials who may have violated anti-torture and civil liberties laws. Obama has selected some outspoken critics of the Bush administration’s torture policies for positions at the Department of Justice and the CIA.
On Friday, in officially announcing retired admiral Dennis Blair as his director of national intelligence and former White House chief of staff Leon Panetta to head the Central Intelligence Agency, Obama vowed to break with past practices that took place under Bush.
“I was clear throughout this campaign, and have been clear throughout this transition that under my administration, the United States does not torture, we will abide by the Geneva conventions, that we will uphold our highest values and ideals,” Obama said.
But that’s as far as Obama intends to go.
Perhaps, Obama’s handlers think the image make-over he is responsible for will not be tarnished by this bit of news and that there are other things they deem more important to the US’ image than torture prosecutions. Perhaps, but if the US is to regain its stature as a democracy that’s pursuing a moral tract, it should start with its own housecleaning, which should mean getting rid of those who’ve tarnished our image.
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