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Tuesday, April 21, 2009

And it isn't going to stop, either
Posted by Jill | 5:20 AM
It's almost a conspiracy theorist's dream scenario, =ahem =, OK, an independent speculative investigator's dream scenario. Here's a centrist president whose very existence so freaks out the right that they start amassing guns 'n' ammo at a furious rate; a former Constitutional law professor whose campaign was built on hope and change and accountability, and within his first 100 days, makes very clear that where his predecessor's war crimes are concerned, it's "Ah, that's in the past now, let's just look ahead."

This is such a specious argument it's laughable. There's the old Yiddish joke about the definition of chutzpah being the man who kills his parents and then pleads for mercy because he's an orphan. The idea that crimes are not prosecutable because they have already happened is preposterous, particularly for someone who claims to have as one of his administration's goals to bring in Osama Bin Laden. Weren't "I really am not that concerned about him" the words of Barack Obama's predecessor? We expected lack of accountability to be an integral part of the Bush Administration, but we never dreamed that Obama, even if we knew he wasn't the progressive dreamboat most of the netroots thought he was, would sign onto the "move on, nothing to see here" doctrine.

So what does YOUR spidey-sense tell you? A deal made where Bush wouldn't declare a state of emergency so as to avoid handing over power in return for this sort of executive immunity? Some kind of Ivy League torture cabal? Remembrance of John F. Kennedy and how there have always been rumblings of the CIA being involved in his assassination? The potential for investigations to demonstrate that many high-profile Democrats in Congress knew and approved of torture as well? Or is it a matter of Barack Obama being corrupted by Washington this quickly?

Well, he may not have a choice as to whether to investigate, because except for the most sick, rabid wingnuts, most people are horrified that even a monster like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times:
Pressure mounted on President Obama on Monday for more thorough investigation into harsh interrogations of terrorism suspects under the Bush administration, even as he tried to reassure the Central Intelligence Agency that it would not be blamed for following legal advice.

Mr. Obama said it was time to admit “mistakes” and “move forward.” But there were signs that he might not be able to avoid a protracted inquiry into the use of interrogation techniques that the president’s top aides and many critics say crossed the line into torture.

And while Mr. Obama vowed not to prosecute C.I.A. officers for acting on legal advice, on Monday aides did not rule out legal sanctions for the Bush lawyers who developed the legal basis for the use of the techniques.

The president’s decision last week to release secret memorandums detailing the harsh tactics employed by the C.I.A. under his predecessor provoked a furor that continued to grow on Monday as critics on various fronts assailed his position. Among other things, the memos revealed that two captured Qaeda operatives were subjected to a form of near-drowning known as waterboarding a total of 266 times.

Some Bush administration officials, including former Vice President Dick Cheney, accused the administration of endangering the country by disclosing national secrets. Mr. Cheney went on the Fox News Channel to announce that he had asked the C.I.A. to declassify reports documenting the intelligence gained from the interrogations. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the former C.I.A. director, has also condemned the release of the memorandums and said the harsh questioning had value.

On the other side of the spectrum, human rights activists, Congressional Democrats and international officials pressed for a fuller accounting of what happened. Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat and chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, wrote Mr. Obama asking him not to rule out prosecutions until her panel completed an investigation over the next six to eight months.

Mr. Obama tried to calm the situation with his first visit to C.I.A. headquarters since taking office. Concerned about alienating the agency, Mr. Obama went out of his way to lavish praise on intelligence officers, using words like “indispensable,” “courage” and “remarkable” and promising his “support and appreciation.”

“Don’t be discouraged by what’s happened in the last few weeks,” he told employees. “Don’t be discouraged that we have to acknowledge potentially we’ve made some mistakes. That’s how we learn. But the fact that we are willing to acknowledge them and then move forward, that is precisely why I am proud to be president of the United States and that’s why you should be proud to be members of the C.I.A.”


I don't know what's more disheartening, that an erudite guy like Barack Obama can come up with no better term for willful and gleeful torture as a policy than resorting to the Kissingerian passive voice of "mistakes were made"; or that there's some kind of "It's OK if you're an American" exception to Nuremberg Principle IV ("The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him."). It's either intellectual laziness or the height of cynicism. Either way, if he thinks that giving the Bush Administration a free pass for its crimes is a way to ingratiate himself with the right, last week's hysteria and the fact that the eliminationist militia movement has awakened from its eight-year-long slumber already disproves that notion.

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