Even as President Obama acted in the name of transparency and accountabilty in releasing the Bush administration's OLC's torture memos, he made assurances that the CIA agents who used the "enhanced interrogation techniques" meticulously detailed within would not be subject to criminal prosecution. Glenn Greenwald at Salon, Jeremy Scahill on his blog, David Bromwich at Huffington Post and Ta-Nehisi Coates at the Atlantic all have good takes on why Obama's decision is wrong. I concur. However politically expedient, Obama's nearly carte blanche absolution of torture was morally wrong, and his justification of it, from a professor of constitutional law, is intellectually dishonest.
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1 comment:
Well. I wanted to make a comment about the torture memos. My own interpretation had been the previous administration wanted to make torture legal by definition of U.S. law. They wanted to make a bubble of legality in an illegal zone.
The people that performed questionable actions, torture etc., are legally allowed to do something that is technically illegal. They were given orders.
Obama is saying that the people who are following orders under the U.S. laws should not be punished. They should punish the people, such as lawyers, who bent the laws in order to legally justify something that is usually illegal.
I’m pretty sure I don’t have most of the facts, but I try pay attention to the some of the news. I wonder what the people on the right would think about him going after high profile republican conservatives involved with legalizing torture. The right would criticize the left for second guessing on “being tough on the enemy”. President Obama would not only spend most of his political capital—he’d go bankrupt and pull majority of people in to a witch hunt. The distraction wouldn’t be good for the country, so I think Obama is trying making a compromise by knowing the truth instead of finding justice.
I will read the article and see if I change my mind.
Later
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