President Obama has shown himself different than the typical politician on many issues. But he is no different when it comes to important matters like holding those who break our laws and subvert our constitution responsible. Many of his biggest supporters are appalled that the President would refuse to bring the Bush gang responsible for their shocking violations of U.S. and International law.
An Austrian newspaper quotes the U.N.'s top torture investigator as saying President Barack Obama's decision not to prosecute CIA operatives who used questionable interrogation practices violates international law.
Manfred Nowak is quoted in Der Standard as saying the United States has committed itself under the U.N. Convention against Torture to make torture a crime and to prosecute those suspected of engaging in it.
Obama assured CIA operatives on Thursday they would not be prosecuted for their rough interrogation tactics of terror suspects under the former Bush administration.
Let it go:
Former U.S. president George W. Bush knew what he wanted from his pliant justice department officials – a green light to treat 9/11 terror suspects roughly – and they were eager to oblige. Government lawyers whose job it was to be the president's conscience "employed twisted and macabre legal reasoning to authorize the unspeakable," says David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor and contributor to the New York Times.
Americans got a depressing eyeful of the fallout from that unholy alliance this week when President Barack Obama ordered the justice department to release an inch-thick set of memos from 2002 to 2005 that authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to use a range of brutal coercive techniques. The memos shed light on "a dark and painful chapter" in U.S. history, Obama said.
[...]Many Americans are convinced that Bush and his coterie winked at CIA torture. Now Obama is telling the public, essentially, to let it go. But in the end Obama may not have the last word.
Even supporters in the media, Like Keith Olbermann, are appalled at Obama's amorality. Read the complete transcript of the Countdown host's special comment:
...the president's revelation of the remainder of this nightmare of Bush Administration torture memos. This President has gone where few before him, dared. The dirty laundry — illegal, un-American, self-defeating, self-destroying — is out for all to see.
Mr. Obama deserves our praise and our thanks for that. And yet he has gone but half-way. And, in this case, in far too many respects, half the distance is worse than standing still. Today, Mr. President, in acknowledging these science-fiction-like documents, you said that:
"This is a time for reflection, not retribution. I respect the strong views and emotions that these issues evoke."
"We have been through a dark and painful chapter in our history.
"But at a time of great challenges and disturbing disunity, nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past.
Mr. President, you are wrong. What you describe would be not "spent energy" but catharsis.
This NY Times letter to the editor gets it right:
I find it hard to believe that a man as intelligent as Mr. Obama, who once taught constitutional law, would equate the pursuit of justice with retribution. It makes it appear as if his decision is one of political expediency.
If holding the C.I.A. operatives accountable for violating federal or international laws is retribution, then the prosecution of ordinary citizens for crimes is also retribution.
The president does not have the authority to be selective about who should or should not be charged with a crime, and he has made a grievous error by confusing the pursuit of justice with retribution or retaliation.
If the president reached his conclusion not to prosecute because the C.I.A. agents were merely following orders, I would remind him that that defense did not hold up at the Nuremberg trials. Those involved must be tried and held accountable regardless of the political consequences.
The Left that fought Bush's neo-Fascist policies are now outraged by Obama's seeming condoning of the abuses of the previous administration:
Amnesty International said the release of the documents was welcome, but condemned the decision to block prosecutions.
"The Department of Justice appears to be offering a get-out-of-jail-free card to individuals who, by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder's own estimation, were involved in acts of torture," said executive director Larry Cox. "No civilized definition of 'reasonable' behavior can ever encompass acts of torture. Torture has long been recognized to be a violation of both national and international law, and no single legal opinion, no matter from what source, can change that."
The Center for Constitutional Rights, a nonprofit agency founded by attorneys who worked for the civil rights movement of the 1960s, also panned the decision not to prosecute.
"It is one of the deepest disappointments of this administration that it appears unwilling to uphold the law where crimes have been committed by former officials," the organization said.
The center is pushing for prosecutions of high-level officials in the Bush administration.
"Whether or not CIA operatives who conducted waterboarding are guaranteed immunity, it is the high-level officials who conceived, justified and ordered the torture program who bear the most responsibility for breaking domestic and international law, and it is they who must be prosecuted," the center said.
"Government officials broke very serious laws: For there to be no consequences not only calls our system of justice into question, it leaves the gate open for this to happen again."
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