[Peace-discuss] Obama and torture

[C. G. Estabrook]

Obama's not really against torture either. Not like you and I are. No one will 
be punished for using or ordering torture. No one will be impeached because of 
torture. Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, says 
that prosecuting Bush officials is necessary to set future anti-torture policy. 
"The only way to prevent this from happening again is to make sure that those 
who were responsible for the torture program pay the price for it. I don't see 
how we regain our moral stature by allowing those who were intimately involved 
in the torture programs to simply walk off the stage and lead lives where they 
are not held accountable."

As president, Obama cannot remain silent and do nothing; otherwise he will 
inherit the war crimes of Bush and Cheney and become a war criminal himself. 
Closing the Guantanamo hell-hole means nothing at all if the prisoners are 
simply moved to other torture dungeons. If Obama is truly against torture, why 
does he not declare that after closing Guantanamo the inmates will be tried in 
civilian courts in the US or resettled in countries where they clearly face no 
risk of torture? And simply affirm that his administration will faithfully abide 
by the 1984 Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading 
Treatment, of which the United States is a signatory, and which states: "The 
term 'torture' means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical 
or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining 
information or a confession ... inflicted by or at the instigation of or with 
the consent or acquiescence of a public official or any other person acting in 
an official capacity."

The convention affirms that: "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a 
state of war or a threat of war, internal political stability or any other 
public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture."

Instead, Obama has appointed former CIA official John O. Brennan as an adviser 
on intelligence matters and co-leader of his intelligence transition team. 
Brennan has called "rendition" – the kidnap-and-torture program carried out 
under the Clinton and Bush administrations – a "vital tool", and praised the 
CIA's interrogation techniques for providing "lifesaving" intelligence...

--William Blum, "The Anti-Empire Report," 1 December 2008 <www.killinghope.org>