[Peace-discuss] Obama and torture

[E. Wayne Johnson]

It seems apparent that one important reason that Bush and Co. have not 
been impeached
for their illegal expansion of the executive power is that these same 
expanded powers are
desired by our incoming masters.

"/One need only admit that public tranquillity is in danger and any 
action finds a justification./

/All the horrors of the reign of terror were based only on solicitude 
for public tranquillity."/

- Tolstoy (War and Peace)



C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> 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>
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