Obama doesn’t slam the door on prosecuting Bush and Company..
April 21, 2009 by Dusty
This just in, from MSNBC:
President Barack Obama is leaving the door open to possible prosecution of Bush administration officials who devised harsh terrorism-era interrogation tactics.
He also said Tuesday that he worries about the impact of high-intensity hearings on how detainees were treated under former President George W. Bush.
But Obama did say, nevertheless, he could support a congressional investigation if it were conducted in a bipartisan way.
Obama has said he does not support charging CIA agents and interrogators who took part in waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics, acting on advice from superiors that such practices were legal. But he also said that it is up to the attorney general whether to prosecute Bush administration lawyers who wrote the memos approving these tactics.
But..Rahm said this weekend that Obama wouldn’t go after the Bush Lawyers. How does this new statement fit with that one?
Your guess is as good as mine m’dear reader….
Related posts:
- Et tu Obama? Well, I couldn’t stay away from Countdown. Nope, and...
- Obama might create a new unit for interrogations The Wall Street Journal reports this, via Jurist: The Obama...
- How we learn Last Monday President Obama went to visit the CIA. He...
- OLC Torture Memos revealed – an Overview President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder should be...
- News Digest: Bush admin OLC memos released in early March The rule of law was severely compromised under the...
This latest development from the Obama administration is not surprising.
Something many participants in this and similar discourse seem to miss are the subtleties in the statements and actions of our elected and appointed surrogates. Far too often, activists on either end of the political spectrum are too quick to condemn, to quick to effect an unmoving posture, which then precludes any meeting in the middle for a mutually acceptable resolution.
Something The Dog Said has a relevant post up on Antemedius ( http://antemedius.com/content/system-working-torture ) and I agree with him, let’s keep the pressure on, but do it in well thought out, strategic way. The message coming from the administration today in which they do not rule out prosecutions, is the same subtle message that was there last week, we just need to help create an environment in which our officials, in the end, arrive at the conclusion that it is in all of our best interests that they sustain our core values.