Paul W. Lovinger: Obama and the Torturers
President Obama has presented a gift of amnesty to those in the CIA and other U.S. agencies who committed torture. The rationale is that it is not right to prosecute people who acted in good faith under the guidance they were provided.
That is not what the laws say. Any officials, high or low, who participated in torture violated U.S. treaties and statutes. Title 18, Sections 2340A and 2441, U.S. Code, sets the maximum penalty at death in any case where a victim died."Terrorism" suspects who died in U.S. custody –- in many cases proven to have been tortured to death -- number in the hundreds (based on AP and ACLU reports). Did their killers really think homicide was legal?
Obama doesn’t seem to know or care that"I was just following orders" did not excuse Nazis at Nuremberg and is expressly prohibited as a defense by the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. It has been a U.S. treaty since 1994. Torture or" cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment" is also banned by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, approved by the U.S. in 1992. And the 1949 Geneva Conventions prohibit any inhumane treatment, physical or mental, of military or civilian war detainees.
A president swears to uphold the Constitution. Article II requires him to"take care that the laws be faithfully executed." He cannot refuse to prosecute grave crimes by federal officials without being derelict in his duty.
Some have said, Wait: maybe he'll go after higher-ups,like the crooked lawyers who whitewashed torture or the top officials who ordered it. (A year ago, ABC News reported that Bush admitted giving the go-ahead in 2003 to meetings of his vice-president, secretary of defense, attorney general, and national security adviser to discuss and approve new"interrogation" techniques.) But if the lower-downs are exonerated without so much as an investigation, it may remove their incentive to supply needed facts.
Anyway, it now appears that Obama won't go after higher-ups either. At least that is what Rahm Emanuel, his chief of staff, indicated Sunday (April 19) on ABC's"This Week." George Stephanopoulos asked Emanuel:"The president has ruled out prosecution for CIA officials who believed they were following the law. Does he believe that the the officials who devised the policies should be immune from prosecution?"
Emanuel talked instead about Obama’s announcement on Thursday (April 16) that accompanied the court-ordered release by the Department of Justice of memos prescribing 14"interrogation" techniques. These included waterboarding, or near drowning, which the new attorney general has called torture; hitting people and pushing them into walls; and keeping them standing, shackled, and awake for up to 11 straight days or jammed into little boxes, maybe with the company of biting bugs.
So Stephanopoulos repeated the question. The answer:"Yeah, but those who devised the policy, he believes that they were, should not be prosecuted either" (sic).
The interviewer could have asked: Why? Did they too act in good faith when they got Americans to become torturers? And if nobody fears prosecution, what will discourage the commission of crimes? Why does the U.S. need criminal laws if they are not enforced?
We who put Obama into office can rightfully insist that he execute the laws against torture and other war crimes. If, as it appears, he won't do so for some reason, let's demand that Attorney General Eric Holder appoint a special counsel.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which successfully sued for the release of the torture memos, has been asking the Department of Justice for an independent prosecutor to investigate the Bush administration's abuse of detainees.
Going a bit further, Rep. John Conyers, Jr., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, recently called for an independent counsel to determine if crimes were committed under Bush's policies of"enhanced interrogation [i.e. torture of prisoners], extraordinary rendition [sending prisoners abroad for torture] and warrantless domestic surveillance [illegal spying on Americans]"
If a popular demand arises for a special counsel and Obama should resist the appointing of one -- something even Nixon didn’t do –- this Obama voter would not shun the I-word.