redneckgaijin

I'm listening to Obama's speech about torture and Guantanamo Bay.

Obama takes great pains to state that torture is immoral. He makes the case that torture "undermines the rule of law" and that it endangers American soldiers in the field while undermining alliances and diplomacy.

But, throughout the speech- and, indeed, throughout his presidency- he has never said that torture is illegal.

There are two main possibilities to explain this:

(1) Obama really does believe torture is legal (and the Military Commissions Act of 2006 goes a long way in that direction, international treaties notwithstanding).

(2) Obama believes torture is illegal, but for political strategy reasons chooses not to say so, so that he can avoid what would then be mandatory, by law, prosecutions of all involved.

Either way, Obama is unworthy of his office.

And he just said a moment ago, "I don't want to waste time re-litigating the policy differences of the past eight years." So, officially at least, Barack Obama regards torture not as a war crime, but as a "policy difference" to be ignored or even accepted.

I'm not the only one paying attention to these things. Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com has noticed, with alarm, that in substance Obama's policies on the war on terror are identical to those of the Bush administration, including imprisonment without writ of habeas corpus, spying without warrant on American citizens at home through wiretapping and monitoring of Internet traffic, extreme use of state secrets privilege to conceal actions from the American people...

... and, possibly, even the use of torture. Quoting from Greenwald's article:

Obama announces that all interrogations must comply with the Army Field Manual but then has his CIA Director announce that he will seek greater interrogation authority whenever it is needed and convenes a task force to determine which enhanced interrogation methods beyond the Field Manual should be authorized.

In other words, Obama's CIA has reserved the right to torture- with Obama's apparent blessing.

Right now, as I type this, Obama is defending his revival of military commissions- he's basically said that he's less concerned with the rights of the accused than in making sure convictions, when they come, stand up under appeal.

And he's just said that any prisoner who can't be prosecuted, but who might pose a threat to America in the future, will be imprisoned until the War on Terror is over- or, in other words, forever.

Yessir, Obama's a pragmatist, all right... but on these issues, that is NOT a good thing.

And here's the state secrets privilege in his speech... Obama's "concerned" that it's overused. He's promising not to use it in the future "without following our process"- or, in other words, whenever they feel like it. He'll inform Congress when he does it- but, as we've seen in the past, Congress is powerless to do anything about it, so that's not the "oversight" he promises.

All in all, this speech is a lot of empty weasel words- no different than Bush.

EDIT: Took FOREVER for the edit window to come up- during which Obama said that he opposed a truth commission because Congress can investigate torture (but he opposes Congressional investigations too), and the courts can convict and sentence war criminals... but the courts can't do anything until someone in the Justice Department PROSECUTES... and he opposes prosecutions, and has the power to make sure they don't happen.

Obama is a bald-faced LIAR- plain and simple.