Whitewashing Torture: President Obama's Jan. 17, 2014 Speech on NSA Reforms

[xocet]

Transcript of President Obama’s Jan. 17 speech on NSA reforms

Published: January 17

President Obama delivered the following remarks on changes to National Security Agency programs Jan. 17 at the Justice Department in Washington. Transcript courtesy of Federal News Service.

...

And yet, in our rush to respond to a very real and novel set of threats, the risk of government overreach, the possibility that we lose some of our core liberties in pursuit of security also became more pronounced. We saw in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 our government engage in enhanced interrogation techniques that contradicted our values. As a senator, I was critical of several practices, such as warrantless wiretaps. And all too often new authorities were instituted without adequate public debate.

...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/full-text-of-president-obamas-jan-17-speech-on-nsa-reforms/2014/01/17/fa33590a-7f8c-11e3-9556-4a4bf7bcbd84_story.html

I suppose that both waterboarding and warrantless wiretaps start with W - nevertheless, that was both quite a leap and quite a smooth transition.

It was torture that was practiced: it was not merely the euphemistically labeled "enhanced interrogation techniques." "Not looking backwards" is not a sufficient replacement for prosecuting the officials who were involved with committing the crime of torture.


Here is a report from Human Rights Watch (http://www.hrw.org/home) which is quite clear on the issue of torture:

http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/us0711webwcover.pdf

Here is a report from The Constitution Project (http://www.constitutionproject.org/) that addresses torture:

http://detaineetaskforce.org/report/

Here is the leaked report from the International Red Cross that addresses detainee treatment:

http://www.propublica.org/documents/item/red-cross-detainee-report#p=1

Neither torture nor condoning torture should be allowed to be American values. To that end, Bush et al should be prosecuted.

[Egalitarian Thug]

1. It's that et al part that ensures nothing will ever be done. K&R

[frazzled]

3. Something has been done: torture was outlawed

in January 2005. By Executive Order.

[frazzled]

2. Try to concentrate

That was two different examples of "government overreach" that made us "lose some of our core values."

And here are two things for you:

1. In his first days in office, Obama signed four executive orders that "consigned to history the worst excesses of the Bush Administration’s “war on terror.” One of the four executive orders that Obama signed effectively cancelled seven years of controversial Justice Department legal opinions authorizing methods of treating terror suspects so brutal that even a top Bush Administration official overseeing prosecutions at Guantánamo, Susan Crawford, recently admitted that they amounted to torture."

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/tny/2009/01/behind-the-executive-orders.html

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/EnsuringLawfulInterrogations

2. There exists a bright line between the president and the Justice Department. The president does not order prosecutions. That would be a despotic act we would abhor. Prosecutors prosecute. And by the way, this Justice Department, in the form of the president's appointee Eric Holder, did define waterboarding specifically as "torture."

If you're looking for trouble, you're going to find it. And you looked hard for a turn of phrase you could use as some kind of weapon. We are not impressed.

This president does not condone torture,* has forbidden it in all cases, and none of your little linguistic tricks will convince the American people otherwise.


*Because I live in Illinois, I can tell you that Obama's criticism of torture goes back to the time when he was an Illinois state senator, when he authored a law requiring the videotaping of all interrogations and confessions in capital cases. Torture, which occurred for many years in the police system here (the former Commissioner has gone to prison over it), was the issue he was addressing. The law was groundbreaking, and has since been followed in other states.

[woo me with science]

6. +1 What a creepy post.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

5. Don't you remember all the trials of the torturers? Oh, wait...we must look forward.