Any credit Barack Obama gets for revealing information on U.S. torture practices, Is “undeserved.” Freedom of Information suits brought by the ACLU and others “had already forced the governments hand.” But Obama has no intention of making the war criminals pay for their crimes – and for that, he is responsible in the eyes of the law. “As a signatory to the United Nations Convention Against Torture, the United States is obligated to investigate, prosecute and punish officials who direct or commit acts of torture.” Obama, like most Americans, thinks obedience to the law is optional for the United States – an imperial mindset identical to that of his predecessors. Freedom Rider: Tortured Justice
by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
“The United States is obligated to investigate, prosecute and punish officials who direct or commit acts of torture.
The corruption endemic to the Democratic Party has once again come back to haunt us. Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and other Democratic leaders had considerable power even in the minority, and could have put a stop to almost all Bush administration actions from taking place. As we are now told incessantly by the Obama administration, senators in the minority can filibuster legislation and prevent a president from doing what he wants to do. Democrats chose not to exercise that option during the Bush administration.
Those handshakes and winks are responsible for the United States government running torture chambers around the world, in clear violation of national and international law. Barack Obama recently released documents which proved that torture took place and he did so because the law required it. Freedom of Information Act lawsuits brought by the ACLU and others had already forced the governments hand. Any credit he gets is undeserved.
He also deserves nothing but scorn for refusing to even investigate the extent of the crimes committed. He and the rest of his administration are breaking the law if they continue in their failure to act.As a signatory to the United Nations Convention Against Torture, the United States is obligated to investigate, prosecute and punish officials who direct or commit acts of torture. It doesn’t matter that President Obama believes investigation and prosecution to be nothing more than “retribution” or that he claims his precious agenda may be ruined if he acts as the law stipulates. His opinion shouldn’t count; the dictates of the law should.
“Obama and the rest of his administration are breaking the law if they continue in their failure to act.”
During his presidential campaign Obama never passed up an opportunity to point out that he was once a professor of Constitutional law. Apparently he did not spend much time emphasizing that the United States Constitution clearly bans “cruel and unusual” punishments. Water boarding individuals 180 times in a 30 day period, slamming people into walls, and placing them in boxes filled with insects certainly qualify as cruel.
It had to have also been clear to Democrats like Reid, Pelosi and John D. Rockefeller that these are cruel acts. In 2002 they and other Democrats were told by Bush administration officials that the government was torturing and they were given specific information about how the torture was carried out. Their complicity not only ensured that Bush and Cheney would get away with committing war crimes, but that the Democratic Party would became complicit – and neuter itself, in the process.
When Congressman Dennis Kucinich introduced an impeachment resolution on the House floor it was squelched by Democratic leadership. It would have been hard for Nancy Pelosi to support impeachment based in part on the commission of war crimes she was aware of yet did nothing to stop. Democrat leaders were accessories and now when the crime calls for punishment, those few who want to act cannot. Calls for truth commissions and bipartisan working groups would be distractions, public relations efforts that would harm the cause of justice. The law is clear and calls for investigation and, if necessary, prosecution by the government of the United States.
“Democrat leaders were accessories and now when the crime calls for punishment, those few who want to act cannot.”
Former Vice President Dick Cheney should be reserving his words for an attorney planning his defense for an upcoming criminal trial. Instead he is unafraid, going before the cameras on a daily basis, happily boasting that he is an unrepentant war criminal. Why shouldn’t he? President Obama has told him that he has nothing to fear.
The insults from the Obama administration are never ending. The president claims that he can’t follow the law and investigate Bush and Cheney because doing so would be a distraction from his oh so wonderful agenda. If Obama has an agenda worth saving, he needs to show us what that is. Will we have an Employee Free Choice Act if he lets Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell and Rice off the hook? Will there be single payer health care if the crimes are ignored?
“The way to move out of the nightmare of the Bush years and neuter the Republicans is to fearlessly take them on once and for all.”
Actually we are far more likely to have an agenda in place that meets the needs of the people if the Bush regime is completely discredited. The way to move out of the nightmare of the Bush years and neuter the Republicans is to fearlessly take them on once and for all. That will mean dumping Pelosi, Reid, Rockefeller and the others who aided and abetted them. So much the better. Their presence is a guarantee of continued failure and their departures would be as liberating as the day that Bush left Washington.
The Democratic Party is as much to blame as Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell and Rice in making the United States a perpetrator of war crimes. They did nothing to oppose them, they stopped those who were willing to oppose them, and now they go along with allowing them to go unpunished. The old saying is wrong. It seems that crime does pay. It pays off very well indeed, at least for those at the top.
Margaret Kimberley's Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgandaReport.Com.
Kalonji Changa is co-founder of Black Power Media and founder of FTP Movement. He joins us from Atlanta to talk about Black August, which has been a fixture of the liberation movement for 43 years.
Irene Asuwa joins us from Nairobi, Kenya. She is co-convener of Ecological Justice and supports outreach at Ukombozi Library. We discuss the recent presidential election in that country.
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