Notwithstanding commanding support in Congress and with the
American public, the creation of an Accountability Commission is now
being held up by the Obama White House.
Torture is a crime and the United States engaged in it. Those are
two indisputable facts. Given the mountains of evidence already in the
public domain, any effort to deny or soften that harsh and devastating
reality is either disingenuous, uninformed or a result of the human
instinct to avoid painful truths. But one of the things that allows our
democracy to endure is that time after time, no matter the misdeed, we
have been willing to look ourselves in the mirror, acknowledge our
wrongdoing and hold ourselves accountable.
Since
sweeping into office pledging to undo all the malign results of the
Bush administration's brutal and ill-conceived "war on terror," Barack
Obama has struggled to make as decisive a point as he did on that first
day, when he pledged to close Guantanamo prison within a year, to ban
the use of torture, and to ensure that the US military abided by the
Geneva Conventions in its treatment of prisoners.
An al-Qaeda associate captured by the CIA and subjected to harsh interrogation techniques said his jailers later told him they had mistakenly thought he was the No. 3 man in the organization's hierarchy and a partner of Osama bin Laden, according to newly released excerpts from a 2007 hearing.
"They told me, 'Sorry, we discover that you are not Number 3, not a partner, not even a fighter,' " said Abu Zubaida, speaking in broken English, according to the new transcript of a Combatant Status Review Tribunal held at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The battle against baseless, worthless grants of anonymity by
journalists is, at this point, probably futile, since even many of the
nation's best and most valuable reporters -- such as The New Yorker's Jane Mayer -- seem helplessly addicted to it.
A prisoner who says he was tortured while
being held for nearly four years as a suspected terrorist can sue
former Bush administration lawyer John Yoo for coming up with the legal
theories that justified his alleged treatment, a federal judge in San
Francisco ruled Friday.
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White's decision marks the first time a
government lawyer has been held potentially responsible for the abuse
of detainees.
Something that has happened repeatedly in Afghanistan over the last eight years happened yet again this week:
After U.S. Strike, Dispute Over Afghan Deaths
KABUL,
Afghanistan - Sharply conflicting reports on an American airstrike this
week continued to trickle out Friday from American military and Afghan
officials as to whether the attack killed civilians.
An "era" used to last, but not so much anymore. We've already heard GOP
Chairman Michael Steele proclaim that "the era of apologizing for
Republican mistakes" was over (when many of us didn't know it had begun), and now it appears that Barack Obama's era of openness has closed, too.
Yesterday, there was a potentially temporary though still quite
significant victory for those who believe in open government and
transparency: as Jane Hamsher first reported, House leaders and the White House were forced to remove the Graham-Lieberman photo suppression amendment
from the war supplemental spending bill, because widespread opposition
to that amendment among progressive H
If, like me, you've been following America's torture policies not just
for the last few years, but for decades, you can't help but experience
that eerie feeling of déjà vu
these days. With the departure of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney from
Washington and the arrival of Barack Obama, it may just be back to the
future when it comes to torture policy, a turn away from a dark,
do-it-yourself ethos and a return to the outsourcing of torture that
went on, with the support of both Democrats and Republicans, in the
Cold War years.
