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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
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April 23rd,
2009 - White House Fights Back on Torture Flap |
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White House Fights Back on Torture
Flap From Agence France Presse April 23, 2009 Newton (Iowa) - The White
House rebuffed calls for an independent prosecutor to probe Bush-era terror
interrogations and denied the Obama administration was tied up in political
knots over the issue. Controversy raged anew a day
after President Barack Obama appeared to change policy by leaving the door
open to prosecutions of officials under former president George W. Bush who
devised legal cover for tactics critics have derided as torture. White House spokesman Robert
Gibbs said flatly that a flurry of news reports proclaiming the
administration had switched course on delving further into those behind
methods like near drowning, or waterboarding, were wrong. Obama had said Tuesday it
was up to Attorney General Eric Holder to decide if former officials broke
the law, though he had previously shielded CIA officers who acted under
orders to carry out brutal questioning of Al-Qaeda suspects. "The notion that the
president is open to anything, I think, misses the point," Gibbs said. "The president doesn't
make a determination as to who broke the law," Gibbs said, as Obama flew
to Iowa to tout his energy and climate change plan. Obama's remarks caused a
stir because his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel had said on Sunday on ABC News
that the president did not want to pursue those who "devised
policy" and was interesting only in looking forward. Gibbs drew a colorful
analogy with what might happen to a reporter if he committed an act of
vandalism aboard the presidential jet. "If you spray-paint the
back of this plane, if you tear up one of the seats, even though it's Air
Force One, the president doesn't make a determination as to who broke the
law," he said. "That's a legal official." The spokesman also rejected
calls by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) for the appointment of an
independent prosecutor to probe the torture issue. "The lawyers that are
involved are plenty capable of determining whether any law has been
broken," Gibbs said. "I want to stress that
that determination is not going to be made by the president, or the vice
president, or anybody that works in the White House, because that's why many,
many, many, many moons ago we created a Department of Justice." The ACLU called on Monday
for Obama to appoint an independent prosecutor to investigate those who took
part in "horrific acts of torture," as the political row deepened
over Bush-era legal memos justifying the tactics released by the White House
last week. It seized on the memos and a
new Senate report suggesting top Bush administration officials were behind
interrogation practices that spread from Guantanamo Bay to Afghanistan to
Iraq. New evidence "makes frighteningly
clear that some of the darkest moments in our country's recent past were
choreographed at the highest levels of government," ACLU counsel
Christopher Anders said. "The people who were at
the very top of the Bush administration and those at the top of the chain of
command must be held accountable." Three prominent US Senators
meanwhile increased the pressure on Obama to rule out prosecutions of former
Bush aides, in a letter to the president. "In the interest of
national security, it is the future, rather than the past, on which we
believe America's gaze must be fixed," said Republicans John McCain and
Lindsey Graham, as well as Joseph Lieberman, an independent. The senators also opposed
the creation of a commission to look into controversial "war on
terrorism" tactics of the past eight years, noting though that they
opposed the methods and found some legal reasoning to be wrong. "Providing poor legal
advice is always undesirable," they said, "but that is a quite a
different matter from making legal advice with which we may disagree into a
crime." Obama said on Tuesday that
any investigation in Congress should be on an non-partisan basis and outside
politically tense hearings process. But the White House denied
he was proposing some kind of investigation. Director of National
Intelligence Dennis Blair said Tuesday some "valuable" information
was gleaned using controversial interrogation methods, but that it was
unclear if it could also have been obtained "through other means." "The bottom line,"
Blair said in a statement," is these techniques have hurt our image
around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed
whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national
security." Copyright © 2009 AFP. External link: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5i-DuH9pIJhC0OPxhJUMCkqtkg8ng |