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As buhdydharma hinted earlier, justice may be forthcoming. The White House has a transcript of President Obama’s joint-press conference with King Abdullah II of Jordan where the president reiterated his view that the CIA torturers should not be prosecuted, however
For those who carried out some of these operations within the four corners of legal opinions or guidance that had been provided from the White House, I do not think it’s appropriate for them to be prosecuted.
With respect to those who formulated those legal decisions, I would say that that is going to be more of a decision for the Attorney General within the parameters of various laws, and I don’t want to prejudge that. I think that there are a host of very complicated issues involved there.
As a general deal, I think that we should be looking forward and not backwards. I do worry about this getting so politicized that we cannot function effectively, and it hampers our ability to carry out critical national security operations.
For the first time, Obama opened the possibility that senior Bush administration officials could be prosecuted for approving torture, the NY Times reports. Obama said, “if and when there needs to be a further accounting,” he hopes Congress would investigate independently and “in a bipartisan fashion”.
The president’s decision last week to release secret memorandums detailing the harsh tactics employed by the C.I.A. under his predecessor provoked a furor that continued to grow as critics on various fronts assailed his position…
Aides said, Mr. Obama opted to disclose the memos because his lawyers worried that they had a weak case for withholding them and because much of the information had already been made public in The New York Review of Books, in a memoir by George J. Tenet, the former C.I.A. director, and even in a 2006 speech by President George W. Bush.
The decision to promise no prosecution of those who followed the legal advice of the Bush administration lawyers was easier, aides said, because it would be hard to charge someone for doing something the administration had determined was legal. The lawyers, however, are another story.
But according to the Washington Post, Obama defended his decision to release the torture memos. Obana said the memos “reflected, in my view, us losing our moral bearings,” adding, “That’s why I’ve discontinued those enhanced interrogation programs.”
Believe it or not, there is other news! Four at Four continues with the accused Somali pirate lands in New York, financial meltdown and bailout, and military rule in Mexico.