President Obama on Tuesday left open the possibility of criminal prosecution for Bush administration officials who drew up the legal basis for interrogation techniques that many view as torture.
Obama said it will be up to Attorney General Eric Holder to decide whether or not to prosecute the former officials.
“With respect to those who formulated those legal decisions, I would say that is going to be more a decision for the attorney general within the parameter of various laws, and I don’t want to prejudge that,” Obama said during a meeting with Jordan’s King Abdullah at the White House.
“There’s a host of very complicated issues involved there. As a general deal, I think we should be looking forward and not backward.
“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.”
The president added that any congressional “accounting of what took place” should be done “in a bipartisan fashion outside of the typical hearing process that can sometimes break down … entirely along party lines.”
It is important, he said, for the “American people to feel as if this is not being dealt with to provide one side or another political advantage.”
Obama’s remarks came five days after the administration released four Bush-era memos detailing the use of terror interrogations such as waterboarding, a technique used to simulate drowning.
One memo showed that CIA interrogators used waterboarding — which Obama has called torture — at least 266 times on two top al Qaeda suspects.
Obama reiterated his belief that he did not think it is appropriate to prosecute those CIA officials and others who carried out the interrogations in question.
“This has been a difficult chapter in our history and one of [my] tougher decisions,” he added. The techniques listed in memos “reflected … us losing our moral bearings.”
The president’s apparent willingness to leave the door open to a prosecution of Bush officials seemed to contradict White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, who indicated Sunday that the administration was opposed to such an action.
Obama believes “that’s not the place that we [should] go,” Emanuel said on ABC’s “This Week.”
“It’s not a time to use our energy … looking back [with] any sense of anger and retribution.”
On Monday, Obama asserted during a visit to CIA headquarters that he had released the documents primarily because of the “exceptional circumstances that surrounded these memos, particularly the fact that so much of the information was [already] public. … The covert nature of the information had been compromised.”
(Source: CNN)
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17 Responses
Let Obama attempt to fix the mess his party created and stop bashing the Bush administration that left office January 20.
Criminal prosecutions for the Bush admin. how clever. What a clever diversion from the real issues of the day.
I guess Obama forgot that he won the election and President Bush is no longer our President.
I guess when things get bad in USA, Obamas advisers told him that you start Bush bashing to get the party kool aid drinkers back in the fold.
Message to Obama: President Bush is no longer President. Please stop Bush bashing. I know Bush bashing helped get you elected but,,, helllo it is April 21 2009 and quite frankly people are sick of it.
What ZREEZUS!!! With most presidents it takes a few years to find out what fools they are. Obama lets us know from the very beginning! He may be able to accomplish far more than all the Israeli aliyah shlichim EVER could! HaMayveen yaveen!
The republicans and bush have noone to blame by themselves for this mess. By pandering to the left wing, they turned off their conservative base and got this donkey elected.
So Joseph, does this mean that your unhappy that they water boarded the mastermind of 9/11?
im sorry (sounds like obamanation already) but the man child is a major tipish! he is embolening the enemy every time he opens his stupid mouth. he is a student of rev jerry wrong & his best friend bill ayers.
to the tipshim that voted for him, I hope you are happy. to the rest of us sane people out there, keep pounding the phones to your losermen & senators so that maybe they’ll get it right. if not, 2010 will be the biggest landside ever in the other direction.
he’s forgetting that if they hadn’t done the waterbarting, who knows if obama would be alive today. these people he’s defending want to kill him!! U DONT GET IT MR OBAMA.
Perfect system of government; just like the “founding fathers” dreamt!
Each new administration will criminally prosecute the previous administrations action which the current one don’t like.
Will certainly get the US very far !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
#4 wasn’t made by myself (who has been posting as Joseph since almost the beginning of YW), but rather by someone else who just started posting under the same name as myself.
Before we all blast the Bush administration for “torture”, Consider this: (KSM=Khalid Sheik Mohammad, mastermind of 9/11)
Before he was waterboarded, when KSM was asked about planned attacks on the United States, he ominously told his CIA interrogators, “Soon, you will know.”
According to the previously classified May 30, 2005 Justice Department memo that was released by President Barack Obama last week, the thwarted attack — which KSM called the “Second Wave”– planned “ ‘to use East Asian operatives to crash a hijacked airliner into’ a building in Los Angeles.”
KSM was the mastermind of the first “hijacked-airliner” attacks on the United States, which struck the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Northern Virginia on Sept. 11, 2001.
After KSM was captured by the United States, he was not initially cooperative with CIA interrogators. Nor was another top al Qaeda leader named Zubaydah. KSM, Zubaydah, and a third terrorist named Nashiri were the only three persons ever subjected to waterboarding by the CIA. (Additional terrorist detainees were subjected to other “enhanced techniques” that included slapping, sleep deprivation, dietary limitations, and temporary confinement to small spaces — but not to water-boarding.)
This was because the CIA imposed very tight restrictions on the use of waterboarding. “The ‘waterboard,’ which is the most intense of the CIA interrogation techniques, is subject to additional limits,” explained the May 30, 2005 Justice Department memo. “It may be used on a High Value Detainee only if the CIA has ‘credible intelligence that a terrorist attack is imminent’; ‘substantial and credible indicators that the subject has actionable intelligence that can prevent, disrupt or deny this attack’; and ‘[o]ther interrogation methods have failed to elicit this information within the perceived time limit for preventing the attack.’”
The quotations in this part of the Justice memo were taken from an Aug. 2, 2004 letter that CIA Acting General Counsel John A. Rizzo sent to the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.
Before they were subjected to “enhanced techniques” of interrogation that included waterboarding, KSM and Zubaydah were not only uncooperative but also appeared contemptuous of the will of the American people to defend themselves.
“In particular, the CIA believes that it would have been unable to obtain critical information from numerous detainees, including KSM and Abu Zubaydah, without these enhanced techniques,” says the Justice Department memo. “Both KSM and Zubaydah had ‘expressed their belief that the general US population was ‘weak,’ lacked resilience, and would be unable to ‘do what was necessary’ to prevent the terrorists from succeeding in their goals.’ Indeed, before the CIA used enhanced techniques in its interrogation of KSM, KSM resisted giving any answers to questions about future attacks, simply noting, ‘Soon you will know.’”
After he was subjected to the “waterboard” technique, KSM became cooperative, providing intelligence that led to the capture of key al Qaeda allies and, eventually, the closing down of an East Asian terrorist cell that had been tasked with carrying out the 9/11-style attack on Los Angeles.
(Source: CNSNews.com)
To all those who are blasting Obama, chill. All he said was “it will be up to Attorney General Eric Holder to decide whether or not to prosecute the former officials.” All that means is that our new President will not interfere with the Attorney General’s decisions. That’s a good thing.
bacci40: Why is aligning with the christian right worse than aligning with the atheist left?
The Attorney General who fought to relaese the Puerto Rican terrorists responsible for killing members of the NYPD – that inspires confidence!
mw13,
Because bacci toes the party line in every scenario and doesn’t waste his brain power on issues related to partisanship.
Bacci40, your very articulate but your articulating garbage. Pikuach nefesh is doche the torah. and common sense, not law, says that its doche the constitution. Bush understood that, and so does everyone with a head on their shoulders. This is not about aligning ones self with a particular party. Its about common sense, which you clearly lack. Its why japanese americans were rounded in to camps during world war 2, its why we used the atom bomb on citizens in hiroshima and nagosaki, its why george washington (preconstitution) hung army deserters.there are dozens more examples of law breaking that I could list. Without common sense a country can’t survive. Obama just doesn’t get it.
bacci40,
I hate to interupt your shtusim with facts but
the Geneva Convention doesnt cover TERRORISTS! Those articles cover wars with COUNTRIES who are at war with each other.
I would rather be associated with the “the current “base” of the republican party,” than to align myself with a bunch of athiest leftist baby killers and people whose dream it is to do away with all good things in this country.
bacci40 says “it is apparent that the bush administation knew that it was doing wrong…for why else would they lie to the american people?”
What lie are you talking about? The only lies I can see are your own.
Criminal prosecutions are not new to the presidency. They tried to get Clinton and they tried to get Nixon. No matter who the president, there is always the element of the political animal and politics.
No previous administration has ever gone after its predecessor. And no administration has faced prosecution for doing its job. Nixon’s and Clinton’s legal problems were about personal behaviour, not official duties.
This would be the first time that lawyers would be charged for giving their honest legal opinion to their client. That’s very probably unconstitutional.