Obama admin won't pursue CIA officials for torture

faceking

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Rights groups criticize CIA immunity on interrogations - CNN.com

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Human rights organizations reacted angrily Thursday to the Obama administration's announcement that CIA officials would not be prosecuted for past waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics.


Obama administration officials say nobody should be prosecuted for following Bush-era policy.



Attorney General Eric Holder made the announcement in a separate statement as the administration announced it was releasing four Bush-era memos on terror interrogations that included the controversial practice of waterboarding.
 

Mackey

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Back in February, the Obama administration shocked many civil libertarians by filing a brief in federal court that, in two sentences, declared that it embraced the most extremist Bush theory on this issue-- the Obama DOJ argued, as The New York Times's Charlie Savage put it, "that military detainees in Afghanistan have no legal right to challenge their imprisonment there, embracing a key argument of former President Bush’s legal team." Remember: these are not prisoners captured in Afghanistan on a battlefield. Many of them have nothing to do with Afghanistan and were captured far, far away from that country -- abducted from their homes and workplaces -- and then flown to Bagram to be imprisoned.Indeed, the Bagram detainees in the particular case in which the Obama DOJ filed its brief were Yemenis and Tunisians captured outside of Afghanistan (in Thailand or the UAE, for instance) and then flown to Bagram and locked away there as much as six years without any charges. That is what the Obama DOJ defended, and they argued that those individuals can be imprisoned indefinitely with no rights of any kind -- as long as they are kept in Bagram rather than Guantanamo.

Obama and habeas corpus -- then and now - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com
 

D_Ireonsyd_Colonrinse

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face:

No, we're not going to prosecute Bush administration and CIA officials for torture. Obama has learned that once you actually get into office, actually become president, it's best sometimes not to prosecute the president (on down) - in order to preserve the authority of the office of the presidency (you don't want to start setting dangerous precedents for new administrations prosecuting each other).


Does this mean George W. Bush is not guilty or somehow vindicated? Hell no.

Do I have to agree with all the decisions my commander-in-chief makes? Not at all.


However, I've come to the unshakable decision (at this point) that I trust this man. I trust Barack Hussein Obama. If he decides it best not to prosecute, I'm with him. I defer to his presidential grasp of the situation. With Barack, I look at the entire package. He's shown himself to be rational, stable, cool & collected, savvy, tuned in, poised, easy-going, perceptive, quick-witted, resourceful - the very picture of my idea of a modern president - all through this first 100 days.

I trust him.

He's earned my trust.

I feel in sync with a lot of his over-arching philosophies.

I trust him in a way I could never trust George W. Bush.


He gets the benefit of the doubt (if he pre-emptively invades North Korea or Iran, though, I'm seriously going to start questioning pledging my allegiances to him)
 
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B_VinylBoy

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Facequeen and Nick doesn't realize the overall impact of this news. Because Obama won't pursue the CIA officials, that exonerates him from anything related to it and puts the issue ENTIRELY on the shoulders of the previous administration.

All conservatives can do is try and twist this into how Obama is "more of the same". But that's all they've been trying to do since day one and there's plenty of things Obama has done in order to dispel that rhetoric. Now, with the memos out for everyone to read (thanks to Obama), that opens the door for other people to go after the CIA officials. And it puts the final nail in the coffin in the overall reputation of the previous administration.

Now, I'll return the stage to the OP and let him try to make this into another Obama issue even after he's apparently wiped his hands clean from it.
 

B_Nick8

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The lib Obamite silence is deafening

STFU, Nick. No, it's not. The smell of your cologne is deafening. Sometimes you are simply one big tool.

Obama isn't pursuing those people nor should he. Anyone operating under a directive that made an action legal at the time ought not to be punished retroactively. The people he might consider punishing would be the people who were responsible for instituting those policies in the first place, particularly your vaunted former president and vice-president but there is a time for healing to begin and Obama is intelligent enough to know that and to put witch hunts aside.
 
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Bbucko

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The fact that nothing in the memos can be disputed or spun actually speaks volumes about the blindness and complicity to which those of all political persuasions who did not loudly and consistently denounce torture and its broader implications regarding the Geneva Convention.

This is a dark day for my country and will indulge in no grave dancing tonight, thanks.
 

D_Rod Staffinbone

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yet another dem (obama) rolls over and plays dead, hopefully he lives on to fight the good fight another day.
in my opinion, this was the moral equivalent of ford's pardon of nixon. probably worse.

sometimes taking the path to try to please everybody pleases nobody.
 
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D_Ireonsyd_Colonrinse

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I've just read through some of the articles on the torture memos. Sickening, nightmarish stuff.

Notice how faceking uses this thread title -- "Obama admin won't pursue CIA officials for torture" -- to divert the topic away from the former president's illegal, immoral medieval torture modus operandi and onto Barack Obama, so it now becomes a thread on whether liberals should take issue with Obama for either pursuing or not pursuing prosecution.

THIS THREAD SHOULD NOT BE ABOUT OBAMA.

THIS THREAD SHOULD BE ABOUT THE FORMER PRESIDENT'S MALIGNANT POLICIES, THEY ARE THE FUCKING TOPIC. These memos are sickeningly detailed. Bush has disgraced, degraded, dishonored this country.

We never had to "authorize" secret medieval torture techniques like we were a petty, malignant, uncivilized third-world country.
 

B_Nick4444

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Bush has disgraced, degraded, dishonored this country.


the CIA gave key legislative overseers about 30 private briefings, some of which included descriptions of that technique and other harsh interrogation methods, according to interviews with multiple U.S. officials with firsthand knowledge.

With one known exception, no formal objections were raised by the lawmakers briefed about the harsh methods during the two years in which waterboarding was employed, from 2002 to 2003, said Democrats and Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter. The lawmakers who held oversight roles during the period included Pelosi and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), as well as Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan).

officials present during the meetings described the reaction as mostly quiet acquiescence, if not outright support. "Among those being briefed, there was a pretty full understanding of what the CIA was doing," said Goss, who chaired the House intelligence committee from 1997 to 2004 and then served as CIA director from 2004 to 2006. "And the reaction in the room was not just approval, but encouragement." [emphasis added]

Hill Briefed on Waterboarding in 2002 - washingtonpost.com

but there is a time for healing to begin and Obama is intelligent enough to know that and to put witch hunts aside.


given the above, might his motivations actually be POLITICAL?
 
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faceking

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Notice how faceking uses this thread title -- "Obama admin won't pursue CIA officials for torture" -- to divert the topic away from the former president's illegal, immoral medieval torture modus operandi and onto Barack Obama,

You think about me a bit too much. It was an abbreviation on the news headline I saw that linked to a fuller title on "rights groups" being upset. In fact, the very liberal outlet known as CNN.

I just posted the article, that's all. You're trying to spin this on me. I was very NJQT on this one. Just posting the news with no opinion thereof.

THIS THREAD SHOULD BE ABOUT THE FORMER PRESIDENT'S MALIGNANT POLICIES, THEY ARE THE FUCKING TOPIC. These memos are sickeningly detailed. Bush has disgraced, degraded, dishonored this country.

Then start your own thread on it.

You are getting very defensive these days WillTom, and can't calmly post. Take a breather.
 

faceking

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A big reason why Obama isn't going to do anything about this...

... is we've being doing it for years. Everyone would go down for decades.

Everyone is naively acting like this is the first time the CIA has done this.
 

D_Rod Staffinbone

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I've just read through some of the articles on the torture memos. Sickening, nightmarish stuff.


THIS THREAD SHOULD BE ABOUT THE FORMER PRESIDENT'S MALIGNANT POLICIES, THEY ARE THE FUCKING TOPIC. These memos are sickeningly detailed. Bush has disgraced, degraded, dishonored this country.

We never had to "authorize" secret medieval torture techniques like we were a petty, malignant, uncivilized third-world country.


that's why the bastards should be prosecuted, not PROTECTED. sacrificial lambs?
SO WHAT. send the message to the world the u.s. was WRONG and have the balls to
put them on trial for what they did. the decision on this was to be expected. no matter who had been elected.

i know it (the torture) goes on, it will most likely continue to go on, but not (for the time being) by those wearing the uniform of the u.s. armed forces.


however, that doesn't make it right.

the mccain or hillary clinton scenario most likely would have been nearly identical to obama's policy on this one.
 
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D_Ireonsyd_Colonrinse

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Nick4444:

The torture detailed in the memos were not only waterboarding. The Bush administration advocated keeping the detainees naked for extended periods of time, dog collars, depriving them of sleep for up to 11 days in a row, smashing their heads against the wall, prolonged shackling, death threats to their families.

WHAT HAS TO HAPPEN BEFORE YOU CONSIDER IT "TORTURE" you fucker? Put them into an iron maiden? Extreme blood loss?

This is not how civilized countries act.
 

B_VinylBoy

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Glad you like your new name. :rolleyes:

A big reason why Obama isn't going to do anything about this...

... is we've being doing it for years. Everyone would go down for decades.

Everyone is naively acting like this is the first time the CIA has done this.

Correction...
There's bigger problems for our president to deal with then making sure that Bush & Company fry for their fuck-ups. That's why Obama made sure the memos were made public. Because even if he doesn't push for an investigation, you can bet SOMEONE will. The move is actually a lot smarter than it looks, and people like you are forever missing the big picture. Then again, that's expected from someone like you.

And even if by chance the CIA has been doing it for a long time as you say... these guys were stupid enough to get caught. There's a reason why people say ignorance is bliss...
 
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