A White House State of Mind

By: David Phillips

April 20, 2009

Yoda’s World

 

Three cheers for the Red, White and Blue, President Barack Obama and the Attorneys General Eric Holder both have said that they will not seek to prosecute those that circumvented American laws, the Geneva convention against torture, or the United Nations agreement against torture both of which the United States are signees, even though both Obama and Holder are on record saying that they would pursue crimes by the previous administration.

 

President Obama had said that “no one is above the law” while campaigning for the job he is currently holding, it seems that that is only true if the laws broken did not emanate from the Oval office.

 

Back in April of 2008 then Senator Obama said, "If crimes have been committed, they should be investigated" referring to the Bush administration, but he also said that "I would not want my first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of Republicans as a partisan witch hunt, because I think we've got too many problems we've got to solve."

 

President Obama keeps telling us that he is quite capable of doing more than one thing at a time, and he has shown that he is able to do that. So why in the world won’t he go after those that committed crimes at the same time? I do not buy his argument that it would appear as a “partisan witch hunt” it sounds more like politics as usual.

 

Attorneys General Eric Holder back in November 2008 said, "Our government authorized the use of torture, approved of secret electronic surveillance against American citizens, secretly detained American citizens without due process of law, denied the writ of habeas corpus to hundreds of accused enemy combatants and authorized the use of procedures that violate both international law and the United States Constitution.... We owe the American people a reckoning."

 

Obama last week authorized the release of a series of memos detailing the methods approved under President George W. Bush, and in an accompanying statement, Obama said "it is our intention to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution." He did not specifically address the policymakers at that time, but has since by saying that he will not prosecute those that authorized torture.

 

The Bush administration torture Memos released last week by President Obama go into detail how the Bush administration approved various forms of torture from “Waterboarding” (simulated drowning) to ‘Walling” slamming a detainees head into a wall along with several other forms of torture techniques where the CIA asked how far they can stretch the envelope with torture.

 

But with all this evidence President Obama says he will NOT seek to indict anyone who had a hand in either approving torture or those that did the torture.

 

Politics as usual and no change we can believe in, A White House State of Mind.