Obama says that he will not prosecute people who practised the actual hands-on torture (enhanced interogation techniques), arguing that those people were carrying out orders and committing acts that they were lead to believed were legal… They were ordered to do something they were told was legal at that time by their county’s powers that be…. they were just following orders… The Nuremberg defence!!!
If torture techniques are important and successful ways of obtaining information for the Americans… wouldn’t torture techniques have been seen as important and successful ways of obtaining information for the Nazis, Japanese, the Chinese, etc.?? and the Americans prosecuted some of those people and some were sentenced to death because of their acts of torture…. But when it is Americans who are accused and implicated in perpetrating torture how thick and fast the excuses flow…I cannot believe that Americans can justify what has gone on through the Bush administration – especially with what is emerging from torture memoranda and discussions.
The logical conclusion to the arguments supporting the “enhanced interrogation techniques” is that the ends justify the means; that is to say that if lives were saved, it doesn’t matter HOW they were saved… it doesn’t matter HOW information was obtained to potentially save those lives, it doesn’t matter HOW the people who threatened those lives were treated – ANY behaviour, ANY policy, ANY technique can be justified if the desired ends are achieved… If Americans believe that, then America (the idea of what America once claimed itself to be. The dream of what America stood for – as articulated in its Declaration of independence) as a moral leader in the world is dead, and George W Bush killed it… I hope Obama will not be the undertaker but the resuscitator.
I understand that by international law and by treaty, waterboarding is defined as torture. The US is a signatory to such laws and treaty and as such is duty bound to act against those who prepared and perpetrated such torture… all else is hypocrisy.
Prosecute the guilty without fear or favour
