Thursday, April 23, 2009 (13:20:28)
The Obama administration has made it clear they are not interested in holding anyone accountable for torture, on the contrary, they will help shield people from accountability, going as far as to cover legal expenses for anyone who might be brought up on charges anywhere in the world. Here is an excerpt from Amy Goodman's column:After President Barack Obama said there should be no prosecutions, he was received with great fanfare at the CIA this week. Mark Benjamin, the reporter who originally broke the Mitchell and Jessen story, said when I questioned him about Obama’s position: “If you look at the president’s statements and you combine them with the statements of Rahm Emanuel, the chief of staff, and Eric Holder, the attorney general ... you will see that over the last couple of days the Obama administration has announced that no one, not the people who carried out the torture program or the people who designed the program or the people that authorized the program or the people who said that it was legal—even though they knew that it frankly wasn’t—none of those people will ever face charges. The attorney general has announced that ... the government will pay the legal fees for anybody who is brought up on any charges anywhere in the world or has to go before Congress. They will be provided attorneys ... they have been given this blanket immunity ... in return for nothing.”
Torturers Should Be Punished
Source: Democratic Underground
Naomi Wolf makes an interesting point, that any prosecutions regarding torture should be at the top, with the Bush administration officials and lawyers who attempted to legitimize torture, rather than at the bottom, with the CIA officials who carried out the orders from above.
Don't Prosecute -- and Scapegoat -- Torture Operatives; Go for the Top
What do YOU think? Leave your comments below!
- Posted by: personman
- Topic: Human Rights
