Obama Under Pressure On Interrogation Policy

[lanlady]

Source: Wahsington Post

Obama Under Pressure On Interrogation Policy
Some See Harsh Methods as Essential

By Michael Abramowitz, Joby Warrick and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, January 10, 2009; A01

President-elect Barack Obama introduced his nominees to head his national security team on Friday. But now Obama begins a perilous balancing act to fulfill his pledge to make a clean break with the detention and interrogation policies of the Bush administration while still effectively ensuring the nation's security.

Obama named retired Navy Adm. Dennis C. Blair director of national intelligence and former congressman and White House chief of staff Leon E. Panetta as his CIA director.

"Under my administration, the United States does not torture. We will abide by the Geneva Conventions. . . . We will uphold our highest values and ideals," Obama told reporters. "It is important for us to do that not only because that's who we are, but also, ultimately it will make us safer and will help in changing hearts and minds in our struggle against extremists."

At the same time Obama intends to curb counterterrorism practices he considers excessive or even illegal, he will also come under great pressure to leave the CIA the kind of flexibility its operatives have long considered necessary to heading off another Sept. 11-style attack, current and former national security officials said.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/09/AR2009010903784.html?nav=rss_email%2Fcomponents

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I hope Obama doesn't cave into pressure.

[bread_and_roses]

1. "Flexibility" = illegal

What "flexibility" is there around torture? How "flexible" do we want to b about slaughtering civilians, incinerating and dismembering children, blowing up hospitals, destroying power grids, water supplies critical to health?

[lynnertic]

6. I think here 'flexibility' = CYA for past crimes

[ixion]

2. we managed for more than 200 years w/o condoning torture

so, just because 911 happened on the ass clown's watch, that doesn't mean that we should surrender liberty and freedom and privacy. It means we should hold the 'moran' who was in charge responsible, and continue to act like a civilized nation, rather than a large group of drunken, psychotic barbarians.

[Diclotican]

9. ixion

ixion

Not quit right there.. In some states in the US, it was allowed to use some form of torture, to get a conviction out of "bad apples" to ca 80 year ago... I would not even tell how it was in Europe for 80-90 year ago, where the Police do had some "leverage" about how to treat prisoners.. Today we would call it torture, then it was just "the work"...

But today we can do it without using torture - and if US was to stand up for what they once was proud of, they have to obey bay the same rules they once had... And it would be a step in the right direction, to respect and to follow the different Geneva conventions.. After all, it was US who made the 3 Geneva convention to live, and a possibility for the world to follow..

US can, if they are willing, to hold the same standard, that hopefully the rest of the civilized world would have as a matter of principle... And many of them who have worked in the field for many years, in police and so on, have told and told again that the fact on the ground is that if you use violence, and treat the prisoner you want to answer your questing harsh, you might stop them for telling you what you need to know.. But if you use the proper methods, in 99.9 percent, the "bad Apple" would talk...

When it coming to this criminals who have been in power the last couple of year in the US.. They must be arrested, and the whole truth about what happened on their watch be open to all to se.. Then I doubt even the most hardliner in the Right Wing would support them...

Diclotican

Sorry my bad english, not my native language.

[Diclotican]

10. ixion

ixion

Not quit right there.. In some states in the US, it was allowed to use some form of torture, to get a conviction out of "bad apples" to ca 80 year ago... I would not even tell how it was in Europe for 80-90 year ago, where the Police do had some "leverage" about how to treat prisoners.. Today we would call it torture, then it was just "the work"...

But today we can do it without using torture - and if US was to stand up for what they once was proud of, they have to obey bay the same rules they once had... And it would be a step in the right direction, to respect and to follow the different Geneva conventions.. After all, it was US who made the 3 Geneva convention to live, and a possibility for the world to follow..

US can, if they are willing, to hold the same standard, that hopefully the rest of the civilized world would have as a matter of principle... And many of them who have worked in the field for many years, in police and so on, have told and told again that the fact on the ground is that if you use violence, and treat the prisoner you want to answer your questing harsh, you might stop them for telling you what you need to know.. But if you use the proper methods, in 99.9 percent, the "bad Apple" would talk...

When it coming to this criminals who have been in power the last couple of year in the US.. They must be arrested, and the whole truth about what happened on their watch be open to all to se.. Then I doubt even the most hardliner in the Right Wing would support them...

Diclotican

Sorry my bad english, not my native language.

[machI]

3. There is a lot riding on the decisions President Obama makes when he first takes office

If President Obama caves in on the torture issue, it will set a precedent that will follow us to the end of his term. These military types have become accustom to getting their way (even encouraged) in the Bush Administration. President Obama needs to rule with an iron hand from the start and not allow these entrenched Neocons to get their way.

[Metta]

4. I read here that he caved on FISA because of "advice" from Brennan.

and so it begins, the unraveling of hope.

[Moosepoop]

5. This article is a load of crap.

Who is the "pressure" to keep the torture program coming from? The article quotes Dick Cheney -- who will of course be out of the picture as of Jan. 20. The other cited courses are "unnamed administration officials." Are they ones that will be in the next administration? The article doesn't say.

Then there are passages like this:

If Obama goes ahead with his plan to scrap the special CIA program, he could expose himself to criticism that he did not do all he could to prevent another terrorist attack. That is exactly the kind of criticism that President Bush himself was subjected to after the Sept. 11 attacks.

"The Bush White House was accused of paying insufficient attention to the threat posed by al-Qaeda before 9/11," said one senior administration official. "Will the new administration let the pendulum swing too far in the effort to purge the perceived excesses of the past? Will they have on blinders to the continuing threat?"

What rubbish! Comparing criticism of Bush for having ignored and/or cooked valid (non-torture gained) intelligence prior to 9/11 with suggested potential criticism of Obama for not using torture to "prevent" another 9/11 is comparing apples and toadstools. The Bush/Cheney gang has been rightly criticized for its handling of supplied intelligence, but saying that Obama would be under the SAME criticism for not allowing torture to gather "preventive" information is absurd. So is the idea that the Bush admin is only being criticized for "paying insufficient attention" to the information that they had been abundantly supplied with. Leaving out the criticisms that they had cooked the information and lied through their teeth to Congress and the public all along speaks volumes to me.

Suggestions that "The pendulum will swing too far!" and "They'll have blinders on to the continuing threat of terrorism!" without torture as a method of gathering intelligence are not "pressure" on Obama -- they are slogans that are meant to be spread to scare the public into putting pressure on Obama. What a load of crap.

[Solly Mack]

7. "Harsh Methods " (It's called torture)

and every time the media (and others) use any of those feel-better-about-it-all euphemisms, they are allowing a lie to stand...the lie being, that the methods being used aren't torture

[disndat]

8. Let me get this straight.

Wasn't Bush/Cheney warned by everyone that an attack was imminent, yet he chose to ignore them? He didn't need to torture anyone, he knew from every possible intelligence sources in the country. He used torture to fool the people into thinking he was tough while spreading greater fear of attack.

[EFerrari]

11. Has Obama said he would end rendition? Anyone know?