Report: Holder may yet initiate torture probe
Published: July 11, 2009
Updated 4 months ago
In spite of President Barack Obama’s reluctance, Attorney General Eric Holder may yet appoint a special prosecutor to plumb the depths of the Bush administration’s torture program, according to a published report.
“Four knowledgeable sources” told Newsweek that Holder’s decision could come in a matter of weeks.
“Such a decision would roil the country, would likely plunge Washington into a new round of partisan warfare, and could even imperil Obama’s domestic priorities, including health care and energy reform,” the magazine reported. “Holder knows all this, and he has been wrestling with the question for months. ‘I hope that whatever decision I make would not have a negative impact on the president’s agenda,’ he says. ‘But that can’t be a part of my decision.’”
President Obama’s attorney general has called waterboarding “torture,” affirming that under his watch, “my Justice Department will not justify it, will not rationalize it and will not condone it.”
“The use and sanction of torture is at odds with the history of American jurisprudence and American values,” he said in March. “It undermines our ability to pursue justice fairly, and it puts our own brave soldiers in peril should they ever be captured on a foreign battlefield.”
Holder also led a review of the treatment of terror suspects.
Obama ordered the review as one of his first acts in office, as he also ordered the closing of the infamous Guantanamo Bay detention center, the CIA’s secret prisons abroad and special interrogation authorities for terror detainees.
With AFP.
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Don’t hold your breath, and if he does you can be sure the “special prosecutor” will have his script to play. There will be NO convictions of anything.
Yeah right. And that useless, bigoted pope in Rome MAY become a protestant next year.
Ever since 2000, I have read one article after the other using such conditional language as:
“may”
“could”
“might”
And usually the Dem kool-aid drinkers starting jumping up and down prematurely at this point and begin engaging in their wishful-thinking and false hope.
For this particular article, the words “may yet” are used.
Nothing ever comes of any of it.
As some of us have said before, any SERIOUS investigations/hearings into these matters would implicate and incriminate the Bush-accomplice Dems as well, including War Criminal Obama, who is continuing the use of torture to this day.
The Obama regime (which is a continuation of the Bush regime) may put on a show of theatre to dupe the Dem kool-aid drirnkers and give the illusion that they are probing/investigating these matters, but nothing of substance. Because they would incriminate themselves as the war criminals that they are.
As I have asked before:
Do people honestly believe that one War Criminal (savior Obama) is going to SERIOUSLY investigate another War Criminal (Bush/Cheney et al)? Duh.
Imsam, your collection of weasel words is admirable. As you and your avid readers know, weasel words make the entire meaning of a sentence neutral or even less. “He MIGHT do something important today.”
I would like to nominate “hope and believe” to your list, two of the most long lived weasel words in our language and favorites of the very people that you skillfully and bluntly excoriate. “Honestly” is another.
Behave yourself.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word
grinder
Believe it when I see it. Crimes were openly committed, loudly defended, and he’s “thinking” about whether or not to go after the crooks. I think at this point, there’s enough evidence that if he really wanted to enforce the law, he could simply just start arresting former Bushies, starting with Bush himself.
Talk about an openly committed crime; the Bush legacy:
http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/four-charged-burr-oak-cemetery-desecration.html
LAWL!! Sure he will! YES HE CAN!
Obama’s numbers are flagging. His hard lean approvals are in negatives now and have been for about 8 or 9 days. This is to scare up support amongst the rubes.. Nothing more.
Of course they are flagging. The man hasn’t been in the country for weeks. When Air Force One runs low on fuel maybe we’ll see more of him at the gas pumps.
I call irrelevant and will take “Economy and Jobs” for $200.
Bush started this (Actually Reagan did) but Obama just can’t expect to spend a trillion bucks and have nothing to show for it in the jobs and prosperity department.
When you drop coin that large, you’re buying something.. You’re either buying all the praise and adulation that a successful resolution will generate from a grateful populace, or you’re buying yourself a truckload of scorn from the same folks.
At the moment, it appears to be the latter..
I predict it will remain the latter until and unless he focuses on something more substantial in the jobs department than trillion dollar make work solutions, gamed out to benefit wealthy benefactors.
Trade policy would be a good place to start and it has populist appeal.
He won’t touch it because, like Bush, he’s more focused on enhancing investment opportunities in Asian markets than he is in keeping Americans employed and prosperous.
The real irony here is that Obama could have gone down in history as one of our greatest Presidents simply by UNDOING, OR ATTEMPTING TO UNDO, MUCH OF WHAT BUSH DID! The harm he inflicted on us, both fiscal and otherwise.. Specifically with regard to the post 9/11 security agenda he adopted and shoved down the throats of Republicans and Democrats alike.
In a nutshell, Obama is now flagging and is poised above the gaping chasm of epic Presidential fail, because, in far too many instances, he has inexplicably chosen to continue the same, detrimental Bush policies.
In re-enforcing the mistakes of the last 8 years, EVEN STRENGTHENING THEM IN SOME CASES, Obama is essentially just following Emperor George off a cliff.
Why is anyone’s guess.. I suspect they’re simply bought off and no longer work for us.
He doesnt have the balls..
What exactly does Obama mean when he says he does not want to dwell on the past? It’s as idiotic as anything Palin might say. Crimes only happen in the past - or am I missing something? If we were to follow Obama’s logic, nobody would ever be charged with a crime.
He means that he is going to protect the existing corporate order established under Reagan. That means that he as been compromised. The existing order is immune from prosecution.
Obama has expressed his notion that capitalism is the best system to create jobs and distribute wealth. He has no alternative view. He must therefore FIX capitalism before future individual wealth can accrue. We must wait. And wait. And wait.
Fear of regulatory legislation haunts Wall Street and Washington. It seem to be a stand off. So we wait. And wait. And Air Force One makes another transatlantic trip. And we wait. We are a nation of domestics.
That means that he as been compromised.
—————————
Savior Obama has NOT been compromised. Not in the least. Are you not aware that he served as a Bush-accomplice while in the senate? He is a war criminal just like Bush/Cheney et al. He’s a Neocon and one would have known that about him had one actively listened to what he said during the campaign. And I’m not referring to his feel-good pabulum speeches he gave for the sheep’s consumption with simple slogans like “hope” and “change we can believe in” propaganda.
It is baseless for anyone to suggest Obama has been compromised and it denies his Bush-accomplice voting record from the senate.
grindermonkey - “We are a nation of domestics.”
… a brilliantly insightful metaphor.
We all know the Obama-Orwellian doublespeak by now:
Translation: Holder will never consider initiating an inquiry into torture.
Think about it; president Obama just gave a message of governance to a known corrupt African continent. Actually centuries of corruption existed in blood shed and disorganization that has played a central role in Africa for centuries.
These past decades Arabia being a key player in International terror, especially with American oil profits has exposed a corporate greed that has shamed us to a level and reduced our morality that we argue about torture, or whether to keep our meddling and political assassinations secret because of embracement that is tightly coupled to family and business profiteering rather than serving American’s.
Obama visiting a place, were a long time ago history that knows the truth about slavery, with a visit to a castle that at one time exchanged, and traded black African people, by the black government, to White people as slaves for bounty in the free world? Here, with his wife and children likely with this slave blood of this history flowing with them, history is going to be made. For me, it will be an irony to return to American and not support his Attorney General to ferrite out the wild corruption we know exists here.
For me, some how the message is clear, Obama has no recourse but to support any and all investigations to address the corruption that is far deeper than Obama is involved. Or the consequence, it is highly and likely, the crescendo of anarchy with creep through our culture till it over takes our society worse than what we think is awful now, what we think is pleasant now will likely decline in horrible comparison.
Actually addressing and investigating Bush and Company is the real path to spreading freedom and Democracy. To solidify freedom in America, Bush needs to be held accountable. Sad but true, difficult but the evidence is so over whelming that Americans are waiting for it to happen. No, it’s not Obama’s fault to most any degree from my view, in just a few years in the politic arena, he can not be as fixed as much as many of the old timers are.
The blundering through these past years and complicity by the major media has brought us to this point. Even the media knows that if the Bush corruption is not addressed America will Plunge into uncharted waters. Obama is a novice political person yet is intelligent, how fair investigation will go will be the question. For anyone in America not to look back at Bush’s reign of horrible governance is simply hypocrisy that will never win with the majority. This is Obama’s moment and the real meaning of the “Audacity of Hope” is at hand.
The blundering through these past years and complicity by the major media has brought us to this point. Even the media knows that if the Bush corruption is not addressed America will Plunge into uncharted waters. Obama is a novice political person yet is intelligent, how fair investigation will go will be the question.
——————————–
It was not just the major corporate media who were complicit. It was also what charades as the Democratic Party.
Obama is intelligent?
You consider it intelligent to continue the Bush agenda?
You consider it intelligent to drone innocent people in Pakistan?
You consider it intelligent to continue 2 war/occupations,
the USA Patriot Act,
continue mountain top removal,
off-shore oil drilling off by East and West coasts,
continue rendition,
continue torture,
continue illegal spying, etc.
DOES THIS SOUND LIKE SOMEONE WHO IS INTELLIGENT TO YOU?
It doesn’t to me. It also sounds like someone who doesn’t give a damn about the US Constitution.
Where do some people get this nonsense that these scum millionaires/War Criminals who charade as politicians are “intelligent?”
And why do some people feel the need to put these scum millionaires/War Criminals who charade as politicians up on some damn pedestal?
“These past decades Arabia being a key player in International terror…”
Not so fast.. with regard to Obama and his comments on “Terror in Somalia” WE paid for that, not the Arabs.
We propped up the Ethiopians and invaded. Not them.
That was our money.. We did that.
I realize that Arab-bashing is a popular pastime on political forums, but here is is disingenuous. What you’re seeing here, and ironically what Obama is addressing, is nothing more than more American colonialism.
The same old shit on a brand new day.
after bush/cheney,
the other foot MUST drop.
if it doesn’t,
it will drop
on barack hussein obama.
obama - chose your villain,
it will either be bush/cheney
or yourself.
meditate on that.
the world watches with fevered eyes.
Uncle Sam or Uncle Tom?
DNC & RNC have BOTH sold out the country in order to enrich themselves.
Independents agree on more than we disagree.
Beware the divide and conquer.
Gravel Kucinich Paul Nader
McKinney Ventura too
perotcharts.com
Five veterans
The Fed
AIPAC
9/11
Yeah, just file that one down the aisle and set it next to the “Ark” they found in Raiders of The Lost Ark.
Holder said, “I hope that whatever decision I make would not have a negative impact on the president’s agenda,’ he says. ‘But that can’t be a part of my decision.”
Holder’s priorities and loyalties should fall first on the side of the Constitution and the rule of law above all else. No one is above the law, and that includes anyone holding the office of POTUS. For Holder to do otherwise, would be to continue the same politicization of the DOJ that placed men of power above the rule of law under the bush regime. We must make clear to Holder that we expect his priorities to line up with enforcing the rule of law by holding the bush criminals accountable so that justice can be served and the rule of law upheld. To do otherwise, will be viewed as a major breach of the peoples’ trust in our judicial system. This should have been one of the Obama administration’s first priorities and the fact that they have dragged their feet on this one is having a negative impact on the peoples’ trust of the current administration.
Lets see. We are talking here of a violation that once carried the DEATH PENALTY until the congress modified the law because they couldn’t stomach the idea of the president of the United States being executed, and this character has to THINK about whether he should even prosecute them? Welcome to Wonderland, Alice.
We all need to work to see that Torture is no longer practiced or condoned by our US Government.
The only way to stop Torture is to
Prosecute Those Who Tortured
or Conspired To Torture/
Torture is a Federal Capital Crime
SEE THE LAW http://http://tinyurl.com/besdd3
SIGN THE PETITION
calling for a Special Prosecutor for
Those who tortured in our name
http://ANGRYVOTERS.ORG
.