Obama’s Dithering on Torture

The publication of a damning investigation into the CIA’s interrogation methods is also another demonstration of the president’s procrastination.

American democracy has an admirable quality: It never hesitates to investigate its mistakes, its excesses, and even its abominations. Whether it’s a matter of questionable and pointless civilian deaths in Hiroshima or Dresden during World War II, unbearable massacres, such as My Laï during the Vietnam conflict, and today, the disgracefully brutal methods used by intelligence agencies to get terror suspects to talk following the Sept. 11 attacks, legislative committees are quick to wage war on the excesses and blunders of those acting in the name of the United States, even when it hurts.

To hide nothing — that is the aim of this 6,000-page investigative report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, presided over by California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, one of the icons of the American left. For three years, members of her team studied millions of documents describing the detention and interrogation conditions of prisoners captured in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen, who were suspected of belonging to the loose conglomeration of terrorists close to al-Qaida. The 525-page report, which was bowdlerized of certain details and made public, reveals – or confirms – the methods used to make suspects talk: sleep deprivation, waterboarding, threats of execution or of being buried alive. Above all, it denounces the uselessness of such practices that, contrary to the CIA’s belief, have never – say the authors – enabled the prevention of any planned attacks. And, also according to the report, the interrogation methods played no part in the final tracking and elimination of bin Laden.

Obama is Not as Clear as He Wants People to Believe.

As soon as the report was published on Tuesday morning, Barack Obama congratulated himself – through one of his spokespersons – on the fact that the truth about these disgraceful practices in an American democracy had been revealed to the country. And the White House reiterated that in 2009, immediately after taking office, Obama ensured that brutal interrogation methods would be banned. Indeed, he is the first leader to have described the CIA practices as “torture.”

And yet, the American president is not as clear as he wants people to believe he is regarding this explosive report, first, because the document was ready at the end of April 2014 and the White House, for various reasons, postponed its publication. Last Friday, John Kerry made it known “in the name of the administration,” that making this investigation public was inappropriate, given the war against the Islamic State jihadi. On television news programs, more or less independent experts highlighted the risk that these revelations would pose for Americans in embassies located in sensitive countries. Moreover, Sen. Feinstein, the person responsible for the report, has indicated that the White House removed 9,400 pages concerning the interrogations from the committee’s investigation, pursuant to its “executive privilege.” Sen. Feinstein was also refused permission to question certain CIA members, and she has accused the agency of hacking the computers of committee members on several occasions.

Finally, when questioned on Tuesday by the Latino channel Telemundo on what he would have done in George Bush’s position had he been at the White House following the events of 9/11, Obama answered, “Nobody can fully understand what it was like to be responsible for the safety and security of the American people in the aftermath of the worst attack on our national soil.” Some will see this declaration as being the epitome of prevarication. Others will see it as a sign of great honesty. In fact, Obama is not getting the political benefit he might have hoped for from this affair. Democrats criticize his dithering, and Republicans accuse him of having abandoned the CIA.