The U.S. Torture Case: Bosses Knew and Approved

About a week prior to the completion of his first one hundred days in the White House, Barack Obama dropped a critical ball. At the same instant as he decided to raise the inevitable issue of the serious and illegal actions carried out by the CIA, especially the use of harsh torture on suspected terrorists, he ought to have attacked the entire chain of command and not put the blame of smashing the Constitution in the hands of the executive ranks alone.

Approximately once in a decade, the Central Intelligence Agency gets hit over the head with a five kilo sledgehammer. Its director is replaced, and those responsible in the government roll their eyes up to the innocent blue skies.

“Waterboarding,” the foolish water torture that emulates a helpless drowning experience in order to break down the prisoner, is another violation of the Constitution, courtesy of the Bush and Cheney school of thought. They knew about it, approved it with their own signatures, and broadened to no end the executive mandate given to security agencies without proper legal procedures – even if they were not considered a ticking bomb.

To pin this stink bomb on the CIA, which has had horrifying stories about it circulating in the media for years, was not the right move, and especially not a smart one. Because, at the end of the day, it’s the CIA that’s supposed to throw itself in front of a bullet making its way to the president. It’s the CIA that needs to alert us of the next 9/11 and help the president with the issues of Israel, Iran and the trigger-happy nuclear North Korea.

Obama, of all people, does not want an ambivalent CIA hesitant and trampled once again. Although the president made an effort to not plaster the blame on the agency, he stopped too fast. He did not instruct his people to do what much of the American public has been waiting for for years: investigate the involvement of Bush and Cheney in almost every possible infringement of the ethical tiers of the Constitution.

Since the speedy pardon Gerald Ford gave Richard Nixon in 1974, there has not been a single ball that has been dribbled so many times. Obama’s field goal percentage, to continue the basketball analogy, is the best of its kind, which is why his feeble and shallow reasoning is so strident and calls for correction. His abandonment of the CIA in this particular case is similar to the desertion of a vanguard that has been disconnected from the rear. The CIA did not operate in a vacuum. It tortured with permission and authorization and lowered America to the level of a third world country, the same kind which it pretends to improve.

Bush and Cheney must pay for their actions, or at least face the law for the criminal and perverse actions they took in the name of pumping up 9/11 and al-Qaeda fear. If America lets them be, it will only strengthen the Republican claim that the government acted by law. If America lets them get away with it, it will only bolster Cheney’s impudence to criticize every acting president, time and time again, before the latter has the chance to get used to his seat in the Oval Office.

But above all, not investigating the actions committed in Guantanamo and in foreign countries in the name of America will leave a stain with long-term moral and political repercussions as to America’s ability to pursue justice. Therefore, Obama perhaps became himself again for the past two days when he declared that he will not stand in the way of such an investigation, if one shall commence. Now his only task is initiating one.