Today Obama's CIA nominee, Panetta, recanted yesterday's testimony admitting that we, the United States, rendered persons to foreign countries to be tortured. There is ample public testimony from military and CIA officials that the U.S. has rendered persons to be tortured.
The Bush administration perpetuated its torture policy by secretly ordering the use of torture while publicly proclaiming that we do not use torture as a method of interrogation. Panetta's public statement today that he has no evidence that we rendered persons to be tortured makes it clear that the Obama administration will continue the Bush pro-torture policy.
The only way, let me repeat, the only way we as Americans can stop our policy of using torture as a method of interrogation is to shed light on our past actions, admit what we have done, and work to bring to justice those who ordered the use of torture. Panetta's public denial of our past policy of rendering persons to foreign countries to be tortured will work to effectively obstruct attempts to investigate our past practices, and it will greatly impede efforts to bring those who ordered the use of torture to justice.
I take Mr. Panetta's public statements today before a Congressional Committee to be proof positive that the Obama administration is a pro-torture administration.
Please help me to understand this. Can it be that we worked with such determination to help elect a second consecutive pro-torture administration? Before the election, we petitioned our elected representatives calling for investigations of the Bush administration for violations of our statutory law, our treaties, our Constitution, and international law for torture. The most repeated answer to our petitions was that the new administration would be different.
We were led to believe by Barack Obama that his presidency would bring a stop to our policy of torture.
In my view, this is a simple question, one of the few questions in politics that truly can be considered on the basis of good or bad. The contrast is as stark as day and night, as black and white. And recent history, World War II, is an easy reminder of the wrong choice on this question. So what is it?
What is it about the infliction of insufferable suffering on another human being that is so appealing that our elected representatives think we are willing to overlook or even encourage it?
Here is where I draw the line. No question, no quibbling, no doubt. As I worked to help the Obama administration get to power, I will now, and I mean beginning today, work to limit this pro-torture administration to one term.
