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Many have been dismayed by the signals then-President-Elect Obama was sending about his Administration’s future role in investigating and prosecuting members of the Bush Administration.
Everything pointed to a "let’s move on" attitude.
But Obama has also spent a lot of time and energy telling us all that it is we…it is us…who will have to participate in the "change" he is leading.
Within hours of entering the Oval Office, Obama threw down the gauntlet.
“Starting today,” Mr. Obama said, “every agency and department should know that this administration stands on the side not of those who seek to withhold information, but those who seek to make it known.”
One of the first acts of the Obama Presidency was to reverse post 9/11 rules erring on the side of secrecy… a policy that clamped down on the Freedom of Information Act.
It was a crucial move by Team Bush, anticipating the crimes and misdemeanors they planned…and still working to pull a veil over the fun and games of previous Administrations…like those of the Reagan and Bush years. This effectively covered up the sins of the father, and the sins of so many working for the son.
Obama, though, has taken a huge step toward pulling back the veil of secrecy.
Although there is little hope that his Administration will investigate, that his Justice Department will seek the justice so many crave, he has challenged us all to do the work that he cannot do. Politically, he has determined that he cannot appear to be engaging in what would be characterized as a "partisan blame-game" cycle of revenge.
Fair enough.
Because he has, in opening up the flow of information, challenged us all to do the hard work of piecing together what has happened. In particular, he has challenged a supine and indolent press to actually engage in journalism and investigate.
Now, they cannot use secrecy as an excuse. Or national security.
Now, they have to use this window of openness to crawl into the darkest chapters of our recent past and expose the crimes and misdemeanors that will otherwise go unpunished.
Now, we can use the court of public opinion to convict those who wait patiently on corporate boards, in think tanks and lobbying firms…and during highly-paid speaking tours…until they can to return to power.
Now, it is up to us.
15 Comments
Excellent parsing. Thanks.
Digg is Open
who was it, I believe fdr who said, “I agree, now make me do it”
bing
yup, fdr;
Well, we can try…but I fear that the die has been cast re: official investigations. Pressure Congress, sure.
But the people we need to pressure are those in the media. The greatest failures have been theirs, not the Team Bush’s. We should all have expected the Bushies to be criminal, greed and war-mongering cronies for the Military-Industrial Complex. To have creating an Intelligence-Industrial Complex. To be an agent for oil and financial profiteers.
They were just doing what they were elected to do.
No, it was the MEDIA who ALLOWED them to do it and get away with it. They were the enablers. They refused to ask questions until Katrina forced the issue. They were shills.
Now…the door is cracked open and it is time for us all to force them to do their jobs. Believeme , I worked in it for the last decade…it is a joke.
Citizen journalism is where it is at…and alternative media…and independent journos…
thanks JP
The US president’s order to close the network of secret prisons around the world – known as CIA “black sites” – which contain an untold number of “ghost detainees” whose existence has never properly been confirmed will be just as satisfying for campaigners.
The black sites were authorised by a classified presidential directive six days after the September 11 attacks in 2001, and only acknowledged five years later in a speech in which George Bush declined to say where they were and insisted only that the interrogation techniques used there were “tough … safe, and lawful, and necessary”.
The point of black sites appears to be to allow detainees to be interrogated in ways that would not have been allowed elsewhere. The black sites that first came to light were in Afghanistan, where Bagram air base and a notorious dungeon codenamed “the Salt Pit” were used as interrogation centres and clearing centres for captives from the around the world to be held before being flown to Guantánamo.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl…..-obama-cia
Instead, Obama renewed America’s commitment to international laws – including the Geneva Convention – that in the past had been disparaged by the Bush administration.
“Anybody in custody and control of American forces is governed by the Geneva Convention,” a senior administration official briefing reporters at the White House said today.
The official added that the International Committee for the Red Cross would keep a record of all detainees in US custody – another departure from the Bush era when the identity of inmates at Guantánamo was secret.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl…..ma-closure
Former Guantanamo guard, Chris Arendt and x detainees, Moassam Begg and Jarallah al-Maari travel the UK.
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Who is responsible for the abuses in Guantanamo, the low level soldiers or the high ranking officials?
CHRIS: It comes from both ends. On the blocks, there’s not an extreme level of oversight. The camp comandant and the seargant major of the camp, the highest ranking NCO and officer of the camp, have virtually nothing to do with the camp — they make all the rules, but they never go in and see it. There is a lot of abuse in our operations just day by day, that goes from something that’s procedural to something that’s excessively forceful. But then interrogators and comandants set things from their end, like they’re responsible for the frequent flier program.
MOAZZAM: The great lesson from Nuremberg is that the individual soldier cannot claim they were not liable because they were just following orders. How did abuse happen? In a place like Bagram, which is closer to the front lines, there’s more anger, there’s more energy from soldiers, there’s more liability for abuse. But there is an environment that can be created when people at the top like Donald Rumsfeld says, “I stand for eight to ten hours a day, why is standing limited for four hours for these guys.” But of course when we stand as detainees, we stand chained, with our hands above our heads. So the penny drops from the top.
http://www.guantanamovoices.org/
JP nails it! Time to “straighten out” the media! Welcome back, sir. It’s good to see you.
This is what torture creates; false information that leads to others being tortured. This is the first information that Khadr, who was tortured before he was sent to Guantanamo, gave false testimony about Maher Arar. Arar was sent to Syria and was tortured for a year because of this testimony. Someone obviously was out to ‘get’ Arar. I wonder who? This is what Alberto Gonzales was covering up when he refused to release information about Arar’s case. Convenient that the US had a Canadian to identify another Canadian. WTF really happened?
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GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba — A teenaged Omar Khadr identified Canadian Maher Arar, who was tortured in Syria after he was sent there by American authorities, as someone he had seen at al-Qaida safehouses and training camps in Afghanistan, an FBI special agent testified Monday.
Khadr made the identification from photographs the agent, Robert Fuller, showed him during interrogations several months after the Toronto-born Khadr was captured following a firefight in Afghanistan in July 2002.
Khadr made the identification from photographs the agent, Robert Fuller, showed him during interrogations several months after the Toronto-born Khadr was captured following a firefight in Afghanistan in July 2002.
Arar became the subject of a commission of inquiry in Canada, which publicly cleared him of any links to terrorism and gave him a $10.5-million settlement
“He pulled the pin and just chucked it over his shoulder,” the agent, identified only as Interrogator 11, told the hearing.
“He had never thrown one before, so he just threw it over his shoulder, like he had seen in the movies.”
The U.S. Dept. of Defence interviewed the Toronto-born Khadr about a dozen times — some sessions lasting as long as five hours — after he arrived at this infamous prison in more than six years ago.
The young Canadian, now 22, was found under the rubble and badly injured with three gunshot wounds following a four-hour firefight.
She denied promising he would go home if he co-operated with her. She was also unable to explain why she destroyed her notes of the interrogation sessions after she had typed them up.
The court has previously heard evidence that a second person found alive in the rubble was shot dead by American troops. The defence said that raised the possibility someone else threw the grenade that killed Speer.
http://www.edmontonsun.com/New…..72761.html
Thanks, Kathryn. DIGG total is now 12
Thanks again, bluebutterfly, for all your posts and links. You must have one fantastic search engine. What system and s engine are you using?
I read sort of a questionable article yesterday that Chaney’s basement had been declared one of the CIA black sites. Frankly it sounds very plausible to me. His new home is built in sight of CIA Hdqtrs, Langly. I still hold the theory that Chaney has been CIA from way back in Nixon’s time.
You were exactly right about the troll yesterday. You always give links for your postings so we can read for ourselves regarding the contents. That troll, in my recollection, never has. His purpose is to cut down with sarcasm the views of other posters. I pointed that out some time back and it really punched his buttons. Since then I have noticed a change in his approach – less abrasive, more insiduous; still as poisonious.
If you sound out his name, it is much like another we see here, who BTW gave accolades to the troll in a diary a few days ago. Your final response to him was perfect.
Good blog, JP! I see the problem of a new Democratic President seeming to wage a kind campaign of revenge against the immediately preceding administration. It would not do. I strongly take your point that the press and the people nonetheless (and all the more!) have a responsibility to find out what has been going on. Where they find wrongdoing–and there are many reasons to think they will–it is equally important that they demand some form of public repudiation of the wrongdoing. Short of that, we will quietly have ended the American experiment in democracy. Let me add only that I think Congress has an important role here. The very broad powers of subpoena enjoyed by Congress have too long been left unused. -tbone
Bob Parry and Russ Baker will be sleeping on cots in whatever rooms contain information on the Reagan/Bush years.
Parry’s Consortiumnews.com is a wonderful source of information on the 80s, a period most people seem to remember only for the type and amount of cocaine they ingested. Of course, that cocaine entered the US courtesy of George H. W. Bush who, as head of the Southeast Drug Interdiction Task Force, presided over a 600% increase in the amount of cocaine entering the US much of it flown in as a tradeoff form arms for the Contras.
Family values=drug dealing=Bush family.
Dude, you are so right about this.
Bob Parry is a beast! Hasn’t given up on trying to show us what really happened. I had a chance to intv him for a piece a few years ago. He was spot-on.
Baker is right on target, too.
And Gary Webb…was a hero. A true hero.