[Ppnews] Obama Protects CIA Torture Memos

[Political Prisoner News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/

April 10 / 12, 2009


Obama Protects CIA Torture Memos


Hope Abandoned

By CHRIS FLOYD

It was obvious from the moment that Barack Obama 
appointed Leon Panetta to head the CIA that there 
was going to be no serious investigation -- much 
less prosecution -- of the high crimes of torture 
committed by the agency at the order of the Bush 
White House. Panetta, a Clinton retread (who 
actually began his career in the Nixon 
administration), has always been a bland, 
feckless, obedient servant of the Establishment; 
he has no outside power base, no pull, no heft, 
no popularity -- nothing that would enable him to 
grab hold of the CIA with both hands and clean 
that fetid, blood-encrusted house. And of course, 
it was precisely this kind of powerless figure 
that Barack Obama wanted in the post.

The appointment was very typical of the Obama 
operation. Panetta had made a few very mild 
statements over the years that would allow him to 
be passed off as some kind of "progressive" in 
the witless, substanceless "process stories" that 
the corporate media do for new government 
appointees. This would be enough to keep the 
progressive "base" -- which was overwhelmingly 
inclined to give Obama every benefit of every 
doubt -- lulled long enough to get the patsy into 
the job. Of course, to actually get the job, 
Panetta had to make it clear to Congress that he 
wasn't going to stir up any trouble on the 
torture front, and was willing to play along with 
anything the Unitary Executive might order him to 
do. But the corp-media made little of this, 
concentrating instead on Panetta's rote 
assertions that "America doesn't torture," and 
his embrace of the Army Field Manual as the 
standard for CIA interrogation. (Of course, the 
vaunted manual also allows practices that any 
rational human being would consider torture, but that's another story.)

Once Panetta was confirmed in his figurehead 
director's role, the Obama White House then 
confirmed its true intentions regarding the rogue 
agency. It has put the actual running of the CIA 
into the hands of one of the top figures involved 
in the Bush torture program. Scott Horton at 
Harper's points us to the remarkable story by 
investigator John Sifton, detailing Obama's 
retention -- and promotion -- of Bush's willing 
torturers. From Sifton, at The Daily Beast:

"On Monday night the confidential report of the 
International Committee of the Red Cross on the 
CIA’s secret detention and interrogation program 
was published on the website of the New York 
Review of Books. The report confirms previous 
allegations about CIA abuses against detainees. 
Unlike earlier reporting, however, the document 
is based on irrefutable first hand information: 
interviews with detainees and U.S. officials. The 
document describes in stark detail the CIA’s use 
of forced standing, sleep deprivation, prolonged 
isolation, assaults, and waterboarding. It also 
discloses the participation of CIA medical personnel in torture....

"The New York Times reported that Leon Panetta, 
the current CIA director, has taken the position 
that “no one who took actions based on legal 
guidance from the Department of Justice at the 
time should be investigated, let alone punished.” 
Yet a number of CIA officials implicated in the 
torture program not only remain at the highest 
levels of the agency, but are also advising 
Panetta. Panetta’s attempt to suppress the issue 
is making Bush’s policy into the Obama administration’s dirty laundry.

"Take Stephen Kappes. At the time of the worst 
torture sessions outlined in the ICRC report, 
Kappes served as a senior official in the 
Directorate of Operations­the operational part of 
the CIA that oversees paramilitary operations as 
well as the high-value detention program. (The 
directorate of operations is now known as the 
National Clandestine Service.) Panetta has kept 
Kappes as deputy director of the CIA­the number 
two official in the agency. One of Kappes’ 
deputies from 2002-2004, Michael Sulick, is now 
director of the National Clandestine Service­the 
de facto number three in the agency. Panetta’s 
refusal to investigate may be intended to protect 
his deputies. Since the basic facts about their 
involvement in the CIA interrogation program are 
now known, Panetta’s actions are increasingly looking like a cover-up."

Sifton also makes a very important point about 
the Red Cross report on torture that has been 
almost entirely ignored (which is not surprising, 
given that the Red Cross report itself has been 
almost entirely ignored by the corporate media 
that gives us the "news" of the day):

"Another overlooked fact is this: the ICRC report 
is an important legal document that contains 
well-sustained allegations of criminal conduct 
with legal significance. Unlike earlier claims in 
books, magazines, and newspapers, the ICRC’s 
allegations are official notices from a legally 
recognized entity. The ICRC, after all, is not 
Human Rights Watch, the Washington Post, or The 
New Yorker, all of which have reported on the 
CIA’s secret prison program. The ICRC is an 
official entity recognized under the Geneva 
Conventions and various other earlier 
international treaties relating to armed conflict 
and prisoners of war. The ICRC is specifically 
tasked under the Geneva Conventions to visit 
prisoners and communicate with detaining powers 
to uphold the conventions’ spirit and purpose. 
Its interpretations and statements on matters of 
international law are held as legally 
authoritative. As such, the ICRC’s allegations 
have legal significance beyond previous 
disclosures. In effect, the document itself is evidence in a criminal case.

"Note in particular the report’s date, February 
14, 2007­Valentine’s Day. On that date, the U.S. 
government was put on notice about the 
allegations of CIA torture. (The ICRC also wrote 
to the U.S. governments about the issue of 
disappearances at several points in 2003-2006.)

"Under international law­the Geneva Conventions, 
the Convention against Torture, and basic 
precepts of customary international law­the 
United States has a positive obligation to 
investigate and prosecute persons alleged to have 
committed torture and other violations of the 
laws of war. As of Valentine’s Day 2007, and 
possibly earlier, the U.S. government was 
obligated to investigate and prosecute the abuses 
detailed in the report. The United States’ 
failure to do so is a recurring breach of international law."

The United States has formally adopted the Geneva 
Conventions and the Convention Against Torture; 
they are not some kind of "foreign devilment" 
messing with our sacred sovereignty: they are the 
law of the land. But it is clear that the Obama 
Administration does not have and never had the 
slightest intention of obeying the law and 
instigating the required investigations and 
prosecutions of the high crime -- the capital 
crime -- of ordering and committing torture. And 
the reason for this refusal is also clear: the 
Obama Administration wants to retain the power to 
torture, to conduct "paramilitary operations" 
with secret armies and single assassins, to carry 
out mass, illegal surveillance of the population 
with no legal accountability, to do "whatever it 
takes" to keep the machine of war and domination 
churning at full strength. That is why they have 
retained apparatchiks like Kappes and Sulick; 
that is why they are not only defending the Bush 
gang's egregious assertions of authoritarian 
power, but are actually seeking to expand them, 
as Glenn Greenwald and others have detailed.

It is understandable that people hunger 
desperately for change after the open, scalding 
evils of the Bush years. It is understandable 
that they would seize on an attractively packaged 
figure who made a few progressive noises, carried 
a great deal of genuinely symbolic weight due to 
his race, and was more personable, cool and 
articulate than his god-awful predecessor. It is 
understandable that many people would want to 
give this figure the benefit of the doubt, to 
turn a blind eye to the many warning signs that 
emerged during the campaign, and hope for the 
best. After all, who would not rather live in hope?

But hope must be grounded in reality; and it must 
be invested in the right place. When reality 
gives it the lie, then it must be abandoned. 
There is no hope to be found in the Obama 
Administration: no hope for genuine change, no 
hope for a clean break (or any kind of break) 
from the relentless and ruthless promotion of 
empire, oligarchy and militarism. By his own 
choices -- his appointments, his policies, his 
court actions, his rhetoric -- Barack Obama has 
demonstrated beyond all doubt his sincere and 
abiding commitment to "continuity" in the most 
pernicious and corrosive elements of America's 
lawless hyper-state. To place one's hope in such 
a figure is a crippling, disastrous folly.

The only hope that can be associated with the 
Obama Administration is the long-shot, rapidly 
fading, outside chance that they could be forced 
-- very much against their will -- into at least 
slowing the militarist-oligarchic juggernaut by 
strong, sustained, massive, informed political 
opposition from the public. (And no, not the 
"tea-bag" fantasies of the fascistic Right, whose 
only real complaint about Obama -- aside from the 
unspoken one about his skin color -- is that he 
is not militarist and oligarchic enough.)

I don't believe this will happen, that this kind 
of genuine and fruitful dissent will arise on a 
scale large enough to pressure the administration 
into making changes in order to save its own 
political skin. Nor do I, as some do, place any 
"hopes" -- if that's the word -- that some 
outside power (or combination of powers) or 
calamitous event (or combination of calamitous 
events) will force the juggernaut onto another 
course. As in the case of the present global 
financial collapse, the reaction of the elite to 
such circumstances will be to do more of the 
same, to try more and more desperately to return 
to the status quo -- or, as today, to exploit the 
panic and chaos of disaster to extend their own 
power and privilege even further. And with a 
militarist elite that possesses an arsenal 
capable of bringing the world down with them if 
they can't hold on to power, I can't contemplate 
such a Götterdämmerung of suffering and death with anything like "hope."

But I also know that I don't know what the future 
might bring. So whatever small hope I still have 
resides in the flickering possibility of 
engendering the kind of large-scale, genuine, 
fruitful dissent described above. I realize that 
this is a rather slim reed to hang on to; yet it 
is a mighty oak when compared to a hope invested 
in leaders who protect and promote torturers, who 
perpetuate -- and laud -- mass war crimes, who 
expand tyrannical powers, and who sell their 
children's birthrights to a keep a tiny, 
rapacious elite in ascendancy. I will take my 
slim reed over such brutal delusions any day.

Chris Floyd is an American writer and frequent 
contributor to Counterpunch. His blog, Empire 
Burlesque, can be found at <http://www.chris-floyd.com/>www.chris-floyd.com.




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