PRESIDENT OBAMA MUST READ ARGUEWITHMYDAD.COM

Is it just a coincidence that the day after I wrote that President Obama must take a stand against torture and those who ordered it, he announces that he is in favor of investigations to discover the truth? I think not. The only rationale answer is that President Obama is reading this site and many other progressive blog sites and he has heard the call for the truth.

I realize that he didn’t order investigations, but he put his political seal on them by announcing in public that Attorney General Holder is responsible to make sure that our laws have not been broken. In this Think Progress article, http://thinkprogress.org/2009/04/21/obama-holder-prosecutions/, President Obama is quoted as saying, “With respect to those who formulated those legal decisions, I would say that is going to be more of a decision for the Attorney General within the parameters of various laws, and I don’t want to prejudge that. ” In that very same article, the testimony that then Attorney General nominee, Eric Holder, gave to Senator Patrick Leahy at his confirmation hearing went as follows:

“Obama is effectively putting the ball in Holder’s court. Recall, during his Senate confirmation hearing, Holder said that the President cannot “immunize” torture and must enforce the law in all cases:LEAHY: Do you believe that the president of the United States has authority to exercise a commander-in-chief override and immunize acts of torture? I ask that because we did not get a satisfactory answer from Former Attorney General Gonzales on that. HOLDER: Mr. Chairman, no one is above the law. The president has a constitutional obligation to faithfully execute the laws of the United States. There are obligations that we have as a result of treaties that we have signed — obligations, obviously, in the Constitution. Where Congress has passed a law, it is the obligation of the president, or the commander-in-chief, to follow those laws. [...]If one looks at the various statutes that have been passed, it is my belief that the president does not have the power that you’ve indicated.”

Now all we have to do is make sure Attorney General Holder is also reading arguewithmydad.com and the other progressive blogs that have been holding President Obama’s feet to the the political fire and convince him that it is time to name an independent prosecutor and honor his word. This is a small victory in the battle for justice to any and all who ordered and authorized torture in our name. The United States of America has never stood for torture until the George W. Bush regime. Maybe now, the rule of law will mean something to Bush and Cheney and the rest of their cabal.

3 Responses to “ PRESIDENT OBAMA MUST READ ARGUEWITHMYDAD.COM ”

Qman says:

April 22, 2009 at 6:47 am

“My Dad”, before you get too excited about this issue being turned over Eric Holder, take a look at a statement he made on CNN in 2002:

“One of the things we clearly want to do with these prisoners is to have an ability to interrogate them and find out what their future plans might be, where other cells are located; under the Geneva Convention that you are really limited in the amount of information that you can elicit from people.”

“It seems to me that given the way in which they have conducted themselves, however, that they are not, in fact, people entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention. They are not prisoners of war. If, for instance, Mohamed Atta had survived the attack on the World Trade Center, would we now be calling him a prisoner of war? I think not. Should Zacarias Moussaoui be called a prisoner of war? Again, I think not.”

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NzFjZWNkZDAyZTE2MTNmZjBkOWQwYjQ4NmE5ZjEwODU=

Will the real Eric Holder please stand up.

admin says:

April 22, 2009 at 6:42 pm

Qman,
It is good to hear from you. I would expect the National Review to print the entire interview or produce the video so you could listen to the entire statement. If you did listen to the entire video you would find out that Holder was talking about Colin Powell’s request that the detainees should be accorded protection under the Geneva convention. He didn’t agree with Powell’s definition, but he did agree that they should be dealt with under those standards so that our military wasn’t subjected to the same torture tactics. You would think that the National Review wouldn’t take things out of context, but I guess even right wing publications can get it wrong. Have you seen the Senate Armed Services Committee report on the origins of torture techniques that were used in Abu Ghraib? It seems that the Bush regime was lying when they blamed “a few bad apples”. It was actually the Bush officials that initiated those horrible actions. Can you imagine my surprise when I learned that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Rummy all lied to me? I think Cheney and others should be getting their affairs together and it might be a good idea that they start interviewing defense attorneys. They are going to need them.
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