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<font size=3><a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/" eudora="autourl">
http://www.counterpunch.org/<br><br>
</a></font><font face="Verdana" size=2 color="#990000">April 10 / 12,
2009<br><br>
</font><h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4><b>Obama Protects
CIA Torture Memos <br><br>
<br>
</i></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5 color="#990000">
Hope Abandoned
</b></font></h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4>By CHRIS FLOYD
<br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=6 color="#990000">I</font>
<font face="Verdana" size=2>t 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.<br><br>
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 <i>get </i>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.)<br><br>
Once Panetta was confirmed in his figurehead director's role, the Obama
White House then confirmed its <i>true </i>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:<br><br>
</font>
<dl>
<dd>"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....<br><br>
<dd>"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.<br><br>
<dd>"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."<br><br>
</dl>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):<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>"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.<br><br>
<dd>"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.)<br><br>
<dd>"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."<br><br>
</dl>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.<br><br>
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?<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.)<br><br>
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."<br><br>
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.<br><br>
Chris Floyd</b> is an American writer and frequent contributor to
Counterpunch. His blog, Empire Burlesque, can be found at
<a href="http://www.chris-floyd.com/">www.chris-floyd.com</a>. <br><br>
<br><br>
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