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By Dennis Loo 

The following posting by Will Bunch at the Philadelphia Daily News' website on April 14, 2008 is worth looking at carefully, especially for Obama's remarks about the White House's torture policies. My comments follow Bunch's posting.

Bunch's post: 

Tonight I had an opportunity to ask Barack Obama a question that is on the minds of many Americans, yet rarely rises to the surface in the great ruckus of the 2008 presidential race -- and that is whether an Obama administration would seek to prosecute officials of a former Bush administration on the revelations that they greenlighted torture, or for other potential crimes that took place in the White House.

Obama said that as president he would indeed ask his new Attorney General and his deputies to "immediately review the information that's already there" and determine if an inquiry is warranted -- but he also tread carefully on the issue, in line with his reputation for seeking to bridge the partisan divide. He worried that such a probe could be spun as "a partisan witch hunt." However, he said that equation changes if there was willful criminality, because "nobody is above the law." 

The question was inspired by a recent report by ABC News, confirmed by the Associated Press, that high-level officials including Vice President Dick Cheney and former Cabinet secretaries Colin Powell, John Ashcroft and Donald Rumsfeld, among others, met in the White House and discussed the use of waterboarding and other torture techniques on terrorism suspects. 

I mentioned the report in my question, and said "I know you've talked about reconciliation and moving on, but there's also the issue of justice, and a lot of people -- certainly around the world and certainly within this country -- feel that crimes were possibly committed" regarding torture, rendition, and illegal wiretapping. I wanted to know how whether his Justice Department "would aggressively go after and investigate whether crimes have been committed." 

Here's his answer, in its entirety: 

    What I would want to do is to have my Justice Department and my Attorney General immediately review the information that's already there and to find out are there inquiries that need to be pursued. I can't prejudge that because we don't have access to all the material right now. I think that you are right, if crimes have been committed, they should be investigated. You're also right that I would not want my first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of Republicans as a partisan witch hunt because I think we've got too many problems we've got to solve. 

    So this is an area where I would want to exercise judgment -- I would want to find out directly from my Attorney General -- having pursued, having looked at what's out there right now -- are there possibilities of genuine crimes as opposed to really bad policies. And I think it's important-- one of the things we've got to figure out in our political culture generally is distinguishing between really dumb policies and policies that rise to the level of criminal activity. You know, I often get questions about impeachment at town hall meetings and I've said that is not something I think would be fruitful to pursue because I think that impeachment is something that should be reserved for exceptional circumstances. Now, if I found out that there were high officials who knowingly, consciously broke existing laws, engaged in coverups of those crimes with knowledge forefront, then I think a basic principle of our Constitution is nobody above the law -- and I think that's roughly how I would look at it. 

The bottom line is that: Obama sent a clear signal that -- unlike impeachment, which he's ruled out and which now seems a practical impossibility -- he is at the least open to the possibility of investigating potential high crimes in the Bush White House. To many, the information that waterboarding -- which the United States has considered torture and a violation of law in the past -- was openly planned out in the seat of American government is evidence enough to at least start asking some tough questions in January 2009. 

End of Bunch's posting.  

My comments: 

1. Bunch asks for and expects too little from Obama. He wonders if Obama as President will look into whether Bush et al have committed crimes. He should be asking why Obama as a US Senator and Presidential hopeful refuses to impeach the criminal Bush gang now!
2. Bush admitted on April 11, 2008 to ABC News that he approved of the torture. The criminals have been caught red-handed and have confessed! Where then is the need for investigations?!
3. Obama continues to rule out impeachment on the grounds that impeachment is "reserved for exceptional circumstances." If launching an immoral and illegal war based on conscious lies that has caused the unnecessary deaths of between 1.1 and 1.3 million innocent Iraqis, the deaths of over 4,000 Americans, cost each and every American family to date $120,000, instituting a monstrous policy of torture, shredding the Bill of Rights and major elements of the Constitution, including the right of habeas corpus, carrying out the felonious act of violating FISA and first secretly and now openly spying on every American, savaging FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers" budget, leaving New Orleans open to disaster, and failing to come to its aid in a timely fashion are not exceptional circumstances, then what pray tell, is?
4. Obama continues to claim in relation to the Bush White House's policies that his differences with them are over their competence, rather than their criminality: "one of the things we've got to figure out in our political culture generally is distinguishing between really dumb policies and policies that rise to the level of criminal activity." Was the deliberate lie taking us into Iraq principally a question of being "dumb?" Is the main problem with torturing people daily and murdering people in custody that it is "dumb?" What does this say about Obama's values? Obama continues to play this game in part because he wants to be president and knows that the people who run the show won't stand for a candidate who calls out Bush and Cheney for crimes against humanity. He also continues to claim that his differences with Bush et al are primarily over tactics because he does in fact share overall similar objectives with the Bush cabal. You want to ask yourself: do you share those objectives too? Do you believe that it's right for the U.S. to carry out unprovoked aggression upon other countries and carry out mass murder? Is it right for the U.S. to threaten and to attack Pakistan and Iran, as Obama has stated he is for:

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) told "the Chicago Tribune on September 26, 2004, '[T]he big question is going to be, if Iran is resistant to these pressures [to stop its nuclear program], including economic sanctions, which I hope will be imposed if they do not cooperate, at what point ... if any, are we going to take military action?' "He added, '[L]aunching some missile strikes into Iran is not the optimal position for us to be in' given the ongoing war in Iraq. 'On the other hand, having a radical Muslim theocracy in possession of nuclear weapons is worse.' Obama went on to argue that military strikes on Pakistan should not be ruled out if 'violent Islamic extremists' were to 'take over'," Joshua Frank wrote January 22, 2005, for Antiwar.com.[1] (From Sourcewatch.org.)

Is this the kind of country that you want to live in, one that acts like the Godfather on a global scale?

5. If you pay close enough attention to what these candidates for president are saying, doing and not doing, there should be no surprises about what they will end up doing when one of them becomes president. If they have tolerated outrageous and obvious criminality to go on all of these years when they have had both the power to speak out about it and to stop it as public officials (if necessary, through filibuster), If they have looked the other way when tyrannical measures have been explicitly instituted before the country and the world, then why should we expect them to do something differently once they become president?
6. People need to stop grasping at straws and engaging in wishful/magical thinking. We need to wake up and smell the coffee. Bush et al are criminals and the pretenders to the throne are all complicit in crimes against humanity. This isn't mere rhetoric or based on speculation and inference. It's a palpable, inescapable fact. The only way that justice will be done - so long overdue - is if the people act as an independent political force - speak out, protest, shut down the military recruiters, step forward and urge others to declare themselves, create a different political dynamic and an entirely different political pole, wear and spread orange - the color of resistance - daily! The Bush regime has earned the people's wrath. Let's give it to them! This path, while difficult, is the only truly realistic path. The other paths are guaranteed to fail as they are nothing but will o" the wisps. The basis for actions by the people, on the basis of the moral high ground, to catch fire is powerfully present. We have seen inklings of this in, for example, the February Berkeley protests against the Marine Recruiters. But this path of the people must be taken up for its potential to be realized:

"Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too" Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now." - Goethe 

      It's up to each of us to make an individual decision to act.  

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