Feb 24- President Obama speaking about the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay said “I can stand here tonight and say without exception or equivocation that the United States of America does not torture.”

http://www.truveo.com/Obama-US…../369341431

Not gonna work, Obama. If we’re a nation of laws, then we cannot let those who have broken the laws to go unpunished. That’s not retribution. That’s what “nation of laws” means.

The United States is a nation of laws. My Administration will always act in accordance with those laws, and with an unshakeable commitment to our ideals. That is why we have released these memos, and that is why we have taken steps to ensure that the actions described within them never take place again.

Thanks, EW, for another great piece of work. As for your ending quote, the President has a duty to do more than “follow” the law; through the DOJ, he has an obligation to enforce the law, blindly, without fear or favor, on all fronts. Selective enforcement violates the rule of law.

Selective enforcement was a Bush Administration hallmark. Is it also what Obama wants to be remembered for?

Bob in HI

The Honor of Our Entire United States is on the line now. Everything Obama says he, and We, stand for has been pushed into the betting pool in a bold attempt to get back what Bush Stupidly, Hatefully, Recklessly threw away for US.

These Torture Memos are Not Legal Documents At All – they are Political Propaganda written After The Fact to Cover-Up War Crimes ordered by Bush and given The Sophist’s Veneer of ‘legality’ by Yoo, Bybee, Bradbury and Rizzo.

The more the Legal Community, Constitutional Scholars, Judges and Lawyers look at these Monsterous Constructions – that Green-Light Cruel and Unusual, Depraved and Indifferent, Sadistic and Pathological Treatment of other Human Beings under Bush’s Complete Control – the Clearer it will become that the White House was occupied for eight years by a Severely Flawed but Calculatingly Evil Tyrant.

For the Innocent who got rounded-up and tagged as ‘Enemy Combatants’ – there was No Way Out – they were ‘Enemy Combatants’ because Bush said they were – ‘deserving’ of being put into the ’system’ and kept there – because he said so. There doesn’t appear to have been an appeal process.

That Bush was Out of Control explains Goldsmith’s comment that ‘everyone was concerned about personal liability’ when he began reviewing Yoo’s work. Everyone knew Bush was the problem, but Bush and his Policy-makers had the Power.

This wasn’t a Rogue Interrogation Program discovered after its establishment. This was a consciously desired systematic course of brutality – Built By Bush – step by step.

Bush designed-in the Plausible Deniability so that the combination of his Power as the President of the United States, acting as the Above the Law UE, with the Rigged Stamps of Approval from Yoo, Bybee, Bradbury and Rizzo proved to be enough to cloud even the judgement of People with good consciences – exactly as he intended.

It would be wrong to include the rank-and-file members of the CIA, even those who were ‘in the system’ itself, in the same category as Bush and his Policy Henchpeople. Time and investigations, imvho, will show that the CIA is actually Full of People just like you and I – good people with good consciences, who were duped into doing Bush’s bidding.

Will it turn out that there were ‘bad apples’ going way over the line? Absolutely, but they will be the exception and not the rule. Imvho, their peers will correct any issues within their ranks.

The same cannot be said for Bush and his Torture Policy Team, including his boot-licking enablement ‘lawyers’ – they are Clearly All Bad Apples of the Most Heinous Kind. We’re talking about Consciously Gaming the Rule of Law to the point of making a mockery of Law itself – where Unrestrained Power is the ‘Law’ for the powerless.

So, I say let the rank-and-file sort themselves out, while We focus on skillfully pulling-in the Big Fish.

Obama still wants to protect what shouldn’t be protected. He’s trying to steer a middle-of-the-road course where there is no middle: we either follow the law or we don’t. But I think that means he can be pressured to move in the right direction.

Whose law? When and how? As someone else has pointed out…there is no rule of law when laws are selectively enforced only when it is to the advantage of tortures. Article 2 of Geneva is very clear…there is no excuse, none, for torturing anyone who falls under the jurisdiction of a signatory…under any circumstance. There are no excuses under Geneva. But apparently, in America’s failing democracy, there are excuses aplenty for ignoring the laws…

My respect for Obama, the Congress, and the Federal Government just dropped another notch…or two.

I don’t know whay he can’t unloose the furies and be done with this nightmare. I don’t know what he thinks will happen if he ends this monstrous rule of terror.

He knows.

I don’t think he’s afraid. I think he has some kind of totally opaque calculus. I think he wants the evil to end without his hands touching the levers to make it so.

Political telekinesis.

The country must cry out for what is right. His games count in our outrage. Otherwise there will be no change.

And that way, he will disarm the right-wing nutjobs in the Senate and House. And they’ll stop calling him a traitor.

And monkeys will fly out of my pants.

To date:

1. Warrantless wiretapping
2. Legal immunity for telecoms
3. Continuing the rendition of “enemy” prisoners to foreign countries
4. Prisoners (Bagram’s military prison) have NO rights
5. STATE SECRETS

Obama DOES NOT RESPECT of “believe in” the rule of law. How many times does HE have to make that painfully clear?