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President Obama Vs DNI Dennis Blair

By Big Tent Democrat

UPDATE - Blair sounds like a problem to me.

Sandy Levinson noted that President Obama said to the CIA yesterday that:

What makes the United States special and what makes you special is precisely the fact that we are willing to uphold our values and our ideals even when it’s hard, not just when it’s easy, even when we are afraid and under threat, not just when its expedient to do so....

However, President Obama's Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair said upon the release of the torture memos:

Dennis C. Blair, the director of national intelligence, cautioned that the memos were written at a time when C.I.A. officers were frantically working to prevent a repeat of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. “Those methods, read on a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009, appear graphic and disturbing,” said Mr. Blair in a written statement. “But we will absolutely defend those who relied on these memos.”

(Emphasis supplied.) Blair seems to contradict President Obama in my view. This dissonance from the Obama Administration, particularly from people like Blair, Panetta and Brennan, makes it difficult to imagine a true repudiation of torture by the United States.

On how to "uphold our values," Levinson observed:

I dearly hope [Obama] means it, but I must say I'm not optimistic. "Upholding our values" means that people are truly held accountable, and the Administration seems extraordinarily reluctant to do that. As it happens, I am ambivalent about criminal prosecution, as much as I would love to s[ee] a number of high-level Bushies go to prison. But I have come to the conclusion that the better response would be a blanket amnesty followed by the setting up of a high-powered "truth commission," with full-scale subpoena power, that would force everyone to testify, under oath, about the gestation of the policy, its implementation, and, very importantly, the known consequences.

I do not disagree. I am skeptical that the impeachment of Jay Bybee and a few prosecutions will really signal bringing to account the idea of the United States as a torturing state. After all, the prosecution of Lyndie England did nothing in terms of bringing the US to account for Abu Ghraib.

I am strongly of the view that only a Truth Commission that looks at how torture came to be the policy of the United States will be effective in bringing accountability to the United States for its torture policies.

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on April 21, 2009 (boomark / email).