You are here : Home » On the Campaign Trail Home

 Subscribe to RSS

« Introducing Obama bin Laden... | Main | Fetch Me An Abacus »

16 April 2008

Obama would 'immediately review' torture crimes

By Leonard Doyle

Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Daily News has an important interview with Barack Obama in which he asked whether an Obama administration would seek to prosecute Bush administration officials for their role in encouraging torture. The questions were prompted by a recent report by ABC News that high-level White House officials including Vice President Dick Cheney and former Cabinet secretaries Colin Powell, John Ashcroft and Donald Rumsfeld, met in the White House to discuss waterboarding and other torture techniques on suspects.

To his credit Obama said that as president he would indeed ask his Attorney General to "immediately review the information that's already there" and determine if an inquiry is warranted - but he also worried that such an investigation could be turned into "a partisan witch hunt". If willful criminality is found, all bets are off Obama said, because "nobody is above the law".

There will of course be no War Crimes charges against George Bush and his cronies, but there could be an Obama version of a "truth Commission" to discover exactly how America got into its worst and most shameful foreign entanglement in 100 years.

Here is Obama's 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 betyween 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.

Comments

Verify your Comment

Previewing your Comment

This is only a preview. Your comment has not yet been posted.

Working...
Your comment could not be posted. Error type:
Your comment has been posted. Post another comment

The letters and numbers you entered did not match the image. Please try again.

As a final step before posting your comment, enter the letters and numbers you see in the image below. This prevents automated programs from posting comments.

Having trouble reading this image? View an alternate.

Working...

Post a comment