The Fight over the Bush Administrations' Terror Policies

With the high-stakes speeches this morning from President Barack Obama and former Vice President Dick Cheney (see above and below), the United States is beginning to get what Obama has long said he wanted to avoid: rehashing the past. Today, Cheney's speech tried to defend the actions taken during his time in office, saying they protected Americans from further attack, and Obama gave a blistering attack on those actions, noting that traditionally Americans closed down torture chambers around the world.


Both views will likely be analyzed and spun ad nauseum in the next couple weeks. But it's really just a continuation of a long-running battle, super-charged by critics from the Right who believe the Obama administration has weakened our anti-terror protections and critics from the Left who believe Obama has backtracked on pledges to end inhumane practices.

Some of those latter people recently met with President Obama to talk about his plans for tribunals for alleged terrorists and other actions that have alarmed human rights groups, Newsweek's Michael Isikoff reports. Anthony Romero, head of the American Civil Liberties Union, left the meeting feeling impressed with the president's command of the issues but disappointed in his policy decisions. Romero has been a vocal proponent of prosecuting leading figures in the Bush administration over torture allegations, as he argued in his recent Commonwealth Club discussion.

Another participant in the meeting, Vincent Warren (photo at right), executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, is reported by RebelReports as having commented, "I came out of the meeting deeply disappointed in the direction that the administration is taking ... I don’t see meaningful differences between these detention policies and those erected by President Bush."

Whether that comment will cheer conservative critics of Obama is unclear, but people on all sides of this issue can hear more from Warren when he speaks at The Commonwealth Club tonight. The title of his speech couldn't be more clear: "Neutralizing the Bush Legacy."

Torture Touches Everybody

Torture allegations may be a defining accusation of the Bush administration by history's standard, but that does not mean it cannot plague Democrats, too, as U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is finding out and as the president is working to avoid. For a nation starting to come to terms with "enhanced interrogation techniques" and possible new photos of prisoner humiliation and mistreatment and the whole issue of torture and who's responsible, this is a time where some people are asking, At what point does the new government's cautious approach and the American people's earlier disinterest make it complicit in allowing torture to have occurred in the first place?

Just this week, Michael Kinsley wrote an opinion piece in the Washington Post charging Americans with collusion in the awful deeds: "If you're going to punish people for condoning torture, you'd better include the American citizenry itself." Salon's Gary Kamiya similarly wrote, "How would these people react to an investigation of those Bush officials who planned and authorized the very deeds that they themselves supported?"

It may seem a tenuous argument at best to charge 56 million voters with complicity when they did not choose to re-elect George W. Bush in 2004 based solely on whether or not he approved waterboarding. But it might help to note that these facts were known before Americans went to the polls. Jacob Weisberg, in an article for Newsweek, lays out what we knew earlier than 2004. Various media outlets had already published reports of illegal extradition of suspected terrorists to CIA "black sites" in foreign countries, and knowledge of the excessive waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed along with photos from Abu Ghraib were widely written scandals.

Weisberg also does a fine job of recreating the atmosphere of fear fed by the Bush administration's warnings about the consequences of insufficient vigilence during those years. New York Times conservative columnist David Brooks remarked about it today and believes Pelosi should own up to participating in that atmosphere of uncertainty: "Why can’t she just tell the obvious truth? She was influenced by the climate of the time. In retrospect, she wishes she had raised her voice in protest." In an appearance at the Commonwealth Club of California last month, Pelosi did not mention the already simmering issues of torture.

After President Barack Obama choose this week to withhold the release of new photos of detainee abuse of terrorist suspects (taken as early as 2004), this issue looms as an issue for which Obama has taken ownership. In so doing, he raised the ire of the ACLU. The president's rationale of protecting the troops and avoiding to inflame the anger of the Muslim world is similar to the policy of the previous administration.

Today, Pelosi publicly charged the CIA and the Bush administration for misleading her about waterboarding, attempting to deflect Republican claims this week that she knew about the situation. "To the contrary ... we were told explicitly that waterboarding was not being used," CBS quotes her as telling reporters today in reference to a 2002 briefing she had with CIA officials.

Since another terrorist attack on U.S. soil has not materialized, this is a political issue of high energy but it's difficult to discern in terms of real impact. But a lot of Americans are concerned about who knew what when, what the real story is about the United States' involvement in torture, its effectiveness or ineffectiveness, and the consequences for U.S. soldiers, America's moral standing, and the rest of the world.

ACLU chief Anthony Romero makes no mystery of where he stands, as he told The Commonwealth Club April 30th. The video is below:


By Steven Tavares

ACLU Chief: Put Bush and Cheney on Trial

In an April 30th talk at The Commonwealth Club, ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero called for the prosecution of any and all U.S. officials, including former President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, who may have knowingly authorized or engaged in important crimes.

“Should the line be drawn around the president? No … We’ve impeached one president who broke the law knowingly and intelligently broke the law. If an investigation shows that our former President Bush broke the law, then he too must be held for account. His election as president did not make him immune to prosecutions of crimes.”

Speaking candidly as the inaugural speaker of The Commonwealth Club's series on The U.S. Constitution in the 21st Century (underwritten by the Charles Geschke Family), Romero described as illegal the acts of torture authorized by high-ranking government officials, putting it in Orwellian terms by saying the victims were intentionally exposed to whatever irrational fear haunted them the most.

“What was a work of fiction [George Orwell’s 1984], for the Bush administration, became the reality," Romero added. "Bush lawyers allowed life to imitate fiction.” For these crimes, Romero and his teams of lawyers at the ACLU will continue their six-year investigation and what they hope will be prosecutions of some of the highest ranking government officials.

Romero also explained why current economic crises and international pressures may force the Obama Administration to push aside divisive issues such as gay rights and the war on terror. Romero asserted that, though the first months of Obama’s presidency have been marked by considerable change, if the threats to civil liberties are not addressed, the future of America may be in more peril than originally believed.

With Romero at the helm, the ACLU has won court victories on the Patriot Act and filed landmark litigation on the torture and abuse of detainees in U.S. custody. Most recently, the ACLU successfully challenged the Bush administration’s illegal spying program. Under Romero, the ACLU has experienced the most successful membership growth in its history and doubled the budget and national staff of the organization.

An attorney with a history of public-interest activism, Romero is the first openly gay man and the first Hispanic to serve as director of the ACLU. In 2005 Time Magazine named him one of the 25 Most Influential Hispanics and “The Champion of Civil Rights.” Born in New York City to Puerto Rican parents, Romero was the first member of his family to graduate high school. He went on to graduate from the Stanford University Law School and Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public Policy and International Affairs.

-- By The Commonwealth Club Media Relations Department