Message to President Obama

For the first time I used the White House comment form to send a message to the President. Obama is also the first US President whom I thought might possibly listen. Here is what I said:

According to the NY TImes: "in a statement to employees, the agency’s director, Leon E. Panetta, said agency officers who worked in the program “should not be investigated, let alone punished” because the Justice Department under President George W. Bush had declared their actions legal." (Scott Shane, "C.I.A. to Close Secret Prisons, Scenes of Harsh Interrogations", Apr 9, 2009)

This sounds like a variant on the merely-following-orders argument that the US rejected at the Nuremberg trials after the 2nd World War. I hope the Obama administration will make it clear that these forms of torture as part of an investigation are and *always* have been illegal under US law and treaty obligations.

Granting an amnesty to those who broke the law may be appropriate. Failing to investigate who broke the law and what they did seems like a choice that could undermine both the law and US credibility about the use of torture in the future.

I hope you will reconsider Mr. Panetta's approach

I doubt whether the comment will have much effect, but I hope that many others will write in to say that merely ignoring torture is not acceptable.

Those wanting to contact the White House can do so via this link: http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/.