Furthermore - Regarding Obama's Cowardly Stance on Admitted Torture

Said Obama:

With respect to the larger point of the RDI report itself, even before I came into office I was very clear that in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 we did some things that were wrong. We did a whole lot of things that were right, but we tortured some folks. We did some things that were contrary to our values.

I understand why it happened. I think it's important when we look back to recall how afraid people were after the Twin Towers fell and the Pentagon had been hit and the plane in Pennsylvania had fallen, and people did not know whether more attacks were imminent, and there was enormous pressure on our law enforcement and our national security teams to try to deal with this. And it's important for us not to feel too sanctimonious in retrospect about the tough job that those folks had. And a lot of those folks were working hard under enormous pressure and are real patriots.

Let's compare that to the text of the Convention Against Torture:

No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.

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[Torture] is illegal under United States law. [...] Its only effective uses are thoroughly totalitarian: to intimidate, punish, and extract false confessions.

President Obama's on-the-one-hand-but-on-the-other shtick amounts to nothing but vile political cowardice when applied to torture. It's also, unsurprisingly, grossly misleading. The Bush torture program was not some panicked misstep in the weeks after 9/11; it was a coordinated effort continued up through 2004 at least, and probably beyond.

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And even if it weren't, what a pathetic excuse 9/11 makes. There is no "unless you are really scared" carve-out in the Convention.

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All this makes that word "sanctimonious" absolutely infuriating. These "patriots" did not have "tough jobs," Mr. President; they committed war crimes on orders from practically the entire top echelon of the previous presidential administration. They violated the United States Constitution [and] grievously harmed the security of the nation.

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But since his administration has refused to prosecute those war crimes, it seems clear that Obama has been made thoroughly complicit in them.

  The Week: Ryan Cooper