On Second Thought, Torture Looks Pretty Good to Him

When the Bush administration revealed in 2005 that it was secretly interpreting a treaty ban on “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment” as not applying to C.I.A. and military prisons overseas, Barack Obama, then a newly elected Democratic senator from Illinois, joined in a bipartisan protest.

[...]

But the Obama administration has never officially declared its position on the treaty, and now, President Obama’s legal team is debating whether to back away from his earlier view. It is considering reaffirming the Bush administration’s position that the treaty imposes no legal obligation on the United States to bar cruelty outside its borders.

  NYT

According to anonymous officials.

The administration must decide on its stance on the treaty by next month, when it sends a delegation to Geneva to appear before the Committee Against Torture, a United Nations panel that monitors compliance with the treaty.

Maybe Obama will change his mind about sending a delegation, too.

[M]ilitary and intelligence lawyers are said to oppose accepting that the treaty imposes legal obligations on the United States’ actions abroad. They say they need more time to study whether it would have operational impacts.

I can only imagine that means to study whether they can claim some loophole if they’re caught.

[In Mr. Obama’s first term, his top State Department lawyer, Harold H.] Koh argued that both treaties protected prisoners in American custody or control anywhere. In a 90-page memo he signed in 2013, before leaving the State Department to return to teaching at Yale Law School, he declared, “In my legal opinion, it is not legally available to policy makers to claim” that the torture treaty has no application abroad.

[...]

Both treaties contain phrases that make it ambiguous whether they apply to American-run prisons on foreign territory. For example, the provision barring cruelty that falls short of torture applies to a state’s conduct “in any territory under its jurisdiction.”

[...]

In March, the Obama administration rejected Mr. Koh’s view about the Bill of Rights-style accord, telling the United Nations that the United States still believed that it applied only on domestic soil.

What kind of sick people would argue that torture is okay as long as it’s not done on their own soil? Who would even imagine that a treaty banning torture would have been drawn up with such a clause? Aside from government lawyers  and scum-sucking politicians, I mean.

That disclosure prompted Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, to propose legislation prohibiting cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment anywhere. After Congress enacted it, President George W. Bush issued a signing statement claiming that his powers as commander in chief overrode the statute, leaving a cloud over the law until Mr. Obama ordered strict compliance with it.

And now, he’s rethinking that.

And considering his recent proposition that we don't need to concern ourselves about trying to avoid civilian deaths in Syria, I'm guessing he's probably already made up his mind.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.