Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

K.W. Pichon of Melbourne, Florida on April 19 let Obama know in his letter where he stands on the U.S. using torture tactics to extract information, to be let off the hook:

"I have been a supporter of Barack Obama since he first came on the political scene, but if he lets the torturers and those who enabled them off the hook he will lose my support.

"The whole world is watching to see if we stand by our words and our Constitution."

Remember when the Nuremberg Trials were conducted immediately following World War Two?  We listened to the redundant rant, "I was only following orders" or words to that effect, the cowardly shifting all responsibility.

Well, it's happening all over again, right here in the U.S.A. today.

Didn't Obama conveniently suggest we should go after the architects of the torture policy.  The implication follows that those who carried out the torture policies were just following orders.  Sorry Obama, that won't wash.

Punish the people responsible is the sensible argument put forth by Martin Garbus of New York City in his April 19 letter to the New York Times:

"The editorial is correct in arguing for the Obama administration to go further.  Criminal prosecution of the lawyers who created the recently distributed Department of Justice memos is required.

"Only criminal prosecution can deter and punish the people responsible."

Aidan Moran, who holds campaigns and meetings for Amnesty International Shoreline Group of Madison, Connecticut, in his April 19 letter to the New York Times, explains succinctly why it is essential to hold all those involved in the U.S. torture scenario accountable:

"If President Obama can, with the stroke of a pen, order the closing of the Guantanamo Prison and the cessation of the Bush era torture policies, we need to ensure that those who orchestrated and sanctioned these policies are held accountable.  Otherwise, what is going to prevent the next president from reinstating them with the simple stroke of a pen?"

The day after Obama appeared before the C.I.A., gaining rounds of applause as he congratulated it for its accomplishments, public pressure prompted him to declare the architects of the torture policy should be held accountable.  He said that Attorney General Eric Holder will look into this.

But Mr. Obama, won't those who water boarded some suspected terrorists be held accountable or will the coward's cliché for abominable acts be, "I was just following orders", which did not change results as Nazis were sent to their deaths, be used as a freedom pass in the U.S.A.?

What about the doctors who stood by, taking the pulses of suspected terrorists to make sure they didn't die, because that might lead to a murder charge if outright killing of suspected terrorists ever leaked out?

Would you accept such an individual as your White House doctor?