Last week, there was one article in The Wall Street Journal that named a single source suggesting Obama would be open to continuing Bush "enhanced interrogation" policies. Right wing blogs, desperate for vindication on this issue, cited the WSJ report, or reports citing the WSJ report, and ignored contradicting stories printed in Salon and The Washington Post. (Civil liberties advocates like Glenn Greenwald were also concerned about the WSJ article, but for obviously different reasons.) Ed Morrisey concluded:
If Obama now agrees with McCain on this issue, that’s an improvement — but will the press treat Obama like they treated McCain? Will they start talking about him as though he was the reincarnation of the Marquis de Sade and Vidkun Quisling rolled up into one person? The MoveOn/Code Pink fringe certainly will, especially after his reversal on FISA reform this summer, on which the media largely gave him a pass.
I suspect they will give him a pass on this occasion, too. And that will speak volumes about their dishonest and vitriolic attacks on McCain in February, smearing his honor for partisan political purposes.
Sure, we're talking about torture here -- but Morrisey's having a partisan pity party over whether or not the media will give Obama a "pass" on the issue. Meanwhile the very same article Morrisey cites contains a quote from non-anonymous Obama adviser John Brennan saying “[Obama] [believes] torture not be allowed in any form or fashion in any part of the federal government, and he would make sure that was the case,” and “whether the Army field manual is comprehensive enough to cover all those tactics and techniques, that’s something I think he’d look to his national security advisers for,” but Morrisey gives more weight to "media reports" that "have raised questions." He ignores entirely any information in the article that suggests Obama might not actually be coming around to the Republican position on torture, for the purpose of arguing that the press treats conservatives unfairly.
If the WSJ report is correct, and Obama won't overhaul said policies, it's not an "improvement," it's a serious blow to our international credibility. It would completely destroy our ability to try GITMO detainees in any non-kangaroo court system, and it would mean that we would continue to rely on compromised intelligence. But it's not surprising to see people who support torture as policy hoping that Obama would come around to their point of view, nor is it surprising to watch them ignore reports the contrary -- they're so desperate for peer and authoritative validation of what is an unquestionably immoral act that they'll cling to any news that contains that possibility. Even if Obama did support torture, that wouldn't be any kind of vindication -- it would simply mean that he is possessing of the same kind of twisted reasoning as so many others in Washington. It wouldn't reflect well on supporters of torture -- nothing can do that -- it would simply make Obama a hypocrite.
Meanwhile, on 60 Minutes, Obama told Steve Kroft:
I have said repeatedly that I intend to close Guantanamo, and I will follow through on that. I have said repeatedly that America doesn't torture. And I'm gonna make sure that we don't torture. Those are part and parcel of an effort to regain America's moral stature in the world.
Now we've heard "we don't torture" from the man currently in office. So this isn't a matter of trust, it's a matter of accountability. This isn't a matter of just saying "we don't torture" as Bush has done so many times before, it's about Obama actually doing something once he gets in office to make sure it doesn't continue to happen. Certainly if Obama wants to close GITMO and try detainees in the civilian court system, he can't actually make use of evidence obtained through torture.
It's worth maintaining a healthy skepticism of Obama's intentions until he is able to act decisively on the subject, but given the circumstances, the public pronouncements, and the reporting done by everyone except the WSJ, I'm feeling a cautious optimism about Obama's intentions to end Bush Administration policy on torture once he takes office.
--A. Serwer
