Barack Obama reacts to the reprehensible news broken by the New York Times.
Barack Obama is the first Presidential candidate out of the gate with a statement slamming the Bush administration over today's big New York Times story on the administration's secret authorization of torture:
"The secret authorization of brutal interrogations is an outrageous betrayal of our core values, and a grave danger to our security. We must do whatever it takes to track down and capture or kill terrorists, but torture is not a part of the answer -- it is a fundamental part of the problem with this administration's approach.
This is on the heels of Obama's statement about the use of private security firms (including Blackwater) yesterday.
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, in Iowa on Wednesday, castigated the Bush administration's use of private security contractors in Iraq and unveiled an accountability proposal to keep such companies in check.
Obama, a U.S. senator from Illinois, spoke to more than 500 people on the University of Iowa campus. He took aim at Blackwater USA, a company under scrutiny in connection with allegations that private security guards killed Iraqi civilians.
"We're not going to win fights when we outsource critical missions to unaccountable contractors who show reckless disregard for Iraqi life," Obama said, as the audience cheered. "The Bush administration's approach to handling this situation is inaction at best, and collusion to cover up the incident at worst. This is completely unacceptable, although, unfortunately, it's typical."
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He also called for making U.S. laws applicable to the private security forces and creating a special unit of the FBI to investigate abuses by contractors.
Obama's statement today contrasted his goals with the Cheneyist contempt for the Geneva Convention, the Constitution, and basic human values currently guiding American policy.
"Torture is how you create enemies, not how you defeat them. Torture is how you get bad information, not good intelligence. Torture is how you set back America's standing in the world, not how you strengthen it. It's time to tell the world that America rejects torture without exception or equivocation. It's time to stop telling the American people one thing in public while doing something else in the shadows. No more secret authorization of methods like simulated drowning.
"When I am president America will once again be the country that stands up to these deplorable tactics. When I am president we won't work in secret to avoid honoring our laws and Constitution, we will be straight with the American people and true to our values."
How pathetic is it that a stark definition of change in electoral politics is opposition to the barbaric tactics Bush himself said were what made Saddam Hussein a brutal madman. Official Republican policy (not just Bush and Cheney, but pretty much every serious contender for the Republican nomination save McCain) is to institutionalize torture and (as Mitt Romney said) double the size of Gitmo, with more secrecy, more human rights abuses, and more of an abandonment of the principles this nation was founded upon.
No wonder Ron Paul raised $5 million last quarter. Even many Republican voters of the small government variety are disgusted with the jackbooted turn their party has taken. Obama's words help define the needed contrast between what the Republican party has become and basic American values, and I imagine the Democratic field will continue to express not only dismay at what has occurred in our name, but a clear alternative if Americans vote for Democrats and against the continuation of our Saddam-like policies.