You should know you're on the wrong track when even the business press starts attacking from the left:
Candidate Obama declares he abhors torture and deplores what went on in Gitmo and in secret detention centres around the world, but President Obama decides that the Camp may have to remain open for another year, as he doesn’t seem to know what to do with the prisoners. The right thing to do would have been to send a plane to Guantánamo Bay Naval Base on the day of his inauguration, to move all the prisoners to the USA.
President Obama, the whole world is watching...and even if there is bi-partisan support for torture in the US, the rest of the liberal-democratic world, from the left of the political spectrum to the right (Willem Buiter, quoted above, comes from the European centre) sees all of America continue to tarnish itself even after the "8 year mistake" has been "erased".
Remember this is not Pravda, Humanité or the People's Daily asking for prosecution of Bush-Cheney officials. It's the Financial Times:
President Obama then also decides not to prosecute those who committed the crimes of torture or abuse of prisoners or were responsible for these crimes...
He is quite wrong...If among the guilty parties are CIA agents and former vice-president Dick Cheney, then so be it.
American used to be a country of laws. It used to lecture other countries, especially left-wing regimes it did not agree with (see Chavez, Morales and co.) on the importance of the Rule of Law.
Where is the rule of law today?
Harry Reid...explained he did not want these terrorists released in the US...President Obama has said: "There may be a number of people who cannot be prosecuted for past crimes, in some cases because evidence may be tainted, but who nonetheless pose a threat to the security of the United State...
...The right and legal thing to do would be to take all the prisoners to the US, charge those who can be charged and release those who cannot be charged. Those who can be sent back to their countries of origin without endangering their safety can be sent back. The rest should be allowed to stay in the US (the principle in question is: ‘you break it, you own it’). Those charged then should be tried in a proper US court, not one of the kangaroo quasi-military tribunals created by Bush and Cheney. If convicted, they should serve their time, or pay with their lives, as the case may be. If acquitted they should be released. That is the rule of law. It is also the right and moral thing to do.
There it is again. Rule of law. I am told that most Senators and indeed President Obama are lawyers by training. Surely this cannot be a foreign concept to them?
...Fear is a poor guide to policy. It caused the US to launch an unnecessary second war against Iraq and it led its leaders to compromise the most important principles on which the country was founded. The fear-induced response of the US authorities to the murderous outrages perpetrated by Al-Queda has turned out to be a much more serious threat to what is best about the US than Al-Queda itself. Bush, Cheney and now also Obama and Reid represent a greater threat to my liberty and fundamental rights as a citizen and a human being than Osama bin Laden and his mindless murderers.
Like Buiter, I too am a dual EU/US citizen, and needless to say, after the change we believed in and indeed voted for was ushered in, I share his disappointment and outrage.
The US president and the majority leader in the US Senate have torn up the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, supposedly in the interest of the nation’s security and to preserve the safety of its people. I hope the blind fear that has de-activated the moral antennae of the American people will subside to the point that a majority will join me in loudly and clearly telling the country’s leadership that its depredations against the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are not in our name.
I hope so too. But, I'm not holding my breath.