Panetta did not say when the secret prisons—which likely exist in Poland, Romania, Jordan, Morocco and Thailand, among other places—would be closed, while claiming that the CIA has not sent any people to the black sites since he took over the CIA’s helm in February.
But since their locations remain classified, it is impossible for third parties, including the ICRC, to investigate Panetta’s assertion that there are currently no suspects in the prisons.
At the same time, Panetta declared that the CIA “retains the authority to detain individuals on a short-term transitory basis.” He did not explain on what evidence a suspect could be detained. Moreover, the reference to “short-term and transitory” imprisonment deliberately leaves open the door for extraordinary rendition, whereby those abducted in the “war on terror” are moved, without access to any legal system, to third countries to be tortured there. Panetta and other administration officials have all but acknowledged that this practice will continue.
Nor does the closure affect the large prison camps in Iraq and Afghanistan where the US military holds thousands of captives and where some of the worst examples of abuse have taken place.
Obama’s protection of Bush administration officials and his continuation of its basic policies—whatever the change in rhetoric and tone—shows that these illegal and anti-democratic methods are the consensus policies of the US ruling elite.
The liberal and “left” groups that continue to claim that Obama can be pressured into defending democratic rights and enacting social reforms are only serving to cover up Washington’s crimes.
It is not only a matter of justice that those who carried out torture be brought to justice. It is also a political necessity. Unless the crimes of the CIA and military are brought to light, the US ruling elite will eventually use these methods against its political opponents at home as well as abroad.
The inability and refusal of any section of the US political and media establishment to forthrightly oppose torture and the panoply of related police-state methods openly employed in the Bush years testifies to the political and moral collapse of American democracy and the demise of American liberalism.
The only social force that can put an end to such crimes and defend democratic rights is the working class, which must exert its independent political and social interests in a struggle against both parties of the corporate-financial elite and the capitalist system they defend. This struggle must include the demand for a full and public investigation into the crimes of the Bush administration and the criminal prosecution of all those, beginning with Bush himself, who authorized torture, illegal detention, abductions and similar violations of international law.
The author also recommends:
US liberal pundits debate the value of torture, 10 November 2001.
Editor’s Note: This is a highly recommended article written by David Walsh which presents an unsettling background to the MSM’s perverse infatuation with torture. For example, Walsh cites an opinion piece in the October 23 Wall Street Journal in which right wing historian Jay Winik reported on the "successful" torture of an alleged terrorist plotter in the Philippines in 1995!
1 | 2
