"I take full responsibility for my own actions and for those of my administration. As angry as I may be about activities undertaken without my knowledge, I am still accountable for those activities. As disappointed as I may be in some who served me, I'm still the one who must answer to the American people for this behavior " A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not."
If you read the Red Cross report and the Senate Armed Services Committee report, I believe you will reach a similar conclusion about your own record on prisoner treatment. You may not have intended to torture people, but you did; you may have wanted to protect the country within the law, but that admirable desire too easily slid into your approval of actions that are indefensible, illegal, and deeply damaging to America's reputation and honor. You were let down, as Reagan was. He took responsibility. You need to as well.
Demanding that you alone be held accountable and no one else be scapegoated would itself be an act of honor.
Again, remember whom you are talking to!
It would draw a line between the past and the future in the same way that Lincoln's defense of his brief suspensions of habeas corpus conceded Congress's sole right to remove this core constitutional provision, but defended his action as a necessary emergency measure because a mass rebellion � ���"had subverted the whole of the laws.� �� � You do not deserve to go down in history as the president who brought torture into the American system and refused to take responsibility for it. It is also vital that torture not become a partisan issue, that any future terror attack not become an opportunity for your party to reinstitute it or wield it as a political weapon against future presidents who are following the rule of law. After the next attack, America will need unity� ��"not a poisonous division over the issue of torture. You had that unity after 9/11. Your successors deserve the same support.
Sullivan continues in this line, asking someone he clearly considers above the law to apologize for having acted accordingly.
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