The books aren’t closed on Bush’s torture policy

„President Obama’s policy toward the Bush administration’s use of torture has been one of splitting the difference — Obama ordered an end to further torture but largely avoided investigating, let alone prosecuting, what Bush administration officials had done. For the Obama administration, the calculation was political: Stopping ongoing criminality by U.S. officials was non-negotiable, but delving into the criminality of his predecessor was deemed too costly. Obama had other priorities — fixing a devastated economy, enacting health-care reform — so dredging up the crimes of the previous administration was seen as too distracting and too antagonistic an enterprise when Republican votes were needed.

So the president adopted the mantra that he would »look forward and not backwards«. Under Obama’s watch, U.S. interrogators would not torture suspects or send them abroad for others to torture. There would be no more twisted legal justifications for torture, no more cheap euphemisms such as »enhanced interrogation techniques.« But there would also be no investigations into this ugly chapter of American history.

The sole exception was a narrow investigation entrusted to special counsel John Durham, which examined interrogators whose cruelty had exceeded authorized interrogation techniques. That inquiry ended last month with a decision to investigate two deaths of terrorism suspects in CIA custody but not some 100 other cases of alleged abuse. The crux of the problem, however, was never excessive torture; it was authorized torture. Khalid Sheik Mohammed, for example, was ordered subjected to »waterboarding« — a form of mock execution by drowning — 183 times. That was the issue — not that some freelancing interrogator might have added a 184th. Obama’s deliberate suppression of this shameful past is wrong. It reflects bad policy, a dereliction of presidential responsibilities and a continuing disregard for international law.”