The Real Meaning of Presidential

Some presidents are certainly more hands on than others. In reading through the latest torture memos, it is sickening to read the level of detail that was included in the Office of Legal Counsel analysis of what constituted torture, in the case of the August 2002 memo, of one specific individual.

By hijacking the Office of Legal Counsel, intended to provide neutral and dispassionate advice to the executive branch, Bush has blood on his hands now, too.

Last night I saw Mary Stuart, a revived translation of Frederick Schiller's original, about the prolonged incarceration and eventual beheading of Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots, at the hand of her Protestant cousin Queen Elizabeth I. After years of being held in prison, isolated from her people and her religion, Mary is still perceived as an enemy by her cousin. Mary was implicated in the death of her last husband, she had three, and in several plots to overthrow Elizabeth and restore Catholicism to England. Elizabeth swears out a warrant for her death and when it is carried out, and her cousin, after nearly twenty years is freed from the horrors of her imprisonment, Elizabeth recants and arrests her own advisers for releasing the warrant that led to Mary's death.

These torture memos were not intended to reach the public although they were intended to provide cover to the CIA, military, private contractors, and eventually the White House Principals. The Bush administration, working most probably through Dick Cheney and David Addington, authorized these memos so that if ever there was an investigation into the use of torture on "war on terror" detainees, they could claim that they were operating under legal counsel. Now that the memos have been released, we know that first, some of the memos were written after the torture began, and second, that the factual narratives contained in the memos is blatantly false, and was known to be false at the time of the writing. Like a recalcitrant, arrogant Elizabeth, the Bush Principals cannot claim innocence, they cannot claim they were acting in the best interests of their country. They subordinated and perverted the rule of law, and got rich at the same time.

President Obama can't walk away from prosecuting those responsible for bringing the United States so close to its own destruction. This isn't a matter of morale. This is a matter of compliance with international treaties that prohibit cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. This is a matter of the US historical stand against torture. This is about honoring those men and women who risked everything and said NO, when they learned what was happening in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.

We have no choice but to investigate and truly close this horrendous chapter in our history.

Read through some samplings on what other folks are saying about the torture memos.