President Obama come’s clean on torture. America did it.
President Obama in a very solemn tone said what everyone on the planet knows. America engaged in torture. President Obama was referring to the Senate Intelligence Committee report that is to be released soon while he was speaking. Following is what the President said. One wonders what will be Dick Chaney’s reaction.
“Even before I came into office I was very clear,” President Obama said. “In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, we did some things that were wrong. We did a whole lot of things that were right. But, we tortured some folks.
We did some things that were contrary to our values. I understand why it happened. I think it’s important when we look back to recall how afraid people were after the Twin Towers fell. The Pentagon had been hit. And the plane in Pennsylvania had fallen. And people did not know whether more attacks were eminent. And there was enormous pressure on our law enforcement, our national security teams to try to deal with this.
And it is important for us not to feel too sanctimonious in retrospect about the tough jobs that those folks had. A lot of those folks were working hard under enormous pressure and are real patriots.
But having said all that, we did some things that were wrong. And that’s what that report reflects. And that’s the reason why after I took office one of the first things I did was to ban some of the extraordinary interrogation techniques that are the subject of that report.
My hope is that this report reminds us once again that the character of our country has to be measured in part, not by what we do when things are easy but what we do when things are hard. And when we engage in some of these enhanced interrogation techniques, techniques that I believe, and I think any fair minded person would believe were torture, we crossed the line. And that needs to be understood and accepted. And we have to as a country take responsibility for that so that hopefully we don’t do it again in the future.”