(instead of bluntly characterizing them as torture and discontinuing them) to qualify as "fully embracing" them?

That would seem to be some sort of logical prerequisite to the use of the term.

[edited to add - I hope I'm not incorrectly associating your response with the topic of the original post, ie "torture state/ticking time bomb"]

the policies? Thanks to the continued "state secrets" cloak of secrecy, we'd never know.

if your stated policy is drastically out of keeping with your secret actions you're certainly increasing the risk of an absolutely enormous shitstorm (and greatly increasing the damage) in the event of an ethically-motivated leak.

I think the reason some of the Bush revelations made less of a splash than they might have in another time and place is that anybody with the brains to pour piss out of a boot was already dead certain it was being done by that time.

It's not like anyone really expected any better of them.

... then IMHO this qualifies as fully embracing them. After all it is the legal framework of injustice that matters most.

But regardless, why would they work so hard to retain these "enhanced interrogation methods" if there was no intention to use them? If this was for political reasons only it'll be beyond spineless.

of the applicability of "state secrets" privilege about past abuses. I see evidence they're trying to retain those - but I don't see anything that bears on the issue of the Obama Administration retaining or discarding torture policies; as far as I'm aware those policies have been specifically renounced. Would you mind citing specific passages that indicate otherwise?

... is meaningless. That's the point I was trying to make.

If you have a legal framework in place that doesn't leave a victim any chance to challenge or even just bring visibility to his plight then you are a the mercy of the government. I certainly hope the Obama admin doesn't torture (of course there is no way to be sure).

At any rate as soon as there's another Republican White House I am certain the gloves come off again. This time there won't be any legal recourse left and they'll have Obama to thank for that.

that seems to be acknowledgement that there's actually nothing in that article to suggest that the Obama Administration has reneged on its promise to put a stop to offical torture as the lede might suggest.

What the article suggests is that that they're not going after Bush-era torturers as aggressively as many (certainly including myself) would like to see.

I suppose if we wanted to establish whether that's a minor or major distinction, the best people to check in with would be those in US custody.

they have no habeas corpus protections? Or when the attorneys who are working with them are a.) prosecuted under material support statutes or drummed out of the service, as some JAG officers were?

^{"Sí che dal fatto il dir non sia diverso."}

-Dante

That, unlike the lede, is actually a rational critique.

There is no way to verify that this administration really stopped the torture nor will there be any legal recourse to hold future administration accountable given the precedence that is now established.

This is equivalent to living in a kingdom with a benign, wise monarch who holds absolute power. You won't have to fear random torture, but there is no legal framework that will guarantee this blissful state will last. Actually the subjects of this hypothetical wise king are probably safer since the human lifetime of a king will be longer than the average term served by an American president.

To paraphrase one of SPK's favorite phrases:

Repeat after me: Current policy is irrelevant in comparison to legal precedence.

than anyone else.

But here's a simple question - quite a few people came forward under the Bush Administration to say "I was tortured!" or "I was rendered to a place where I was tortured!". Scrutiny of their claims showed they were quite credible (Mike Arar, for example).

Can you link to credible cases (or any for that matter) of people having come forward to relate stories like that about events since January 2009?

Hence I left the country. It was really for the sake of my sanity and health of body and mind.

Reading and posting about this from a country that is less eroded from within makes this much easier to bear.

prosecute, then who will? Do you honestly believe the republicans would prosecute themselves? Interesting dossiers? I would be much happier with factual ones and our intelligence agencies do not have a stellar history of great analysis.

ultimately that Nixon was pardoned. And likely contributed to the end of any prosecutions of Reagan after he left office.

I'm just sayin. Whatever it is, it got Clinton, Blair, Brown, Bush, Obama on the same page. And now Cameron and Clegg have been coming on board.

if the reigning powers don't do anything and the guilty party won't-who will? We are just suppose to take it and tell all those abused to get over it? And at the same time lecture other countries for torture and other human rights violations, we are hypocrites and it will do nothing to build our image back up. I am so not impressed with with that crew being on board for anything, they all have their own credibility issues.

... the International Criminal Court for.