“Senior members of the Bush administration who approved the use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation measures could face prosecution, Barack Obama said today, in a surprise about-turn by the president.” So says the Guardian today.
I’d been thinking that if ever I were caught out using violent abuse to “persuade” someone to do or say what I wanted, I could have tried to imitate the American government by claiming immunity on the grounds that it was all in the past, and that we should now be trying to move forward.
(Removes tongue from cheek.) I hope this apparent about-turn is a real one!
My intuition tells me that Obama is waiting for others to take the lead WRT what, if anything, will be done to prosecute the offenders and while I, for one, think the USA should be moving full speed ahead with this, I think this may well be a smart political decision on his part. He really does (so far, at least) remind me of the ideal leader as described in the Tao Te Ching–leading so subtly that others will say, “Look what WE did” instead of “Look what HE did.” Of course, this could all be just fantasy on my part, but I wonder….