Change Begins – No More Torture Says Obama Executive Order

I actually started to get cynical before the inauguration, mainly due to the then President-elect’s picks for top economic posts in the Cabinet.  Today as I look at the Briefing Room on the White House website, the cynicism is giving way to hope once again.

President Barack Obama today signed an Executive Order essentially rescinding Bush Administration policies proscribing torture.  The order carries the title, Ensuring Lawful Interrogations.

This brought a smile to my face:

All executive directives, orders, and regulations inconsistent with this order, including but not limited to those issued to or by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from September 11, 2001, to January 20, 2009, concerning detention or the interrogation of detained individuals, are revoked to the extent of their inconsistency with this order.

Then there’s this:

Effective immediately, an individual in the custody or under the effective control of an officer, employee, or other agent of the United States Government, or detained within a facility owned, operated, or controlled by a department or agency of the United States, in any armed conflict, shall not be subjected to any interrogation technique or approach, or any treatment related to interrogation, that is not authorized by and listed in Army Field Manual 2 22.3 (Manual).

So, what’s so big about the Army Field Manual?  It’s called setting and abiding by a standard that is in accordance with the U.S. Constitution, international treaty obligations and federal law.  It means no more episodes of “24″ playing out in Guantanamo or black sites in Poland.  You see, Jack Bauer is a TV character.  To move the plot along his forays into torture often lead to good information.  In the real world, harsh interrogation techniques often yield bullshit.

The order also calls for the closure of CIA operated detention facilities.  To the credit of some in the CIA, they were never for getting into the jailer’s business in the first place.  Obama established a task force to study and make recommendations on issues around agencies other than the Dept. of Defense employing Army Field Manual techniques and how to lawfully transfer detainees from one place to another, ostensibly the kinds of folks who have been picked up through the use of extraordinary rendition, some of who were innocent, one of whom was innocent and died in American custody in Afghanistan.

The Constitution and laws and the understanding of basic human rights are what separates us from the apes who live and think in the Middle Ages and seek to terrorize us.  Today, we began to reclaim the moral high ground.