The documents were going to be released soon by court. They were suing to get them opened up, so Obama let them go to not have to go through a lawsuit to get them. I am not sure about trying anyone over what happened during another admin. It was a legal action during that time. Can you make a legalaity an illegality after the fact?

Kat

I want the policy makers to make sure that they do not make it legal now or ever again.

I do not believe in prosecuting the soldiers for what their government has done to them.

Does anyone REALLY belive that this is the first time torture has been used in American war or history??? I mean....torture has been used many times in many wars. By Americans. Ever hear of the war between the Whites and Indians?? The white man showed them a few things...like scalping alive. Raping their women...burning them alive, killing their children. Not right then...not right now. Never...no more. Torture must go.
Kat

You are right...why should soldiers be made patsies for what they were told to do??

No, Kat, I have seen the horrors of war and we are just as guilty of them as all other nations.

We as humans should have grown in our mentality enough to understand there are no winners in war.

The guilty party was George Bush.

What point would there be in making criminals out of the men who were only doing what their Commander-in-Chief had told them to do?

The bottom line is that we have a new Commander-in-Chief now, and it wouldn't make much sense to try to prosecute the old one at this stage of the game. The damage has already been done.

Why try to make criminals out of military soldiers who were only doing what they were told to do by the previous administration?

What sense would that make?

It wasn't George Bush alone..it was a gang of neoconservatives... if you ask me, Bush couldn't find his way out of a paperbox without Cheney give him a hand.

Agreed.

None the less, it's the Commander-in-Chief who's responsible for keeping eveyone else in line. If he turns out to be the puppet of his subordinates that's only a reflection of how inept a Commander-in-Chief he was.

The bottom line was that Bush never attempted to persecute the waterboarders during his administration, so that can only mean that he condoned it.

Ultimately a Commander-in-Chief must either take responsiblty for his own hit men or denounce them LIVE when it happens as not being condoned by him.

In either case it would seem futile for the next administration to try to criminalize the activities of a previous administration.

About all Obama can realitisically do at this point is say, "no more". And just move foward from there.

But I agree, Cheney and others were probably pulling the bulk of the strings of the last administration. But Bush allowed that to happen. So where does the responsiblity ultimately lie?

The responsibility lies with the commander in chief.