Wading In: Torture, Transparency and the Grievous Limits of Looking Forward But Not Back
by Abby Zimet
Despite their public claims of distance from and transparency in the battle between the CIA and Senate over the Torture Report, it’s become increasingly clear the Obama White House has been in there deeper than it wants to acknowledge, working for years to cover up the Bush administration’s role, withholding key documents and going to “extraordinary lengths” to keep secret one single phrase describing Bush’s authorization, reports Marcy Wheeler in The Intercept. More broadly, the Obama administration’s complicity points to what Charles Pierce calls “the final limit to looking forward, and not back” – that is, offering “absolution without penance” to the country for the criminality of Bush and an intelligence community “not reconciled to democracy.” In that context, Obama’s coming clean on the Senate report is “the last chance for even the ghost of a full accounting.” And the odds for that are…
