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Gonzales Says Torture May Be Necessary Again In Future
Obama refuses to rule out "enhanced interrogation"
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Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has told an interviewer
that he believes the use of torture “may be necessary”
in the future, while president Obama has refused to rule out
so called "enhanced interrogation" techniques.
The comments came as Gonzales joined another former
Attorney General - John Ashcroft - on a panel at American Jewish
University, chaired by MSNBC's Dan Abrams.
Gonzales described the recent decision by the
Obama administration to disclose Bush era memos regarding torture
of detainees, as providing "important information to the
enemy”.
“And then secondly, to say that we have now discontinued
these techniques,” he continued, “they may be necessary
in the future. And by disclosing it, means you take them off
the table and they can never be used again.”
When asked if he still believed techniques such as waterboarding
were legal, Gonzales intimated that he did:
“Dan, when I served in the administration, the position
of the administration was that under certain conditions and
circumstances, this technique would be lawful,” he said.
He also added, “now, my understanding of the legal positions
of the department has now been changed. So we can spend all
evening debating the merits of a legal opinion of the Department
of Justice, which by the way, opinions get changed—I don’t
want to say all the time—but it’s not unusual to
have opinions change and be modified as conditions change, as
administrations change, as the Supreme Court renders a decision,
opinions change.”
Full transcript can be read
here.
(Article continues below)
Meanwhile the president did
not rule out future use of torture when questioned
on the matter.
Mark Knoller of CBS News put the following question
to Obama last week.:
If part of the United States were under imminent
threat, could you envision yourself ever authorizing the use
of those enhanced interrogation techniques?
Obama replied with the following comments (emphasis
added):
So when I made the decision to release these
memos and when I made the decision to bar these practices,
this was based on consultation with my entire national security
team, and based on my understanding that ultimately I will
be judged as commander-in-chief on how safe I'm keeping the
American people.
That's the responsibility I wake up with and it's the responsibility
I go to sleep with. And so I will do whatever is required
to keep the American people safe. But I am absolutely
convinced that the best way I can do that is to make sure
that we are not taking short cuts that undermine who we are.
And there have been no circumstances during the course of
this first 100 days in which I have seen information that
would make me second guess the decision that I have made.
OK?
Of course, these comments did not make the nightly
news nor any major press reports.
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