We Need a Torture Commission

By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Apr 16, 2009 9:31 PM CDT
We Need a Torture Commission
A file photo from 2008 of Gitmo.   (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)

President Obama appears ready to put the whole issue of CIA torture behind him. He owes it to the nation to do otherwise, writes Mark Benjamin in Salon. In particular, he should appoint a torture commission—a bipartisan group to evaluate what, if anything, the US gained from these interrogation techniques. Most likely, they just made "desperate prisoners say whatever they had to say to make the pain stop, yielding a few gems among a flow of muck."

Dick Cheney and others disagree, but without a commission, we'll never know who's right. "While Obama has turned the page, many others haven’t—including the people, and their allies, who think waterboarding was a good idea," writes Benjamin. "Without a commission, if Mitt Romney (the man who pledged to double the size of the prison at Guantánamo) is president in 2013—or 2017—we could start torturing all over again." (More President Obama stories.)

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