Remember the controversy over the Pentagon policy of not allowing the press to take pictures of the flag-draped caskets of American war dead as they arrived in the United States? Critics accused President Bush of trying to hide the terrible human cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“These young men and women are heroes,” Vice President Biden said in 2004, when he was senator from Delaware. “The idea that they are essentially snuck back into the country under the cover of night so no one can see that their casket has arrived, I just think is wrong.”

In April of this year, the Obama administration lifted the press ban, which had been in place since the Persian Gulf War in 1991. Media outlets rushed to cover the first arrival of a fallen U.S. serviceman, and many photographers came back for the second arrival, and then the third.

But after that, the impassioned advocates of showing the true human cost of war grew tired of the story. Fewer and fewer photographers showed up. “It’s really fallen off,” says Lt. Joe Winter, spokesman for the Air Force Mortuary Affairs Operations Center at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where all war dead are received. “The flurry of interest has subsided.”

That’s an understatement. When the casket bearing Air Force Tech. Sgt. Phillip Myers, of Hopewell, Va., arrived at Dover the night of April 5 — the first arrival in which press coverage was allowed — there were representatives of 35 media outlets on hand to cover the story. Two days later, when the body of Army Spc. Israel Candelaria Mejias, of San Lorenzo, Puerto Rico, arrived, 17 media outlets were there. (All the figures here were provided by the Mortuary Affairs Operations Center.) On subsequent days in April, there were nearly a dozen press organizations on hand to cover arrivals.

Fast forward to today. On Sept. 2, when the casket bearing the body of Marine Lance Cpl. David Hall, of Elyria, Ohio, arrived at Dover, there was just one news outlet — the Associated Press — there to record it. The situation was pretty much the same when caskets arrived on Sept. 5, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 16, 22, 23 and 26. There has been no television coverage at all in September.

The media can cover arrivals only when the family gives its permission. In all the examples above, the families approved, which is more often than not the case; since the policy was changed, according to the Mortuary Affairs Office, 60 percent of families have said yes to full media coverage.

But these days, the press hordes that once descended on Dover are gone, and there’s usually just one organization on hand. The Associated Press, which supplies photos to 1,500 U.S. newspapers and 4,000 Web sites, has had a photographer at every arrival for which permission was granted. “It’s our belief that this is important, that surely somewhere there is a paper, an audience, a readership, a family and a community for whom this homecoming is indeed news,” says Paul Colford, director of media relations for AP. “It’s been agreed internally that this is a responsibility for the AP to be there each and every time it is welcome.”

Colford says the AP has a photographer who lives within driving distance of Dover and is able to make it to the arrivals, no matter what time of day or night. As for the network news, it’s not so simple; a night arrival means overtime pay for a union camera crew. And then there’s the question of convenience. “It seems that if the weather is nice, and it’s during the day, we get a higher level of media to come down,” says Lt. Winter. “But a majority of our transfers occur in the early evening and overnight.”

So far this month, 38 American troops have been killed in Afghanistan. For all of 2009, the number is 220 — more than any other single year and more than died in 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004 combined.

With casualties mounting, the debate over U.S. policy in Afghanistan is sharp and heated. The number of arrivals at Dover is increasing. But the journalists who once clamored to show the true human cost of war are nowhere to be found.

Byron York, The Examiner’s chief political correspondent, can be contacted at byork@washingtonexaminer.com. His column appears on Tuesday and Friday, and his stories and blog posts appears on ExaminerPolitics.com. He can be followed on Twitter at ByronYork.

How did we wind up with another Cheney/Bush clone in the White House? Since his election, still more billions have been given to the banksters, the Wall Street speculators who caused the current melt-down, and above all to the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) and the Pentagon. Every piece of “Gone with the Wind” sized legislation is held up until every special interest, every bankster and insurance group is completely protected, at the expense of We the People.

The first act of the “new” administration was to widen the war in Afghanistan, and also to push it into the tribal regions of Pakistan. The buildups continue, with an even greater emphasis on robot, remote controlled killing machines to maximize casualties amongst the Afghans while minimizing danger to our own personnel.

We are now being told that Bush’s war was one of “choice” whereas Obama’s is a “war of necessity.” Look closely at this. He states that our personal survival in the United States consists in spending billions futilely chasing a handful of ex-CIA operatives (from an earlier war ) around the mountains, meanwhile firing Hellfire missiles into Afghan villages, killing innocent villagers, elderly, female, children, in hopes of killing some Pashtun carrying a rifle, which makes him an “insurgent.” In that part of the country, you are not properly clothed unless you have a weapon. When we blast a village and do manage to kill a man with a rifle, there are ten more to take his place; the friends and relatives of those killed and maimed by our attacks. For thousands of years, these people have been fighting off invaders and expelling occupiers of their land at tremendous personal cost. They don’t even care who or what the United States is, they simply want them, and any other invader, out of their country.

This would all seem to be insanity until you look at what is controlling this nation. Follow the money! If we keep escalating the wars, the MIC continues to make huge profits. It trades with both sides in weapons and intelligence, always at a profit. If we ever waged peace, the MIC would have to start making refrigerators and stoves. A guy buys a refrigerator, he keeps it for ten or fifteen years. Where is the profit in that? A guy buys a thousand pound bomb and BOOM! He has to buy another. Now there, my friends, is profit. And then, of course, there is the oil pipeline route.

We are looking at a government where the Fed Chairman tells Congress that to survive, we must promote austerity in the United States. Cut back on social services, education, Social Security, Medicare and other frills. At the same time, another three hundred billion is given to the Pentagon to promote their wars, and their research into still more draconian ways to control not only We the People, but the entire world.

A ten percent cut in the Pentagon’s budget would take care of most of our domestic problems,. We could feed the hungry, house the homeless, provide decent medical care and repair our crumbling infrastructure. That would still leave the bloated Pentagon giant spending several times more than all the rest of the world combined in “defense” spending. We are spending money on developing more robots, suborbital bombers, armed platforms in orbit that can rain death and destruction on anybody who refuses to obey us.

Over two centuries ago, a group of visionaries wrote a remarkable document to be the rule and guide of the new nation. Over the past couple of decades, but especially during the past nine years, that document, the Constitution of the United States, along with its first ten amendments, known as the Bill of Rights, has been effectively shredded, replaced by the misnamed Patriot Act in its various incarnations, the Military Commissions Act, the various Surveillance Acts and Executive Orders. The Executive is shielding the perpetrators of these crimes, and then there is the dismissing of habeas corpus, the repeal of Posse Comitatus and other protective legislation to leave us open to martial law and a military takeover.

I have sent four letters to Mr. Obama, certified, return receipt requested. At least three have been delivered. The only response, so far, was a preprinted card with a stamped signature from some guy who is the chairman of correspondence, or some such title.

In these letters, I have queried him as to why the Constitution is not being restored to the Halls of government and reminding him of the duties specified in the document. No answer.

I have asked him why he is escalating our wars and further impoverishing our nation with giveaways to the rich. Why no help is given to those who are being foreclosed on. No answer.

I sent him a copy of the Nuremberg Principles, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, The Constitution of the United States, including the Bill of Rights. I cited the fact that, under the Constitution, those are all part of the “Law of the Land,” as they are included in treaties that were ratified by the Senate. I asked him, “What part of the above documents have we not broken?” No answer.

I have sent off similar queries over the years to my alleged representatives in the House and Senate. No answer. Apparently, these subjects are now off limits as far as government officials are concerned. Perhaps they have truly shredded the Constitution and it is no more. I fear that the “Great Experiment” has come to an end, not with a bang, but with scarcely a whimper. Now, little seems to be left but for the somnolent American Sheeple to just follow the nice goat with the bell up the ramp, and though the doors into the abattoir. A sad end to a noble effort by our forefathers.

In the name of God, the most gracious and most merciful.

Here I am, free. But my country is still a prisoner of war.

Firstly, I give my thanks and my regards to everyone who stood beside me, whether inside my country, in the Islamic world, in the free world. There has been a lot of talk about the action and about the person who took it, and about the hero and the heroic act, and the symbol and the symbolic act.

But, simply, I answer: What compelled me to confront is the injustice that befell my people, and how the occupation wanted to humiliate my homeland by putting it under its boot.

And how it wanted to crush the skulls of (the homeland’s) sons under its boots, whether sheikhs, women, children or men. And during the past few years, more than a million martyrs fell by the bullets of the occupation and the country is now filled with more than 5 million orphans, a million widows and hundreds of thousands of maimed. And many millions of homeless because of displacement inside and outside the country.

We used to be a nation in which the Arab would share with the Turkman and the Kurd and the Assyrian and the Sabean and the Yazid his daily bread. And the Shiite would pray with the Sunni in one line. And the Muslim would celebrate with the Christian the birthday of Christ, may peace be upon him. And despite the fact that we shared hunger under sanctions for more than 10 years, for more than a decade.

Our patience and our solidarity did not make us forget the oppression. Until we were invaded by the illusion of liberation that some had. (The occupation) divided one brother from another, one neighbor from another, and the son from his uncle. It turned our homes into never-ending funeral tents. And our graveyards spread into parks and roadsides. It is a plague. It is the occupation that is killing us, that is violating the houses of worship and the sanctity of our homes and that is throwing thousands daily into makeshift prisons.

I am not a hero, and I admit that. But I have a point of view and I have a stance. It humiliated me to see my country humiliated. And to see my Baghdad burned. And my people being killed. Thousands of tragic pictures remained in my head, and this weighs on me every day and pushes me toward the righteous path, the path of confrontation, the path of rejecting injustice, deceit and duplicity. It deprived me of a good night’s sleep.

Dozens, no, hundreds, of images of massacres that would turn the hair of a newborn white used to bring tears to my eyes and wound me. The scandal of Abu Ghraib. The massacre of Fallujah, Najaf, Haditha, Sadr City, Basra, Diyala, Mosul, Tal Afar, and every inch of our wounded land. In the past years, I traveled through my burning land and saw with my own eyes the pain of the victims, and hear with my own ears the screams of the bereaved and the orphans. And a feeling of shame haunted me like an ugly name because I was powerless.

And as soon as I finished my professional duties in reporting the daily tragedies of the Iraqis, and while I washed away the remains of the debris of the ruined Iraqi houses, or the traces of the blood of victims that stained my clothes, I would clench my teeth and make a pledge to our victims, a pledge of vengeance.

The opportunity came, and I took it.

I took it out of loyalty to every drop of innocent blood that has been shed through the occupation or because of it, every scream of a bereaved mother, every moan of an orphan, the sorrow of a rape victim, the teardrop of an orphan.

I say to those who reproach me: Do you know how many broken homes that shoe that I threw had entered because of the occupation? How many times it had trodden over the blood of innocent victims? And how many times it had entered homes in which free Iraqi women and their sanctity had been violated? Maybe that shoe was the appropriate response when all values were violated.

When I threw the shoe in the face of the criminal, Bush, I wanted to express my rejection of his lies, his occupation of my country, my rejection of his killing my people. My rejection of his plundering the wealth of my country, and destroying its infrastructure. And casting out its sons into a diaspora.

After six years of humiliation, of indignity, of killing and violations of sanctity, and desecration of houses of worship, the killer comes, boasting, bragging about victory and democracy. He came to say goodbye to his victims and wanted flowers in response.

Put simply, that was my flower to the occupier, and to all who are in league with him, whether by spreading lies or taking action, before the occupation or after.

I wanted to defend the honor of my profession and suppressed patriotism on the day the country was violated and its high honor lost. Some say: Why didn’t he ask Bush an embarrassing question at the press conference, to shame him? And now I will answer you, journalists. How can I ask Bush when we were ordered to ask no questions before the press conference began, but only to cover the event. It was prohibited for any person to question Bush.

And in regard to professionalism: The professionalism mourned by some under the auspices of the occupation should not have a voice louder than the voice of patriotism. And if patriotism were to speak out, then professionalism should be allied with it.

I take this opportunity: If I have wronged journalism without intention, because of the professional embarrassment I caused the establishment, I wish to apologize to you for any embarrassment I may have caused those establishments. All that I meant to do was express with a living conscience the feelings of a citizen who sees his homeland desecrated every day.

History mentions many stories where professionalism was also compromised at the hands of American policymakers, whether in the assassination attempt against Fidel Castro by booby-trapping a TV camera that CIA agents posing as journalists from Cuban TV were carrying, or what they did in the Iraqi war by deceiving the general public about what was happening. And there are many other examples that I won’t get into here.

But what I would like to call your attention to is that these suspicious agencies – the American intelligence and its other agencies and those that follow them – will not spare any effort to track me down (because I am) a rebel opposed to their occupation. They will try to kill me or neutralize me, and I call the attention of those who are close to me to the traps that these agencies will set up to capture or kill me in various ways, physically, socially or professionally.

And at the time that the Iraqi prime minister came out on satellite channels to say that he didn’t sleep until he had checked in on my safety, and that I had found a bed and a blanket, even as he spoke I was being tortured with the most horrific methods: electric shocks, getting hit with cables, getting hit with metal rods, and all this in the backyard of the place where the press conference was held. And the conference was still going on and I could hear the voices of the people in it. And maybe they, too, could hear my screams and moans.

In the morning, I was left in the cold of winter, tied up after they soaked me in water at dawn. And I apologize for Mr. Maliki for keeping the truth from the people. I will speak later, giving names of the people who were involved in torturing me, and some of them were high-ranking officials in the government and in the army.

I didn’t do this so my name would enter history or for material gains. All I wanted was to defend my country, and that is a legitimate cause confirmed by international laws and divine rights. I wanted to defend a country, an ancient civilization that has been desecrated, and I am sure that history – especially in America – will state how the American occupation was able to subjugate Iraq and Iraqis, until its submission.

They will boast about the deceit and the means they used in order to gain their objective. It is not strange, not much different from what happened to the Native Americans at the hands of colonialists. Here I say to them (the occupiers) and to all who follow their steps, and all those who support them and spoke up for their cause: Never.

Because we are a people who would rather die than face humiliation.

And, lastly, I say that I am independent. I am not a member of any political party, something that was said during torture – one time that I’m far-right, another that I’m a leftist. I am independent of any political party, and my future efforts will be in civil service to my people and to any who need it, without waging any political wars, as some said that I would.

My efforts will be toward providing care for widows and orphans, and all those whose lives were damaged by the occupation. I pray for mercy upon the souls of the martyrs who fell in wounded Iraq, and for shame upon those who occupied Iraq and everyone who assisted them in their abominable acts. And I pray for peace upon those who are in their graves, and those who are oppressed with the chains of imprisonment. And peace be upon you who are patient and looking to God for release.

And to my beloved country I say: If the night of injustice is prolonged, it will not stop the rising of a sun and it will be the sun of freedom.

One last word. I say to the government: It is a trust that I carry from my fellow detainees. They said, ‘Mutadhar, if you get out, tell of our plight to the omnipotent powers’ – I know that only God is omnipotent and I pray to Him – ‘remind them that there are dozens, hundreds, of victims rotting in prisons because of an informant’s word.’

They have been there for years, they have not been charged or tried.

They’ve only been snatched up from the streets and put into these prisons. And now, in front of you, and in the presence of God, I hope they can hear me or see me. I have now made good on my promise of reminding the government and the officials and the politicians to look into what’s happening inside the prisons. The injustice that’s caused by the delay in the judicial system.

Thank you. And may God’s peace be upon you.

Iraqi journalist Mutadhar al-Zaidi gave this speech on his recent release. The translation is by McClatchy’s special correspondent, Sahar Issa.

(h/t LewRockwell.com)

Featured Post for 05-/22-05/28:

“It became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it”

I recalled this statement while I was reading a very powerful look at the My Lai massacre that took place during the Vietnam War. The depravity of humanity gone mad is revealed in this account and one would think that we would never again commit such atrocities. But the powers that be convinced us that we should put it behind us and move on. And now it seems we have repeated the depravity again in Iraq.

Is it true that our future is shaped by what and how we react to events and realities of the present? Have we gone even deeper into depravity since My Lai? And if that is true, what did we not do that would have kept us from drifting into an open acceptance of torture and unjustified bloodletting today? If the future we get IS up to us, what failures of our past determine what we leave for our children today?

Please take a read.

http://rwor.org/a/027/vietnam-destroy-village.htm.

The above link is a very descriptive anti-war piece about Vietnam. You might also notice that it is reflective of the Iraqi and Afghan wars of today. The parallel left me to doubt about our children’s future, but then I realized that we can set the tone of morality and ethical behavior, all we need to do to is reach out and do what is necessary to become what we want to be.

What is it we want the future to be? If we know that, and if we know what was failed to be done in the past, that caused our today, then we should know what must be done to set the tone for the future of our Country.

So why not look at Vietnam and see what it is that we have failed to learn from My Lai? Discover what would have prevented us accepting torture and massacre of innocents in Iraq and Afghanistan. I think we ignored red warning flags in the run up to Vietnam and then we failed to prosecute War Criminals for their crimes after that war.

Consider these red flags from that sorrowful episode in our history: (1) The Lie about the Gulf of Tonkin that was used as a justification to invade Vietnam. Shouldn’t we have learned to deeply question our Government when it is promoting a preventative War?

Then we let President Johnson off the hook when the Gulf of Tonkin was exposed as a lie. And remember the justification using the fear that “If we ignore the Communists in Vietnam, the rest of the Far East Countries will fall to the communists like Dominoes”?

Isn’t this rationale much like the fear of the Saddam “Mushroom Cloud” sprung on us by the Bush Administration? Just compare the Vietnam “Domino Theory” to “Weapons of Mass Destruction” about Iraq.

Consider another Vietnam War red flag (2) “Those people are Godless people who want to overrun the world and it would be better to fight them over there instead of over here”. Really, isn’t this the same chant heard about Iraq today with only the name of the people, Countries, and cultures changed?

Isn’t the prelude to any war propaganda to demonize the people? Would either the Vietnamese or the Iraqis have the capacity to “take over the world”?

And (3) the red flag of questioning the patriotism of the American Citizens who oppose the war, by stating that to support our soldiers we must support the war: Look at the phrase “Support the Troops” and the implication by the war mongers that if you don’t support the war, you don’t support the troops. Does it not sound familiar?

It was also used during the Vietnam War. We must learn to be aware of these red flags when we start hearing why we should start a preventative war of self-defense, against a Country or people who are not doing anything to us. So isn’t this what we should have done before we invaded Iraq, to keep us from repeating the mistake of Vietnam?

Lt. Calley, the leader of the My Lai massacre served all of two days in jail for his crimes. And he spent only three years under house arrest (was free to leave the house and roam about town as long as he was accompanied by his keepers).

After the house arrest Calley went on to rake in a fortune as a speaker to Right Wing groups especially the Religious Right. You know who the Religious Right is – those Bible thumping, God fearing, Ten Commandments, Good Samaritan, clean Moral living people, who support the most immoral, most vile, most ungodly Administration in history, the Republican Bush bunch, yes that’s the good people I’m talking about, the core of the Republican Party.

We must learn to be careful in how we use our vote.

Those Vietnamese who were massacred at My Lai and those killed in Iraq including those tortured to death, are still dead. And Calley was the only My Lai soldier convicted while no one who authorized torture after 9/11 has even been charged. Is there any wonder that people around the world hate us?

And would you agree that the hate is with good reason? What have the many “Police Actions” since World War II (over 50 to date) gained us if not hate? They were called police actions because our Constitution proscribes to Congress only, the ability to declare war. And yet not one single one of those military events since WWII has been a declared war, as the Constitution allows, not this Iraq War, and not the Afghan War, currently being escalated by Obama.

Because of the Constitutional requirement that Congress only can declare war, the Executive has usurped a “right” from the Constitution, of wartime powers, therefore many things now are called “wars”. We must learn to hold accountable those who lead us into un-necessary military actions. War should be an action of last resort.

Not an opportunity for a hefty profit stream to War Industry Corporations. A failure to punish people and entities for criminal activity is nothing more than an approval of that criminal activity and that failure to hold accountable, generates more of the same.

“We had to destroy our Country to save it” Is this what we have come to? Isn’t this the general excuse by the last Administration for the destruction brought on America? It started well before the Bush Administration, but the big move came under that despotic Bush era. Remember that on 9/12 a committee authorized by Bush and Cheney and headed up by Feith was formed to mine data that could be useful to sell the need of an invasion of Iraq to the American people.

It later took on the name of the Office of Special Plans. And it seems to make no difference that it was the Bush bunch. Reality has shown that we are now in the first installment of the continuation of those Bush policies. Once again the electorate have proven that a vote for the lesser of two evils gets you the same result – evil.

We must learn to hold accountable those Parties that claim the high road and yet exude corruption.

The destruction to America under Bush is almost unimaginable: We have lost many rights guaranteed to us by the Constitution, We have lost our Moral position in the World, We have become a pawn of Corporate Interests, We produce for the profits of the War Industry, We have become a bankrupt Nation, and we have subjugated the financial future of our children to the International Banking Cartels.

And the justification for all these woes is that it had to be done to protect us from “Them” and “They”, people who hate us for things like My Lai and the newest atrocities, over a million dead in Iraq, over four million displaced in that country, a country ruined for the next several generations. And why? – Sadly the excuse heard today was that it was done to free the Iraqis, yet we still occupy their land, kill their people, and steal their resources.

And the damage done to America in the name of protecting America from it’s enemies, could be paraphrased, “We had to destroy our Country to save it”. Criminals and War Criminals must be punished without exception. There are consequences for not doing so.

The future we get is truly up to us. Haven’t we proven that time and again? We let those atrocities in Vietnam go unpunished. Even worse was the Vietnam War itself, one now proven to be brought about by lies and propaganda.

And most telling, we didn’t learn from the lie (Gulf of Tonkin) that was the excuse manufactured for going to war. In every military excursion since WWII there has been a pre-war PR run up promoting fear of the “enemy”, immorality of the people, followed by a manufactured excuse to exercise military action.

Would we be in war in Iraq today if we had charged President Lyndon Johnson and his War Mongers for their Vietnam War Crimes and successfully prosecuted them? Would prosecuting the Bush bunch for their War Crimes stop a Vietnam or Iraq of the future? How many victims would be alive today if we would have had the courage to do the right thing? We need to put a stop to war criminals.

The one sure way to effect that stop is to make liable those who become War Criminals and those who promote the business of war for profit. When we learn from our past and act on that knowledge, the future we get will no longer be the past we ignored, we will re-set our future, for the better. And surely our children and their children will benefit from our actions.

Featured Post for 05-/15-05/22: Obama at this point, by covering up for official torture, and by signing on to and expanding the war in Afghanistan, is dooming his presidency, further staining the reputation of the United States, and ultimately furthering the decline of the country that was set in motion by his predecessors.

The illogic of Obama’s position on these photos is stunning. Since we know the photos exist, the refusal to make them public can only feed a sense that they must be worse than the horrific photos of torture at Abu Ghraib Prison which were already released. Nobody is going to assume that the photos in the White House’s possession are less offensive than what has already been discovered and made public–for why would the administration be worried about that?

The truth is always better than a cover-up, and what we now have the president advocating is a cover-up of American torture.  FULL STORY

Enough is enough. It’s time to free John Walker Lindh, poster boy for George Bush’s, Dick Cheney’s and John Ashcroft’s ‘War on Terror,’ and quite likely first victim of these men’s secret campaign of torture.

Lindh is in the seventh year of a 20-year sentence for ‘carrying a weapon’ in Afghanistan and for ‘providing assistance’ to an enemy of the United States. The first charge is ridiculously minor (after all, it’s what almost everyone in Texas does everyday). The second is actually a violation of a law intended for use against US companies that trade with proscribed countries on a government ‘no trade’ list like Cuba or North Korea. Ordinarily, violation results in a fine for the executives involved. FULL ARTICLE

Shocking evidence from a classified Senate Armed Services Committee report released last week makes the most compelling case to date that senior Bush administration officials intentionally lied about torture.

Under the bright lights of national news cameras, President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld described the horrors of Abu Ghraib as acts committed by a “few bad apples,” when in fact, they were actively encouraging the armed forces to torture prisoners at detention centers worldwide.

The details in this and other documents recently released should send chills down your spine. They confirm our worst nightmares about the types of interrogation tactics approved, including slamming suspects into walls, waterboarding 2 individuals a combined 266 times and exploiting another’s fear of insects by confining him in a box with an insect.

Horrifying as they are, these details only scratch the surface of what our 50 years of experience interviewing victims of torture tells us. We know that abuse always escalates over time, especially when sanctioned at the highest levels.

The administration’s response? Give torturers a free pass. The Obama administration announced recently that it would guarantee immunity to CIA officials and others who carried out clearly illegal interrogation tactics. This action directly contradicts the administration’s assertions that nobody is above the law.

The President and others in his administration have begun to change their tune in response to mounting public outcry. And now Obama has signaled that he may leave the door open for further investigation of those in the highest rungs of power in the Bush administration.

This moment represents a crucial opening in the fight for accountability. It’s a chance to finally slap the cuffs on those who authorized interrogators to take the gloves off and ensure that those responsible for abuse are held to account for the irreparable harm they’ve caused.

And most importantly, it’s an acknowledgment that accountability is the only way to put an end to the failed policies of detention without trial and detainee abuse.

What happens next will determine whether the whole story about Bush-era torture will see the light of day or remain shrouded in secrecy. We need to ensure that a non-partisan independent commission leads the investigation, and that it’s free from political influences, has subpoena power and enough money to pursue the truth.