WASHINGTON: US President-elect Barack Obama said yesterday he was not ruling out possible prosecution for abuses committed under the Bush administration, saying no one “is above the law.”
“We’re still evaluating how we’re going to approach the whole issue of interrogations, detentions, and so forth,” Obama said in an interview aired on ABC’s This Week program when asked about alleged abuses under Bush.
“Obviously we’re going to be looking at past practices and I don’t believe that anybody is above the law,” Obama said.
But Obama, who takes office on Jan. 20, added that he wanted his administration to focus on tackling problems moving forward, rather than reviewing policies under his predecessor.
“My instinct is for us to focus on how do we make sure that moving forward we are doing the right thing,” he said. “That doesn’t mean that if somebody has blatantly broken the law, that they are above the law. But my orientation’s going to be to move forward.”
Human rights and civil liberties groups have called for senior Bush administration officials to be prosecuted for a series of alleged abuses, from mishandling the conflict in Iraq to the illegal detention and torture of terrorist suspects and domestic spying.
In the interview, Obama criticized Vice President Dick Cheney for his public defense of “extraordinary” interrogation methods used against top terrorism suspects, including simulated drowning known as waterboarding. “Vice President Cheney, I think, continues to defend what he calls extraordinary measures or procedures when it comes to interrogations and from my view waterboarding is torture,” Obama said. “I have said that under my administration we will not torture.”
Obama declined to say whether he could appoint a special prosecutor to look into possible charges against Bush and his deputies, saying the issue would be up to his attorney general. “He is the people’s lawyer,” he said of the attorney general-designate, Eric Holder.
“So, ultimately, he’s going to be making some calls, but my general belief is that when it comes to national security, what we have to focus on is getting things right in the future, as opposed to looking at what we got wrong in the past.”
He reiterated his vow to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp but acknowledged it might not happen within his first 100 days in office. “It is more difficult than I think a lot of people realize.”
But the president-elect vowed to take swift action on the Middle East peace process and Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Obama said he was building a diplomatic team so that “on Day 1, we have the best possible people who are going to be immediately engaged in the Middle East peace process as a whole.” The team would “be engaging with all of the actors there” so that “both Israelis and Palestinians can meet their aspirations,” Obama said. He said Iran was going to be one of his administration’s biggest challenges and warned that a nuclear-armed Iran “could potentially trigger a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.”
Obama not only promised “a new emphasis on respect and a new emphasis on being willing to talk, but also a clarity about what our bottom lines are.” “And we are in preparations for that. We anticipate that we’re going to have to move swiftly in that area.”
Iran has defied UN sanctions designed to halt its enrichment of uranium, insisting that its nuclear program is for civilian energy needs and has no military bent. “And we are going to have to take a new approach. And I’ve outlined my belief that engagement is the place to start,” Obama said.
