Obama may be running into trouble over torture memos

Barack Obama's decision to release memos that authorised the use of torture may leave him with a nasty battle to contend with.

US President Barack Obama has said he's "a strong believer that it's important to look forward and not backwards," says Ben Pershing on the Washington Post. But his decision last week to release four memos drafted by lawyers from the George Bush administration that authorised the use of torture techniques, such as waterboarding, to interrogate terror suspects may leave him dealing with the past for longer than he had hoped.

While Obama has stressed that CIA interrogators themselves should not be prosecuted, he hasn't ruled out legal consequences for the officials who drafted the legal opinions in the first place, saying it's an issue for the Attorney General. "If we are truly a nation of laws, a prosecutor needs to be appointed", says Michael Ratner in The New York Times. Otherwise, Obama is complicit in torture too. Indeed, if he doesn't, Obama will "set a precedent of whitewashing White House lawlessness in the name of national security", writes Bruce Fein on the Dailybeast.com.

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