Ex-Gitmo Prosecutor: Obama's Drone Surge as Damaging as Bush Torture Program [View all]

[unhappycamper]

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/02/01-5



US Air Force Col. Morris Davis (Ret.), who says: "If we're the country we claim to be, we've got to get back to the values we claim to represent."

Ex-Gitmo Prosecutor: Obama's Drone Surge as Damaging as Bush Torture Program
- Jon Queally, staff writer
Published on Friday, February 1, 2013 by Common Dreams

Retired Air Force Col. Morris "Moe" Davis, once the lead government prosecutor for terrorism suspects at the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, says that the US torture regime under Bush and now the drone assassination program run by the Obama administration have combined to make the world less safe and called both programs—whether they could be legally justified or not—"immoral."

"We are not the shining city on the hill," Davis told the small crowd gathered at Johnston Community College in North Carolina on Thursday night. "If we're the country we claim to be, we've got to get back to the values we claim to represent. Regardless of whether it's illegal, it's immoral."

~snip~

The group that sponsored the evening's lecture, North Carolina Stop Torture Now, noted that Col. Davis' appearances come on the heels of reports by the Washington Post and European human rights advocates that the Obama administration continues to secretly detain suspected terrorists captured abroad.

Comparing Bush's torture regime to Obama's escalated use of drones to carry out attacks in Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere Davis said it was "six of one and half a dozen of another."