Obama: The New Torture President

I've cut President Obama a lot of slack over many things that put "the left" into an uproar. I didn't expect him to be a liberal president. I understand the difficulty of balancing competing interests. But the one thing, the only thing, I expected him to do was to uncategorically reject the Bush legacy of torture. So this, Mr President, is not just wrong. It's evil.:

P.J. Crowley, the state department spokesman, stepped down Sunday after saying publicly that treatment of Wikileaks suspect Pfc. Bradley Manning in military detention has been “ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid.” [...]

The remark by Mr. Crowley last week to a small audience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, first reported by the blogger Philippa Thomas, was rejected by none other than President Obama at a press conference on Friday. Mr. Obama said that he had been assured the treatment of Private Manning was “appropriate and are meeting our basic standards.”

No Mr. President. It is most certainly not “appropriate" or in the slightest "meeting our basic standards.” I don't care what Manning did wrong. Crowley was only telling the truth. America does not torture. Or at least it didn't until Bush became president. And now you blithely excuse and enable it. There aren't sufficient words in our language to express my disgust and disappointment.