President Obama may be about to enter his first real pickle since taking office on January 20. Obama's first hundred days - an admittedly strange benchmark which all new presidents are judged by - will most likely be remembered for such historic things as the planned closure of Guantanamo Bay, extending a (recipocrated) hand to Cuba ( and even Iran) and, of course, everything that happened before, during and after the G20 conference that attempted to grapple with the world's extensive economic problems. His wildly popular wife Michelle and even Bo the puppy may get a quick mention on April 29th too.

Of course, it's still very early days, but so far so good. There are a few occurrences that haven't been quite as damaging as they could have been. That extremely misguided and offensive reference to the special olympics for one. It certainly didn't help that a couple of the first choices for his cabinet turned out to be tax evaders and he had to admit to screwing up. However, that admission did become one more opportunity for him to make a clean break with all things Bush. Bush waited until the last days of his presidency to make a minor admission that some mistakes had been made and even then he was still making lame excuses about events like Hurricane Katrina.
There were signs that Russia could be potentially hostile but relations between the Prez and Medvedev seem okay for now. Similarly, Raul Castro could have told him to ‘eff off. And then there was that appearance on Jay Leno's chat show, a presidential first.

Throughout it all, Obama hasn't strayed too far from the astute, measured style that won him the election. On the other hand, there are already plenty of world leaders, politicians, political journalists, and other interested parties ( the lobbyists for one) who can't wait for the first sign of weakness or incompetence from America's first black president. So he'll never be able to stop treading carefully.

But the decision to publish the torture guidelines that were imposed by the Bush Administration (doesn't it feel good to refer to them in the past tense!!!!!) and the accompanying decision not to prosecute those who carried out 'questioning' under those guidelines could quite possibly turn out to be his first real live controversial conundrum. The chilling, Orwellian term 'enhanced interrogation techniques' speaks for itself. Aside from the fact that information gleaned in this way is often useless and false, the usage of such methods is just one facet out of many that makes a mockery of the neo-conservatives claims to be on the side of freedom and all the rest of it.
Just for the record the techniques include such things as forced nudity, sleep deprivation, food deprivation and walling, whereby the detainee is slammed into a special kind of wall that is meant to be more frightening and imposing than painful. We'll take their word for it. Waterboarding, which recreates the sensation of drowning, is perhaps the most well known of the techniques which clearly amount to torture.

The move to forgoe prosecution of the actual CIA interrogators was rightly criticised by Amnesty International and other human rights organisations. But the usual suspects simultaneously accused the President of jeopardising US security. General Michael Hayden, head of the CIA under Bush, has been all over the place having a go at the decision.

However, Obama's admission a couple of days later, that the architects of the guidelines, and quite possibly the lawyers that justified them, could be prosecuted turned the whole thing on its head. Yes, he was deliberately vague and he made clear that the decision was going to be the attorney general's and not his. But if the go ahead is given the outcome will be the same.

The decision not to prosecute the practioners always left the door wide open for prosecutions much higher up the food chain. Much like Redman and Method Man, the crucial question now is just how high. So, despite everything else that has happened, as Obama approaches his first 100 days in office, this whole torture question looks like being the one most likely to be studied by future history classes.
 
Words: Russell Myrie
Image: Core 77 Mag online www.core77.com