With the stroke of a pen...how fast things can change with a signature!

    True. Torture and abuse of prisoners is as old as mankind. What is mind-blasting is how the White House could set up a classified detention system in Guantánamo under the orders of the Pentagon, redefine torture to allow use of strong hand methods, kidnap persons suspected of "terrorism" and send them to secret jails around the world--and then prohibit those same actions in a few hours, with the pen of U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama.

    In took just a few strokes of a pen last Thursday to undo years of policies imposed by outgoing President George Bush’s so-called "war on terror." Obama has ordered the prison at Guantánamo to be shut down within a year, the detainees moved to other countries or to regular U.S. courts; forced the CIA to stop torturing people, to close secret "black sites" around the world and to follow the Army Field Manual rules on interrogations; and told the entire government to stop relying on legal opinions issued by the Bush administration to justify policies that were never justifiable...except in the eyes of those who gave birth to them.

    What is equally amasing is with what speed supporters of Bush’s repressive policies in the U.S. and around the world have suddenly jumped on the bandwagon of defense for human rights and rejection of the ends-justify-the-means notions they so strongly supported just days ago.

"First, I can say without exception or equivocation that the United States will not torture," Obama said. "Second, we will close the Guantánamo Bay detention camp and determine how to deal with those who have been held there. And third, we will immediately undertake a comprehensive review to determine how to hold and try terrorism suspects to best protect our nation and the rule of law."

   In any system there are, of course, loopholes and submerged forces dedicated to resisting orders they consider inconvenient. Still, the orders appeared to represent a sharp and refreshing break to policies that seemed untouchable during the Bush era. Journalists and others found outraged responses from the White House when they asked about those policies, or encountered responses such as that of Bush’s Vice President,Cheney,shortly after 9/11:  "We have to work the dark side."

  Most conservatives still think bringing the more than 200 Guantanamo prisoners to U.S. courts would represent a sort of redlight for the safety and security of U.S. citizens, under the notion that if they were kept further away there would be more security. The Obama Administration has rebuked that argument with the notion that the best defense of the country is through respect for its laws and democratic system.

  Back to the stroke of the pen. How many other repressive measures might be revoked with a mere signature? And then: what awaits those who in the name of the previous administration’s policies acted against human rights or the checks and balances of the constitution?

   During the military dictatorship in Argentina, and many other countries in Latin America, the rights of citizens were systematically violated in accordance with the notions of "counter-insurgency" warfare taught to Latin American military officers at Panama and other U.S. military schools. The argument: the populist or leftist movements were a threat to democracy and should be destroyed. They were erradicated with torture, mass arrest, kidnappings and the disappearance of opposition politicians, trade union leaders, intellectuals and countless numbers of ordinary citizens.

   In many countries where democracy has returned these acts of terrorism at the hands of de facto governments has been conveniently pushed into beaurocratic drawers. In Argentina, however, judicial process continue for these crimes. One of the arguments of those accused of rights violations is that they were merely carrying out orders...

Might that same argument be used by those in the U.S., should members of the Bush Administration be called to testify in eventual judicial processes involving illegal acts or violations of the rights of prisoners?