Did Obama 'torture some folks'?

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last updated 14 July 2016

"In the immediate aftermath of 9/11," President Obama said during the process of declassifying the Senate's shocking report on Bush-era CIA torture, "we did some things that were wrong. We did a lot of things that were right, but we tortured some folks." Obama was adamant in his condemnation of torture both before and after he took office, and he made ending American use of torture a major campaign promise.

Now, documents obtained by BuzzFeed News suggest Obama himself may have "tortured some folks" during his presidency. The pages, released through a Freedom of Information Act request, reveal that during Obama's tenure, U.S. interrogators have used a number of techniques that at least border on torture, according to human rights advocates, if not outright cross the line.

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One document obtained also alleged about 300 cases of more serious detainee abuse in Afghanistan by U.S. troops and spies in 2011 and 2012. "Detainees said they were threatened with death, attack dogs, and rape, or their families' lives were threatened," with one detainee claiming "he was beaten and forced to sign a confession he didn't make." The Department of Defense declined to comment to BuzzFeed News about these allegations.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.

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