Hillary Clinton: Pass torture laws

Hillary Clinton on Tuesday heaped praise on the Obama administration for banning “brutal interrogations” and called for legislative action — the first comments from the former secretary of state since the CIA torture report was made public.

In a speech before a well-heeled crowd honoring a liberal hero, Clinton took a sharp swing at the George W. Bush era while appealing to her party’s growing coalition of black and Hispanic voters, who propelled President Barack Obama to the White House.


“There’s no doubt that at home and abroad America is at our best when our actions match our values,” Clinton said as she was honored at the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights gala in midtown Manhattan.

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“Yes the threat of terrorism is real and urgent — scores of children were just murdered in Pakistan. Beheadings in the Middle East. A siege in Sydney. These tragedies not only break hearts but should steel our resolve and underscore that our values are what set us apart from our adversaries. I am proud to have been a part of the Obama administration that banned illegal renditions and brutal interrogations.

“Today we can say again, in a loud and clear voice, the United States should never condone and practice torture anywhere in the world,” said Clinton, adding that it should be reflected in “both policy and law … if that requires new legislation, then Congress should work with President Obama to quickly enact it and it should not be an issue of partisan politics.”

In her speech, in which she repeatedly invoked Kennedy, the slain civil rights icon, she referred repeatedly to the protests over the deaths of two black men at the hands of police.

“We can stand up together and say ‘Yes, black lives matter,’” said Clinton, a reference to the slogan used by protesters nationally in the wake of the deaths of unarmed black men in Staten Island and in Ferguson, Missouri.

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But she made only a glancing reference to the legislative fight in her own party led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) last week over the so-called “cromnibus” bill and a provision stripping some power from the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill. Warren is being urged by some progressives to challenge Clinton if she seeks the 2016 Democratic nomination.

Instead of speaking in strictly economic terms, Clinton talked more broadly about championing the have-nots in the United States’ racial and financial divide. That message, and her deference to Kennedy, a revered liberal figure, could appeal to her party’s base, which increasingly comprises black and Hispanic voters.

Still, Clinton strongly denounced torture methods employed during the George W. Bush era against possible terror suspects on the same day the former president’s brother, Jeb Bush, edged closer to a presidential run of his own. It made clear the early contours of a policy debate that would in part pit the second Bush White House years against the Bill Clinton era. Jeb Bush has not yet publicly commented on the torture report.

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She quoted Sen. John McCain, one of her Republican opponents in 2008 and a war hero who was tortured while a prisoner of war, in denouncing the use of such practices.

She said the United States needs to keep the country safe and “reaffirm” the “strength of its character … without relying on torture abroad or unnecessary force or excessive incarceration at home.”

Kennedy “understood everyone in every community benefited when there is respect for the law and when everyone in every community is respected by the law.”

Clinton spoke at length about racial disparities in the post-Kennedy era.

She said that she wonders what Kennedy would think “when 16 million children live in poverty in the richest nation on earth … [when] such a large portion of economic gains have gone to such a small [group]. … Progress we have made has not closed the wealth gap between black and Hispanic families and white families, it’s actually grown wider.”

Clinton described the interconnection between economic disparities and “gaps” in how blacks and Hispanics are treated in contrast whites, saying people need to stand up and say “that inequality is not inevitable.”

Clinton, who was criticized by some for speaking out on the Ferguson and Garner cases late in the process, cited statistics showing “African-American men are still far more likely to be stopped and searched by police … a third of all black men face the prospect of prison [at some point and black men are] 20 times more likely to be shot dead by a police officer than a young white man.”

“What would Robert Kennedy say to the thousands [of people] marching in our streets demanding justice for all … young people with their eyes open and their hands up,” she said, later praising the hardworking officers who set the model for good police work.

She said she too many people have shuddered at images of excessive police force but “read reports about torture done in the name of our country [and] see too many representatives in Washington quick to protect a big bank from regulation, but slow to take action to help working families facing ever greater pressures.”

Of Kennedy, she said, “I’d like to believe that he would remind us that in America there have often been wide and tragic gaps between promise and performance ideal and reality and that the calling of our country is to extend and enlarge the meaning and the practice of freedom to all of our people.”

She said that remnants of segregation and discrimination don’t need to be “perpetuated,” and that even though “some of the economic disparities may stem from long-term trends in globalization … we don’t have to give in to them … the choices we make matter.”

“I believe Robert Kennedy would be telling us to restore a sense of security and potential to families struggling and worrying,” she added.

Americans, she said, “are understandably frustrated by all the division and polarization. … It’s easy to get discouraged; it’s also easy to get angry to lose sight of the common” humanity.

In words that could apply to what voters are looking for from both Clinton and Bush, the former secretary of state said, “Robert Kennedy was the privileged heir to a famous name yet that never stopped him from finding the humanity in everyone. … He had the great gift of seeing the world through [other people’s] eyes, imagining what it was like to walk in their shoes.”

The event also honored actor Robert De Niro and singer Tony Bennett. Clinton sat with them at a head table alongside Ethel Kennedy, Robert Kennedy’s widow.

Throughout the evening, people made references to Clinton potentially running for president, from De Niro to Kerry Kennedy, Robert Kennedy’s daughter.

During a break for dinner, the crowd looking to squeeze Clinton’s hand or take selfies with her swelled so large that a Hilton hotel staffer came over the intercom and said the Secret Service had asked people to clear the aisle around the head table.

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