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Yahoo! My Yahoo! Mail Yahoo! Search Search: Sign InNew User? Sign Up News Home - Help Navigation Primary Navigation Home Singapore Asia Pacific World Business Entertainment Sports Technology Top Stories Most Popular Secondary Navigation Africa Europe Latin America Middle East North America Search Search: White House fights back on torture flap AFP - Thursday, April 23 NEWTON (Iowa), (AFP) - - The White House rebuffed calls for an independent prosecutor to probe Bush-era terror interrogations and denied the Obama administration was tied up in political knots over the issue. ADVERTISEMENT Controversy raged anew a day after President Barack Obama appeared to change policy by leaving the door open to prosecutions of officials under former president George W. Bush who devised legal cover for tactics critics have derided as torture. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said flatly that a flurry of news reports proclaiming the administration had switched course on delving further into those behind methods like near drowning, or waterboarding, were wrong. Obama had said Tuesday it was up to Attorney General Eric Holder to decide if former officials broke the law, though he had previously shielded CIA officers who acted under orders to carry out brutal questioning of Al-Qaeda suspects. "The notion that the president is open to anything, I think, misses the point," Gibbs said. "The president doesn't make a determination as to who broke the law," Gibbs said, as Obama flew to Iowa to tout his energy and climate change plan. Obama's remarks caused a stir because his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel had said on Sunday on ABC News that the president did not want to pursue those who "devised policy" and was interesting only in looking forward. Gibbs drew a colorful analogy with what might happen to a reporter if he committed an act of vandalism aboard the presidential jet. "If you spray-paint the back of this plane, if you tear up one of the seats, even though it's Air Force One, the president doesn't make a determination as to who broke the law," he said. "That's a legal official." The spokesman also rejected calls by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) for the appointment of an independent prosecutor to probe the torture issue. "The lawyers that are involved are plenty capable of determining whether any law has been broken," Gibbs said. "I want to stress that that determination is not going to be made by the president, or the vice president, or anybody that works in the White House, because that's why many, many, many, many moons ago we created a Department of Justice." The ACLU called on Monday for Obama to appoint an independent prosecutor to investigate those who took part in "horrific acts of torture," as the political row deepened over Bush-era legal memos justifying the tactics released by the White House last week. It seized on the memos and a new Senate report suggesting top Bush administration officials were behind interrogation practices that spread from Guantanamo Bay to Afghanistan to Iraq. New evidence "makes frighteningly clear that some of the darkest moments in our country's recent past were choreographed at the highest levels of government," ACLU counsel Christopher Anders said. "The people who were at the very top of the Bush administration and those at the top of the chain of command must be held accountable." Three prominent US Senators meanwhile increased the pressure on Obama to rule out prosecutions of former Bush aides, in a letter to the president. "In the interest of national security, it is the future, rather than the past, on which we believe America's gaze must be fixed," said Republicans John McCain and Lindsey Graham, as well as Joseph Lieberman, an independent. The senators also opposed the creation of a commission to look into controversial "war on terrorism" tactics of the past eight years, noting though that they opposed the methods and found some legal reasoning to be wrong. "Providing poor legal advice is always undesirable," they said, "but that is a quite a different matter from making legal advice with which we may disagree into a crime." Obama said on Tuesday that any investigation in Congress should be on an non-partisan basis and outside politically tense hearings process. But the White House denied he was proposing some kind of investigation. Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair said Tuesday some "valuable" information was gleaned using controversial interrogation methods, but that it was unclear if it could also have been obtained "through other means." "The bottom line," Blair said in a statement," is these techniques have hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security." Email Story IM Story Printable View Blog This Recommend this article 0 users recommend Sign in to recommend this article » Most Recommended Stories » Related Articles: World Russian minister arrives in NKorea: state mediaAFP - 1 hour 20 minutes ago Israeli foreign minister to travel to Egypt: radioAFP - 1 hour 54 minutes ago Rice OK'd CIA waterboard request as Bush adviserAP - 2 hours 11 minutes ago US sentences Colombian drug trafficker to 31 yearsAFP - 2 hours 18 minutes ago Clinton defends abortion right worldwideAFP - 2 hours 27 minutes ago Most Popular – World Viewed IMF sees deeper 2009 decline, weak 2010 Robust profits mask problems in bank sector Charred meat linked to pancreatic cancer risk Fertility doctor on brink of cloning human: report 'Silent' heart attacks go unnoticed: study View Complete List » Search: Home Singapore Asia Pacific World Business Entertainment Sports Technology Top Stories Most Popular Copyright © 2009 Yahoo! Southeast Asia Pte Ltd. (Co. Reg. 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