Despite the last year’s flood of revelations about torture – first-person accounts of torture at “black site” secret prisons, Justice Department memos secretly “legalizing” “enhanced interrogation techniques,” the inspector general report cataloging abuses that exceeded what Bush’s lawyers approved – one fact has remained constant: the Obama Administration has been unwilling and unable to confront the legacy of torture inherited from the Bush Administration. About this ambivalence and reluctance, one thing is certain: it reflects that of the country.

Mark Danner, a UC Berkeley professor of journalism, has covered war, foreign affairs and political violence for two decades. He is the author of Torture and Truth (2004) and, most recently, Stripping Bare the Body: Politics Violence War.

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