That may be true, but there’s an aspect of one of Brennan’s recent speeches that, if actually implemented, would have the opposite effect.

As Spencer Ackerman reported here earlier, Brennan, in his speech to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, declared an end to the “war on terror.”

“This is not a ‘war on terror,’” Brennan said. “We cannot let the terror prism guide how we’re going to interact and be involved in different parts of the world.”

Well, if that’s the case, then how is the Obama administration going to justify “preventive detention” of terror suspects under the laws of war?

That power to detain supposedly “dangerous” people who can’t be proven guilty in any sort of court is a power the Bush administration relied on heavily and the Obama administration continues to claim. It’s at the core of President Obama’s claim that there’s a class of people who cannot be tried in criminal court or even by military commission, yet still must be held in prison because they’re “dangerous.”  That’s all been justified legally by saying that we’re at “war,” and terror suspects are warriors in the “war on terror.”

Now that the Brennan has declared an end to that war, is the Obama administration willing to relinquish its right to detain terror suspects picked up anywhere in the world?

So far, Obama has not made clear how he intends to use this “preventive detention” authority he claims that he has, though it’s as broad a detention authority as Bush Attorney General Michael Mukasey claimed over a year ago. But if Brennan really has the sway over the administration that Wheeler suggests he does, then maybe Obama will soon have to concede that the “war on terror” is over — and so is his corresponding power to seize and imprison its supposed “warriors” anywhere in the world.

Also tomorrow, after numerous delays, the Obama administration is expected to produce a much-anticipated 2004 CIA inspector general’s report with more details and criticism of the Bush administration’s interrogation tactics.

As I explained in my last post on the Jawad case, the Obama administration is trying to keep holding Jawad — who’s been in U.S. custody without charge for almost seven years — based on those tortured confessions, which even a military judge previously deemed too unreliable to use in his military commission case.

The ACLU will argue tomorrow that the federal judge in Jawad’s habeas corpus case should rule that evidence gathered through torture is still too unreliable — and therefore inadmissible — to be the basis for continuing to keep him in prison indefinitely.

Although the Jawad case appears to be the first in which the Obama is seeking to rely on evidence obtained through torture, it’s just one of many examples of the government’s refusal to acknowledge the legacy of torture under the Bush administration — and its consequences.

There are, of course, the now-notorious photographs of detainee abuse that the Obama administration has kept from being released, despite the orders of a federal court to turn them over. And then there’s the fact, which Glenn Greenwald, Marcy Wheeler, Daily Kos and John Sifton have been writing about, that there are a whole lot of unsolved murders and mysterious autopsy reports concerning the brutal deaths of detainees in U.S. custody, for which almost no one has been held accountable.

In many cases, these deaths weren’t the result of waterboarding or some other act that Obama administration officials have admitted are torture; they seem to have been the result of ordinary “enhanced” interrogations:  beatings, stress positions, food and sleep deprivation and the like.

According to a report from Human Rights First, about 100 detainees have died in U.S. custody since August 2002, but only 12 deaths have resulted in punishment of any kind for U.S. officials.

The ACLU has embarked on an important campaign for accountability for the torture and abuse that U.S. officials have inflicted on detainees. That includes ongoing efforts to unearth more information, to press for prosecutions of those who authorized the abuse, and to compensate the victims, many of whom, like Jawad, still remain in U.S. custody.

Tomorrow’s brief arguing that tortured evidence shouldn’t be the basis for continuing to hold detainees is a small but important step.

But the President’s speech seemed primarily aimed at stopping torture abroad, which is presumably why he’s called on the State Department to get involved. But what about torture committed by our own government?

I know some are still debating which techniques constitute “torture” — such as in this scolding piece from The Washington Times — but because the Convention Against Torture, which the president was commemorating, prohibits torture AND cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, as I’ve noted before, at this point we can put that debate aside. There’s little question that the sort of techniques engaged in by U.S. government officials — whether partial drowning, “walling,” weeks of sleep and food deprivation or locking detainees inside a tiny box with what were believed to be deadly insects is, at the very least, cruel and degrading.

It’s odd, therefore, as Marcy points out, to see the president — who vowed on his third day in office to end torture — refusing to prosecute those who engaged in acts that clearly violate the anti-torture convention he commemorated on Friday.

As Marcy put it: “Mr. President, the agency that must take the lead in stopping torture is the Department of Justice. The effective policies for stopping torture you’re looking for? They start with prosecuting torture.”

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As I first reported in February, the case — al-Haramain Islamic Foundation v. Obama — challenges the federal government’s warrantless wiretapping program.  The now-defunct Islamic charity is suing the government for wiretapping the group and its lawyers in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA.

The Obama administration, like the Bush administration before it, asserted the “state secrets” privilege, saying that the entire subject matter of the case — the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping program — was a state secret, and disclosing any details about it to the the lawyers representing the Islamic charity would pose a national security threat. The judge rejected that argument, as did the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

But the Obama administration wasn’t going to let some federal judge tell it what to do. In March, it argued that Walker lacked the authority to reveal the secret document that supposedly proves al-Haramain was wiretapped. The Justice Department even went so far as to threaten to remove the document from the judge’s files.

In short, the Obama administration seemed to be setting up a direct standoff between the executive branch and the federal judiciary.

On Friday, the court rejected the Obama administration’s arguments and ordering the Justice Department to work out a procedure with al-Haramain’s lawyers by May 8 to allow them to view the secret document in a way that won’t compromise national security.

Let’s see what the Justice Department does now.