[Vision2020] "Prosecute Torturers and Their Bosses"

[Rosemary Huskey]

It is my profound hope that prosecutions will soon begin to take place
starting with the cowards and sadists listed below. However, I have little
hope that President Obama has the integrity or the courage to initiate the
appropriate legal process.  Rose Huskey


The Opinion Pages <http://www.nytimes.com/pages/opinion/index.html>  |
Editorial 


Prosecute Torturers and Their Bosses


By  <http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/opinion/editorialboard.html> THE
EDITORIAL BOARDDEC. 21, 2014 

Since the day President Obama took office, he has failed to bring to justice
anyone responsible for the torture of terrorism suspects - an official
government program conceived and carried out in the years after the attacks
of Sept. 11, 2001.

He did allow his Justice Department to investigate the C.I.A.'s destruction
of videotapes of torture sessions and those who may have gone beyond the
torture techniques authorized by President George W. Bush. But the
investigation did not lead
<http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/statement-attorney-general-eric-holder-closur
e-investigation-interrogation-certain-detainees>  to any charges being
filed, or even any accounting of why they were not filed.

Mr. Obama has said
<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/12/us/politics/12inquire.html?pagewanted=all
&_r=1&>  multiple times that "we need to look forward as opposed to looking
backwards," as though the two were incompatible. They are not. The nation
cannot move forward in any meaningful way without coming to terms, legally
and morally, with the abhorrent acts that were authorized, given a false
patina of legality, and committed by American men and women from the highest
levels of government on down.

Americans have known about many of these acts for years, but the 524-page
executive summary
<http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/12/09/world/cia-torture-report-docu
ment.html>  of the Senate Intelligence Committee's report erases any
lingering doubt about their depravity and illegality
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/10/opinion/the-senate-report-on-the-cias-tor
ture-and-lies.html> : In addition to new revelations of sadistic tactics
like "rectal feeding
<http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-12-10/rectal-feeding-of-detainees-called
-abuse-with-guise-of-treatment.html> ," scores of detainees were
waterboarded, hung by their wrists, confined in coffins, sleep-deprived,
threatened with death or brutally beaten. In November 2002, one detainee who
was chained to a concrete floor died of "suspected hypothermia."

These are, simply, crimes. They are prohibited by federal law
<http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2340A> , which defines
<http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2340>  torture as the intentional
infliction of "severe physical or mental pain or suffering." They are also
banned by the Convention Against Torture
<http://www.hrweb.org/legal/cat.html> , the international treaty that the
United States ratified in 1994 and that requires prosecution of any acts of
torture.

So it is no wonder that today's blinkered apologists
<http://www.wsj.com/articles/michael-b-mukasey-the-cia-interrogations-follow
ed-the-law-1418773648>  are desperate to call these acts anything but
torture, which they clearly were. As the report reveals, these claims fail
for a simple reason: C.I.A. officials admitted
<http://justsecurity.org/18221/knew-illegal/>  at the time that what they
intended to do was illegal.

In July 2002, C.I.A. lawyers told the Justice Department that the agency
needed to use "more aggressive methods" of interrogation that would
"otherwise be prohibited by the torture statute." They asked the department
to promise not to prosecute those who used these methods. When the
department refused, they shopped around for the answer they wanted. They got
it from the ideologically driven lawyers in the Office of Legal Counsel, who
wrote memos fabricating a legal foundation for the methods. Government
officials now rely on the memos as proof that they sought and received legal
clearance for their actions. But the report changes the game: We now know
that this reliance was not made in good faith.

No amount of legal pretzel logic can justify the behavior detailed in the
report. Indeed, it is impossible to read it and conclude that no one can be
held accountable. At the very least, Mr. Obama needs to authorize a full and
independent criminal investigation.

The American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch are to give
Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. a letter Monday calling for appointment of
a special prosecutor to investigate what appears increasingly to be "a vast
criminal conspiracy, under color of law, to commit torture and other serious
crimes."

The question everyone will want answered, of course, is: Who should be held
accountable? That will depend on what an investigation finds, and as hard as
it is to imagine Mr. Obama having the political courage to order a new
investigation, it is harder to imagine a criminal probe of the actions of a
former president.

But any credible investigation should include former Vice President Dick
Cheney; Mr. Cheney's chief of staff, David Addington; the former C.I.A.
director George Tenet; and John Yoo and Jay Bybee, the Office of Legal
Counsel lawyers who drafted what became known as the torture memos
<http://www.nytimes.com/ref/international/24MEMO-GUIDE.html> . There are
many more names that could be considered, including Jose Rodriguez Jr., the
C.I.A. official who ordered
<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/03/washington/03web-intel.html>  the
destruction of the videotapes; the psychologists who devised
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/16/us/politics/cia-on-path-to-torture-chose-
haste-over-analysis-.html>  the torture regimen; and the C.I.A. employees
who carried out that regimen.

One would expect Republicans who have gone hoarse braying about Mr. Obama's
executive overreach to be the first to demand accountability, but with one
notable exception
<http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2014/12/09/?entry=6819> ,
Senator John McCain, they have either fallen silent or actively
<http://www.wsj.com/articles/michael-b-mukasey-the-cia-interrogations-follow
ed-the-law-1418773648>  defended
<https://twitter.com/marcorubio/status/542356968737107968>  the indefensible
<http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/congressman-senate-report-not-tortu
re-just-people-having-to?utm_term=4ldqpia&bftw=pol> . They cannot even point
to any results
<http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/12/08/world/does-torture-work-the-c
ias-claims-and-what-the-committee-found.html> : Contrary to repeated claims
by the C.I.A., the report concluded that "at no time" did any of these
techniques yield intelligence that averted a terror attack. And at least 26
detainees were later determined to have been "wrongfully held
<http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/12/09/world/cia-torture-report-docu
ment.html> ."

Starting a criminal investigation is not about payback; it is about ensuring
that this never happens again and regaining the moral credibility to rebuke
torture by other governments. Because of the Senate's report, we now know
the distance officials in the executive branch went to rationalize, and
conceal, the crimes they wanted to commit. The question is whether the
nation will stand by and allow the perpetrators of torture to have perpetual
immunity for their actions.

 

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