The worst approach is to let Dianne Feinstein stall everything and have the Senate Intelligence Committee investigate. Nobody has done worse than the Senate Intelligence Committee so far.
This is a rare moment when the country is seeing just how things have worked in official D.C. With sufficient pressure, we can force Obama, Holder and the media to do the right thing.
The following ten approaches can all be done simultaneously:
- Pressure Holder to appoint a special prosecutor;
- Impeach Jay Bybee. He will not be convicted by the Senate - that takes two thirds - but Conyers, if he has the nerve, can force witnesses to testify under oath.
- Force those who ordered and enabled torture to resign from prestigious positions - for example, why is Haynes the chief counsel for Chevron?
- Use state bar associations to disbar the torture lawyers - Addington, Haynes, Rizzo (still working for Obama!), Yoo, Bradbury, etc.
- Support the investigative reporters pulling out the news - particularly Wheeler, Danner, and
- Force the mainstream inside the beltway press to ask hard questions of the torture leaders - no softballs as usual.
- Fund the nonprofits extracting documents under the freedom of information act, particularly the Center for Constitutional Rights and the ACLU;
- Put religious denominations on the record that torture is a sin, and push the pastors of those who tortured or enabled it to preach about it.
- Make sure that no university gives cover to those who enabled torture by awarding an honorary degree; and
- Review all Congressional testimony under oath by those who enabled or approved torture for evidence of perjury, and when found, prosecute.
A Truth Commission is not a bad approach. But it is too often used in official Washington to delay and create opportunities for public posturing.
Unless the torturers - particularly those who approved it, such as Rice, Cheney and Rumsfeld - are prosecuted, there is only one thing we can be sure of. Someday in the future, the CIA or others of its ilk will torture in our name again.