Last Sunday, the disingenuous and discredited (but still happily employed) torture supporter John Yoo wrote an op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer, where he bashed the Department of Justice for leading a "farce" of an ethics investigation that examined his role in authoring the infamous torture memos.
Only problem is, he let a tiny little detail slip into the second paragraph (emphasis mine):
The Justice Department's internal ethics watchdog, known as the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), has waged a witch-hunt against Bush administration lawyers who developed policies to protect the nation after Sept. 11. OPR lawyers -- and the Obama administration -- disagreed with the policy choices made by President Bush on the detention and interrogation of terrorists. But instead of arguing against those policies honestly and openly, they decided to fight them under the pretext of a cooked-up ethics investigation.
You got that? John Yoo just admitted -- in writing -- that George W. Bush made specific policy choices, backed by Bush Administration lawyers (including Yoo), to authorize the brutal detention and torture of war prisoners. That seems to follow pretty nicely from Dick Cheney's on-camera admission that he was a "big supporter of waterboarding" a little more than two weeks ago.
None of that is terribly surprising; those of us who have been closely following the illegality of the Bush Administration's actions vis-a-vis the treatment of Guantanamo detainees were fully aware that it was not the work of a "few bad apples," but rather the work of those at the very top. However, you would think that if John Yoo and Dick Cheney not only announced that they "support" waterboarding but that they (and their former boss) penned and signed memos declaring such an inhumane interrogation method to be acceptable -- that there would be a full criminal investigation of those who admitted to those crimes and others suspected of being culpable. Unfortunately, you'd be wrong.
That's what's really unconscionable and reprehensible about our national discourse over the Bush Administration's torture regime. Political officials are somehow allowed to publicly admit their roles in approving the torture of prisoners, yet they face no criminal trials or charges. They are allowed to frame something as despicable as torture as a "policy choice" that should be debated -- like it's a tax cut -- rather than a crime that is required to be investigated. They are permitted to argue in a widely distributed newspaper that the Bush Administration's interrogation methods didn't constitute torture, even though those methods included "waterboarding, hypothermia, long-time standing, sleep deprivation in excess of two days and the use of psychotropic drugs" -- and if that wasn't enough, the slicing of a man's genitals. How can a person admit to authorizing these things and not face the consequences?
Think of it this way: If your average Joe Schmo wrote an op-ed in the Philly Inquirer confessing that he murdered someone ten years ago (or that he paid a hitman to murder that person), he would be arrested, prosecuted, investigated, tried in a criminal court, and most likely convicted, if his confession were true. At least, that's what we're supposed to do in a nation of laws, and I highly doubt we'd be describing an investigation of a real, confessed murderer as a "farce." But for some reason, those who authorize a war crime like torture are not only given a free pass, but celebrated as a featured speaker at a conservative political conference and employed at a prestigious law school.
Never mind the fact that there actually have been more than 100 detainees in U.S. custody who have died as a direct result of those brutal interrogation methods permitted by the Bush Administration. Apparently, if you're John Yoo, and you admit that you and the President of the United States established a torture regime, you're completely shielded from accountability: Authorizing torture is necessary to "protect national security," and any investigation into those who authorized it is both a "farce" and a "witch hunt," because even if it's illegal, it's still necessary to "protect the nation." Yes, this is the same John Yoo who believes that the President has the legal power to order the massacre of an entire village of citizens. How can he admit to all of this and get away with it?
Suffice it to say, I completely disagree with anyone who will argue that we need to "look forward, not backward" with respect to prosecuting those who authorized torture -- and that includes the Obama Administration. Avoiding criminal investigations of those responsible (for whatever reason) allows our political officials to break the law with impunity and commit war crimes without accountability. Both the Geneva Conventions and the U.N. Convention Against Torture are quite clear on the definition and prohibition of torture:
To this end, the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons:
(a) violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;
Article 1:
For the purposes of this Convention, torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.
.....
Article 4:
Each State Party shall ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law. The same shall apply to an attempt to commit torture and to an act by any person which constitutes complicity or participation in torture.
If we really are a nation of laws and not men, then those responsible for committing war crimes must be prosecuted for those laws to have any meaning. What is the point of having these laws if they are not enforced? What is the purpose of law if justice is not served?