Now that those who destroyed the CIA torture tapes, and those who ordered them to do it, are clear of the statute of limitations for obstruction of justice charges...
...they can no longer rely on 5th Amendment protections against self-incrimination on this particular matter, since they cannot be prosecuted for it...
...so, a court could compel them to testify about the destruction of evidence of torture. Perhaps they would even have to testify about the evidence of torture itself, upon pain of a contempt of court sentence.
And, torture charges have no statute of limitations.
Therefore, while the injustice of torture enablers getting away with their misdeeds is an awful event, from that particularly bitter lemon there is sweet lemonade to be made in getting to the actual torturers and the individuals who ordered it.
But, our present "Department of Justice" would never do it.
Remember this one?
Attorney General-designate Eric Holder acknowledged that waterboarding is torture. Torture is a federal crime. It is the Attorney General's job to prosecute federal crimes. And yet, Mr. Holder refuses to prosecute the self-admitted torturers.
emptywheel calls it: so much for the law. So much for the mathematical transitive property of equality, even!
:: ::
What would it take to make the United States of America a free, representative republic? It would mean the people asserting their ultimate power and responsibility to demand prosecution for torture. It would mean that those without power, us, gain it, and some of those with lose it. In the literal and in a limited sense, that's a revolution — not against the government, but against the people who enjoy unaccountable, concentrated power. And that would take the coalescing of a national mass movement.
What's the constituency for freedom and equality before just law?