Yesterday, the torture condundrum was spelled out in vivid detail: Spain's Attorney General said prosecutors are recommending against opening an investigation into whether the top-level "Bush Six" sanctioned torture because they were not present when the alleged torture took place. Meanwhile, President Barack Obama said that the CIA officials carrying out torture policies crafted and approved by the Justice Department will not be prosecuted.
Crystal eyes note the absurdity: Absolved because you were ordered to torture by those who are absolved because they were not there.
A brilliant piece of twisted dark logic that renders justice not only blind but impotent.
An entire class of CIA operatives get blanket immunity while people like myself, Thomas Tamm and others who exposed Bush illegality were criminally investigated and are still suffering the fallout.
No one is accountable. Everyone's hands are still dirty.
While I applaud President Obama for releasing the secret OLC memos, which is a huge victory for transparency, I don't agree that no one should be prosecuted for inflicting:
* cramped, dark confinement (plus insects)- no more than 18 hours/day
* "the waterboard" [their scare quotes, not mine]- no more than 2 hours/session
* walling [slamning a prisoner against a wall]- no more than 20-30 times consecutively
* extended sleep deprivation - no more than 11 days
Reading Spain and America's torture stances together, we can't prosecute the top officials who devised and blessed torture because they "weren't there," nor can we prosecute the CIA officials who carried it out because they were just following orders.
Candido Conde-Pumpido, Spain's Attorney General, said:
If one is dealing with a crime of mistreatment of prisoners of war, the complaint should go against those who physically carried it out.
(Spain has obviously not adopted the legal concept of vicarious liability, which imputes legal responsibility for acts of another.)
Meanwhile, President Obama issued a statement on the release of torture memos by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), assuring
those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice will not be subject to prosecution.
You can read Obama's statement in full here: http://www.nytimes.com/.... (President Obama appears to endorse the much-discredited "Nuremberg defense," popular with Nazi defendants, that they were "just following orders" and are therefore not responsible for their crimes.)
In theory, torture is unequivocally and absolutely forbidden by the law of civilized nations, which used to include the United States. No other practice except slavery is so universally and unanimously condemned in law and human convention. But in practice, it is painstakingly prescribed, carried out, condoned and excused.
"The day we stop condemning torture--although we tortured--is the day we stop being human beings." Those are the words not of our world leaders, but of an Argentinian torturer in Argentina's Dirty War.
By immunizing those who carried out torture, and refusing to investigate, much less prosecute, those who devised and authorized this conduct of the lowest moral order, we have lost our soul.