General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Forgive me if I roll my eyes at your precious outrage about torture. [View all]Vattel
(9,289 posts)Obama gave us an executive order which is the weakest response possible. He or the next president can rescind it at any time. If he or Congress were really serious about reducing the likelihood of future torture and assuring the world that we have changed our ways, we should amend the Torture Act and the War Crimes Act to make practices like waterboarding unambiguously criminal under those criminal statutes. Both of those acts are well-intentioned but they are horrible pieces of legislation. Due to their ambiguity, John Yoo and others in the Bush DOJ were able to argue that waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques did not violate them. I don't buy Yoo's arguments, but it would be better to make the statutes unambiguous than to argue subtle points of interpretation with the likes of Yoo. Strong criminal prohibitions would not stop extremists about presidential war powers from arguing that the President is above the law on matters of national security, but they would be a much greater obstacle to torture than an executive order.