Torture: Investigate and learn (Orange county register via Yuma Sun)

[struggle4progress]

... Documents released by the government make it clear that the CIA did use enhanced interrogation techniques that have been defined as torture when done by operatives from other countries, including the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding, sleep deprivation, nakedness in extreme cold, beatings, threats against relatives, forcing uncomfortable postures for long periods and more.

The Obama administration has said it does not intend to prosecute CIA operatives who relied on these and other memos that appeared to authorize such techniques as legal.

But there is a strong case for prosecution. The Convention Against Torture, signed in 1988 by then-President Ronald Reagan and ratified by the Senate in 1994, requires signatories to investigate allegations of torture and to "submit the case to its competent authorities for the purpose of prosecution ... No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture … An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture."

If we believe that the rule of law applies to rulers as well as to the ruled, to government employees as well as to ordinary citizens – which is the essence of the rule of law – then at least an investigation of both those who committed and those who ordered or authorized torture, up to and including the man in the Oval Office, would seem appropriate ...

http://www.yumasun.com/opinion/torture-50604-war-interrogation.html