Torture is back on the radar

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Torture is back on the radar, big time.

Dick Cheney is all over the television machine telling us that enhanced interrogation techniques are not torture and that anyway they worked, really, really worked in “keeping the country safe after 9/11.” Yet he cannot name one piece of solid intelligence that came out of those torturous interrogations.

Will President Obama seek to prosecute the torturers? I doubt it. But Eric Holder at the Department of Justice? The jury is still out.

As I’ve said before, I believe that we need to investigate this issue thoroughly, then prosecute where appropriate. I don’t think this should become the hallmark of the administration. I think it should be worked on quietly but purposefully and with great determination on the part of the investigators and prosecutors.

Of course, we are faced with the question of how far up and how far down the chain of command we want to go.

No one really wants to see a former President of the United States sitting in the docket being questioned about his actions while in office. No one even wants to see a former Vice President in the same situation, but we may have no choice if Mr. Cheney continues to advertise to the world that he knew these techniques were being used, that he knows for a fact that former President Bush knew they were being used, that Donald Rumsfeld approved them, that the whole point of the famous torture memos was to provide comfort for the people down the chain who otherwise probably would have objected and refused to take part in them.

That’s the down the chain piece. It’s easy to see that Mr. Yoo should be punished. He knew better than that. It’s easy to me to see that the Secretary of Defense and the head of the CIA and the people just below them should be punished. These are not naïve people. They have been dealing with the question of the Geneva Conventions for decades, and surely they should know that there is no excuse for looking away. If nothing else, they must have seen “Judgment at Nuremberg” at some point in their lives.

Part of me is gleeful that Mr. Cheney keeps hanging himself and his friends. Part of me wants to give him some more rope. But part of me also wants him to SHUT UP! I am already upset that this happened. Not so much horrified, although there is some of that. No, more embarrassed and ashamed.

How can I ever face anyone from a country that we have condemned for torturing prisoners? I learned the moral bankruptcy of “Do as I say, not as I do” when I was a child. It never worked for my parents and, for the most part, they didn’t do things they didn’t want me to do. When I had a child, the sentiment led me to clean up my act in many ways, from quitting smoking (twice) to getting involved in making the world a better place.

I’m not saying that America is the world’s parent, any more than we can be the world’s police force.

What I am saying is that we have to stop acting like we’re a spoiled pre-teen who thinks rules are meant to be broken.
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