Let the chips fall

November 14, 2005. That’s the date of my first post addressing the use of torture by the Bush administration. (Run a Pied Type search on “torture” to see the rest.) My mind was made up long before the current, increasingly heated discussion began. Suffice it to say that while the media, the pundits, and the politicians from both parties are playing gotcha with all this, I’m sitting here impatiently waiting for the unavoidable, inescapable conclusion that torture did take place; that the orders to employ it, hide it, and lie about it originated in the Bush White House; and that heads at the highest level should roll for this systematic, intentional violation of the laws of humanity and of international law as stated in the Geneva Conventions.

Methinks they doth protest too much … Cheney, Rove and their ilk. The more this heats up and the longer it goes on, the louder they howl that it was not torture — and even if it was, it was justified. Cheney (why isn’t he gone, anyway?)  and the GOP have back-pedaled and back-pedaled until their defense has become not so much a defense but a protest that all the information hasn’t been released yet, that we haven’t heard yet what information was obtained by the “not-torture.” Sooo, once we see that information, the torture somehow, magically, won’t be torture anymore? ’Scuse me? How does that work?

I hope Eric Holder is busy sharpening his figurative pens and drafting those subpoenas and other legal documents. Because, god forbid, if we don’t police ourselves and hold ourselves accountable for what happened, I see absolutely no reason why the rest of the world shouldn’t step in and do it. The United States is no more above international law than our president is above US law.

Of interest: Executive Summary, Senate Armed Services Committee Inquiry into the Treatment of  Detainees in U.S. Custody