Should members of the Bush Administration be prosecuted for torture?

Yes

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by Sandi Crain

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It's time to face the facts and deal with the way in which the U.S. has waged the War on Terror. The newly released, though still very redacted, Inspector General Report from the CIA has made it clear. The U.S. has been torturing prisoners and it's not just a "few bad apples" in the military or private mercenary, but a result of orders that came from the top.

Sometime in 2002, George Tenet, Dick Cheney, Condoleeza Rice and John Ashcroft, held a meeting in which they discussed in detail which torture methods they could get away with using on prisoners held by the U.S. In 2003, when the CIA sought confirmation on these techniques they were being asked to perform, the administration once again gave the go-ahead.

It's also recently come out that the White House pressured interrogators to use torture in order to gain false information that would back up the story that Saddam Hussein did, indeed, have weapons of mass destruction. Regardless of Dick Cheney's belief that the U.S. would have to court the Dark Side in the War on Terror, it's just plain wrong.

Our treatment of prisoners in this war has been extremely unconstitutional. The act of pulling suspects off the streets and allowing them to disappear into prisons, violates the 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th amendments, as stated in the Bill of Rights. Article 6 of the U.S. Constitution requires the U.S. to accept all treaties signed as Law of the Land and making the Geneva Conventions an extension of that Constitution.

Regardless of what name one chooses to call our prisoners, our treatment of them breaks the law and those who broke that law should be prosecuted under the laws that they chose to manipulate or simply ignore.

One of the arguments against prosecution that is often used is that the "enhanced interrogation methods" weren't really torture. This is faulty reasoning. The hundreds of prisoners who have died in U.S. custody are physical proof that these methods were cruel, inhuman, and degrading acts of violence.

Many of the interrogators, themselves, questioned the legality of what they were being ordered to do. The recently released CIA IG report specifically states that "unauthorized, improvised, inhumane, and undocumented detention and interrogation methods were used"-(section 258 IG Report).

What many fail to consider while deciding for themselves if these methods are right or wrong is that few if any of these prisoners are guilty of any crime. Some were rounded up for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Others were "sold" to the U.S. by questionable characters. Some were women and children. By denying them the basic rights of Habeas Corpus that most of us enjoy, these prisoners have had no way to defend their innocence. It used to be Innocent Until Proven Guilty in the U.S. Now, apparently, it's Guilty Because We Have the Biggest Guns.

We must prosecute the offenders including those that at the top who were responsible for creating the atmosphere in which torture was committed in our names. If we don't, this will continue. Although the Obama administration claims they have outlawed torture they still are continuing rendition to countries that do allow torture.

Although Obama claims he wants to finally give these prisoners basic human rights, he still admits that some cannot be tried in court or allowed to go free. Is this because they have been tortured so badly that it would embarrass the U.S. for the world to see them?

Jesus once said, 'the Truth shall set you free". This is good advice. Let's get this all out into the open and deal with it honestly. If we drag our heels because it's too difficult to face, we will only be hurting ourselves. Eventually, some other country will prosecute the U.S. for its crimes and we will only look weak and pitiful to the rest of the world.

If we take a stand here and put the Bush administration in front of an impartial judge and jury, we take one big step towards repairing our reputations and regaining our dignity. With courage and will, we can fix what our leaders have broken.

And we have to do it now. Using the excuse that there's already so much on the political table to worry about it now is no excuse. We have three separate branches of government and each one of those branches is capable of multitasking. There is absolutely no reason that the judicial branch can't get busy on this.

As it stands today, the organizations responsible for the information that we do have are human rights and citizen grassroots organizations. It's high time for the justice system to put that blindfold back on their eyes, stop protecting their high-powered friends, and administer "justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent . . . under the Constitution and laws of the United States" (the Judicial Oath of Office).

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