I’ve just been reading the torture memos which the Obama administration has released. Read them yourself – please. I’m not sure that I trust myself to describe my reactions, but Andrew certainly speaks for me:
Bybee is not representing justice in this memo. He is representing the president. And the president is seeking to commit war crimes. And he succeeded. This much we now know beyond any reasonable doubt. It is a very dark day for this country, but less dark than every day since Cheney decided to turn the US into a torturing country until now.
Setting aside questions of a “truth commission”, and also whether individual interrogators should be prosecuted, two things stand out very starkly.
- Yoo and Bybee should be disbarred from legal practice – including the teaching of law – for life.
- All of the doctors who supervised the torture sessions have violated their Hippocratic oaths. They should be struck off and never allowed to practice medicine again.