A Dark Day for Justice

By Jeremy Scahill

Reading through the torture memos today, it is important not to be numb to the fact that what we are reading are the cold, merciless legal justifications for atrocious acts committed against other human beings. The banging of prisoners’ heads into walls, the simulated drowning, the placing of human beings inside of small boxes—these were all acts done in our name.

How dark a day this is when, on this day, when these torture memos are released, President Obama chooses to assure CIA torturers that they have nothing to fear because they were just following the law. “This is a time for reflection, not retribution,” Obama said today. What about a time for justice? Justice for the victims. Justice for the constitution. Justice for the law.

Obama said “it is our intention to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution.” Their duties? Reading these memos, how can one even think of describing torture of a fellow human being as a duty? That was part of the total sickness of what Bush and his cronies did and authorized others to do.

The lawyers who wrote these memos outlining acceptable torture for the CIA interrogators are just as complicit and guilty as those who strapped the prisoners to the gurney for waterboarding, or pushed them inside the box or told the men that their families would be retaliated against if they did not cooperate.

Despite all of the history that precedes this moment in time, once again “the law” is being used to justify war crimes. What about the Nuremberg principles? It is only through justice that our country would send a message to the world and to future US administrations that this will never again be tolerated. But that is not the message sent.

If justice was at the center of the release of these memos, then rather than assuring torturers that they would not be prosecuted because they were, “in good faith,” following unjust laws and legal proclamations, the president had issued a statement of contrition for these crimes and publicly assured the victims that they would find justice. Instead, he has assured the criminals they shall escape it. The shame continues.

This is a dark day.