17th
David Cole vs. Former Bush Advisor on Torture Memos
“Prosecution would be dangerous,” the former Bushie says. Yes it would be—for the guilty.
By Jeremy Scahill
David Cole, the tenacious human rights lawyer and constitutional law scholar who has represented Maher Arar and other victims of the US torture complex has weighed in on the release of the Bush torture memos. In a short essay for The New York Times, Cole wrote the following:
President Obama should be commended for releasing these memos. But his simultaneous assertion that he will not seek to hold accountable those responsible for the wrongs so evident on the memos’ face is unacceptable. The line C.I.A. agents are not, however, the most culpable. Rather, it is the lawyers and high-level government officials who set this scheme in motion and made it possible. These documents are irrefutable evidence that government officials, including lawyers employed in the Office of Legal Counsel, a Justice Department office meant to serve as the “constitutional conscience” of the Executive Branch, set out to manipulate the law to reach repugnant, illegal results that contravene the very ideals President Obama says must not be sacrificed.
It is not enough to say that when we have a president who does not believe in cruel and inhuman treatment and torture, the United States will not engage in such practices – while leaving open the possibility that if we again elect a president who does believe in such practices, they can be revived as a policy option. We must formally acknowledge that what was done was wrong, indeed criminal. At the very least, a credible independent investigation must be undertaken. The Convention Against Torture, which we have signed and ratified, demands nothing less wherever there is any evidence that persons within our jurisdiction inflicted cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment on another human being. These memos are that evidence.
As a counter-point to Cole, the Times printed a short essay by Kori Schake, a former national security advisor to Bush on defense issues. Her essay had the ironic (?) title “Prosecution Would Be Dangerous:”
The agency believed it had in custody enemies planning catastrophic terrorist attacks against our country and were urgently seeking information. The C.I.A. sought legal counsel and complied with the advice. Subjecting people to prosecution under those circumstances would be a dangerous politicization of difficult choices made by those serving our country.
I’m sorry, but a three year old would have used their own brain (or heart) in making that “difficult choice” about whether something was really wrong with slamming someone against a wall thirty times or placing a human being in a box for hours at a time or simulating drowning. No lawyer’s advice necessary. Yes, Ms. Schake, prosecution would be dangerous—for the torturers, their bosses and their lawyers. For the country and the world it would be progress.
