Via Mark Kleiman, Dahlia Lithwick and Philippe Sands observe that the Torture Convention, to which the United States is a signatory, “every state has a treaty obligation to criminalize torture, and to prosecute torturers itself or extradite them for prosecution elsewhere.”
Again, I completely understand the Obama administration’s hesitancy to open their new administration with this particular issue. But simply deciding to let it slide and say bygones are bygones isn’t a very viable strategy. Torture is illegal in the United States, a legal obligation exists to prosecute torturers, we have at least one legal determination that torturing has happened (and this is absent an inquiry) and many credible further allegations of such, we have confirmation that waterboarding—which has always been considered torture until Dick Cheney came along—has taken place, and we have a President-Elect about to take an oath to, among other things, “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”
Something has to be done. Ideally something that isn’t—and doesn’t look like—an unseemly partisan witch hunt.
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