New Haven Independent

It is unimportant whether or not the individuals we tortured were saints or sinners.

And please, no attempted parsing of language to suggest that waterboarding or stress positions isn’t torture. You and I both know it is. Let’s not kid ourselves anymore.

It was torture when the Japanese did it during WWII and when the Spanish did it during the Inquisition. No amount of loud-mouthed blowhard talk show hosts with questionable values are going to suddenly make “torture” into a new theme ride at Disney.

In our silence we are as guilty as the individuals who put the rags down people’s throats and then poured water over them to simulate drowning.

The details of the atrocities are still emerging, along with who knew what and when. One thing is abundantly clear: The United States must thoroughly investigate how it came to pass that a country like ours became no better than Saddam Hussein’s.

You remember him, right? He was the former president of Iraq who had thousands tortured. You may also recall that the U.S. invaded Iraq in part to save its people from this despotic leader.

And in those cases where we didn’t directly torture people, the CIA sent them over to countries that do. We don’t know how many disappeared into prisons in other countries never to be seen again.

So much for that moral high ground we used to inhabit.

Once we figure out who gave the orders and who approved them and then who implemented them, we should indict all them. Every last one. From the private “just following orders” to the Commander-in-Chief (if that is the case) who signed off on them.

“Just following orders” didn’t work in Nuremberg. It shouldn’t work now and it is beyond insulting to suggest otherwise.

High on that list? Individuals like now federal Judge Jay Bybee, who at the time was an assistant attorney general. He drafted the “top secret” memo that provided the legal justification for “enhanced interrogation procedures” as far back as August 2002.

You can read the entire memo here.

Everyone involved knew better. And if they didn’t know better or thought this was some scene out of “24,” then that is even more of a reason to separate them from the rest of “civilized” society before their pornographic amorality infects others.

Much as President Obama would like to do nothing else but be “forward looking” and let the “past-be-the-past,” these were war crimes.

We have an ethical, moral and legal responsibility to find and prosecute those individuals responsible for war crimes done in your name and mine.

You and I deserve no less.