The Times Catches Up With Us

by tristero

There’s a pretty good editorial on the high level torture approvals by the Bush administration today in the Times, what Digby, Dday, and I – as well as others in the blogosphere have been complaining loudly about since April 11 when ABC published and broadcastBush Aware of Advisers' Interrogation Talks. Here’s an excerpt from the Times editorial:

We have long known that the Justice Department tortured the law to give its Orwellian blessing to torturing people, and that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved a list of ways to abuse prisoners. But recent accounts by ABC News and The Associated Press said that all of the president’s top national security advisers at the time participated in creating the interrogation policy: Vice President Dick Cheney; Mr. Rumsfeld; Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser; Colin Powell, the secretary of state; John Ashcroft, the attorney general; and George Tenet, the director of central intelligence.

These officials did not have the time or the foresight to plan for the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq or the tenacity to complete the hunt for Osama bin Laden. But they managed to squeeze in dozens of meetings in the White House Situation Room to organize and give legal cover to prisoner abuse, including brutal methods that civilized nations consider to be torture.

Mr. Bush told ABC News this month that he knew of these meetings and approved of the result.

Those who have followed the story of the administration’s policies on prisoners may not be shocked. We have read the memos from the Justice Department redefining torture, claiming that Mr. Bush did not have to follow the law, and offering a blueprint for avoiding criminal liability for abusing prisoners.

The amount of time and energy devoted to this furtive exercise at the very highest levels of the government reminded us how little Americans know, in fact, about the ways Mr. Bush and his team undermined, subverted and broke the law in the name of saving the American way of life.

We have questions to ask, in particular, about the involvement of Ms. Rice…

I have two equally urgent, perhaps more urgent questions: since impeachment is not, and will not, be on the table, is there anything that can be done to stop present torturing and prevent future torture by Bush?

Second, what laws can be passed to prevent any future administration from torturing those in its grip, be they called “prisoners,” “non-comabatants,” or anything else?