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From the Los Angeles Times‘ Criminal investigation into CIA treatment of detainees expected; Insiders say Atty. Gen. Eric Holder is close to naming a prosecutor to look into reports of excessive waterboarding and other unauthorized methods. Convictions could be hard to get:
U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. is poised to appoint a criminal prosecutor to investigate alleged CIA abuses committed during the interrogation of terrorism suspects, current and former U.S. government officials said.A senior Justice Department official said that Holder envisioned an inquiry that would be narrow in scope, focusing on “whether people went beyond the techniques that were authorized” in Bush administration memos that liberally interpreted anti-torture laws.
…Some cases have not previously been disclosed, including an instance in which a CIA operative brought a gun into an interrogation booth to force a detainee to talk, officials said.
Other potentially criminal abuses have already come to light, including the waterboarding of prisoners in excess of Justice Department guidelines, and the deaths of detainees in CIA custody in Afghanistan and Iraq in 2002 and 2003…
As a military veteran who served for a couple of decades in the U.S. Navy, I hope some sort of investigation goes through, and at least some are punished for torturing detainees prisoners held in camps, such as Gitmo. To do nothing is to send the message to the world that it’s okay to torture Americans to the same level we tortured War On Terror prisoners.
Basically, America needs to engage in behavior towards people we hold as prisoners in a way that we want others peoples and states to behave towards American they might hold as prisoners. Not prosecuting CIA or U.S. servicemember who tortured prisoners seems unacceptable to me.
As someone who realizes I could have been one of those prisoners when I was serving in the military…well, it’s not difficult for me to put myself in the place of American servicemembers who may in the future become prisoners of war, or prisoners of militant organizations that are warring with America. Having America be a moral force in the world seems a idealistic, I know, but I see it as necessary if only from the perspective of setting a standard we can hold others to.
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What about commands from higher upWhy I certainly agree that we need to hold our military accountable for unacceptable to torture practices, I think it’s just as important to hold military leaders accountable more so than the servicemembers who may have been following orders from those higher.
Certainly the “I always following orders” doesn’t hold from an ethical and moral standpoint. But legally speaking, I think any higher ups that authorized and encouraged these practices need to be held more accountable than the grunts following orders.
For example, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, an example was made of Lynndie England who became the unfortunate face of those abuses as she did appear in the more popular pictures depicting the abuses and I beleive was sentenced to three years confinement, loss of pay and eventual dishonorable discharge, but less was mentioned of Brigadier General Janis Karpinski who was in charge of the prison and who was only demoted to Colonel as punishment over the scandal. Incidentally, she claimed that torture orders came from higher up.
Whoever those higher ups were, nothing was ever mentioned of them, but the women of the scandal were certainly made examples of it seems.
It’s the higher ups, the ones giving the torture orders, who truly need to be punished for these acts instead of scapegoating grunts who were following those orders.
Not going to be a real investigationIf you read the article closely, you’ll see that this isn’t going to be a serious torture investigation:
Holder will be solely concentrating on people that went beyond the torture techniques authorized by the White House.
Wishful thinkingYeah, I know it’s wishful thinking. I just wish that if something happens similar to the hoopla with Abu Ghraib, that the press will actually do it’s job and focus on the higher ups. But yes, it’s all wishful thinking. sigh