Salon‘s Joan Walsh writes about the case for prosecution:
The blogosphere has been charged with debate about impeaching Jay Bybee, the deputy attorney general whose name is on arguably the worst torture memo released last Thursday. Bruce Ackerman wrote a convincing case for impeaching Bybee on Friday; today the New York Times joined the cause with a fiery editorial: “These memos make it clear that Mr. Bybee is unfit for a job that requires legal judgment and a respect for the Constitution. Congress should impeach him.”
But the editorial goes beyond that point – read the whole thing – to make the case that President Obama and Congress have a legal obligation to investigate the entire chain of command behind Bybee and other government lawyers’ sick, skewed defense of torture.
Walsh also points to Scott Shane’s article in yesterday’s New York Times, which provides the backstory of Abu Zubaydah’s torture:
… In the case of Abu Zubaydah, U.S. officials claimed they were torturing a top al-Qaida leader with a strong psychological and spiritual backbone; instead they tortured a flunky who was probably crazy before they tortured him, and who gave them nothing of value despite the abuse.
There were a couple of fascinating tidbits in the Times piece that I hadn’t known. For one thing, the useful piece of information Zubaydah gave the U.S. – that the top planner of 9/11 was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed – came before the torture began, when Zubaydah was interrogated by FBI agents who were playing good cop, helping him get medical treatment for the wounds he suffered in his capture.
Second, and this was chilling, some of the interrogators on hand began to blanch at the abuse of Zubaydah, and also came to believe he had no more to tell them – but “top CIA officials back at headquarters” continued to push for more harsh treatment. I don’t care if Obama says he has no plans to punish them; we need to know the names of these incompetent sadists.
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