CIA torture: American democracy in shambles

[Karmadillo]

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/12/11/pers-d11.html

CIA torture: American democracy in shambles
11 December 2014

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The law is unambiguous. According to the Federal Torture Act, anyone who “commits or attempts to commit torture [defined as an ‘act intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering’] shall be fined… or imprisoned not more than 20 years,” and “if death results to any person”—as was the case for at least one of those tortured by the CIA—the guilty party “shall be punished by death or imprisoned for any term of years or for life.”

Under international law, torture is prohibited by the Geneva Conventions (where it is categorized as a war crime) and the Convention against Torture, which requires signatories (including the United States) to prosecute violations of the convention. Under the Convention against Torture, the ban on torture is absolute. There are no exceptions.

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Those so implicated include former President George W. Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney, who oversaw the torture; former CIA Director George Tenet, who officially approved it; current CIA Director John Brennan, who was Tenet’s executive assistant; John Yoo and Jay Bybee, the Justice Department lawyers who authored the infamous torture memos; Bruce Jessen and James Mitchell, the psychologists and CIA advisers who devised the torture methods; Condoleezza Rice, the former national security advisor who authorized the waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah; and Jose Rodriguez, the CIA counter-terrorism chief who approved the destruction of videotapes documenting the crimes.

By any objective standard, all of these individuals and many others involved have to be arrested and prosecuted. The crimes documented in the Senate report make those for which Nixon faced impeachment, forcing him to resign, appear almost insignificant. Yet those who are implicated, far from fearing that they will be held accountable, brazenly defend their actions.

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As much as the torture program itself, the inability to hold anyone accountable exposes the breakdown of constitutional forms of rule in the United States. Crimes have been committed, exposed openly before the entire world, and, within the framework of official political channels, absolutely nothing can or will be done about it. Under these conditions, it is impossible any longer to speak of democracy. The United States is run by a gigantic military-intelligence apparatus that acts outside of any legal restraint. This apparatus works in close alliance with a financial aristocracy that is no less immune from accountability for its actions than the CIA torturers. The entire state is implicated in a criminal conspiracy against the social and democratic rights of the people, internationally and within the United States.

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