Look! Shiny objects! via Thomas Hawk.

On Thursday afternoon, we’ll host a live chat at 3 pm ET/12 pm PT with ACLU’s Jameel Jaffer regarding the recent release of the OLC memos and the need for more in-depth examination of how torture became official US policy. 

Please take a moment to sign our petition regarding the need for an outside prosecutor to investigate the torture allegations.

Jameel penned thoughts that are particularly on point as to why this exposure is necessary. From the top down:

…the methods described in the memos are illegal under both domestic and international law, and they were illegal when the Bush administration endorsed them. For years, the U.S. State Department’s human rights reports have described these methods as torture. And after the Second World War, the United States prosecuted Japanese commanders for having inflicted some of the methods that the memos purport to authorize. It does not compromise national security to broadcast to the world that the US will eschew methods that are criminal under US and international law, that the State Department has described as torture, and that the United States has previously prosecuted as war crimes. Indeed, to propose that the nation’s security would be compromised by that message is to propose that the nation’s security would be compromised by the rule of law.

Nor will it be unfortunate if CIA interrogators hesitate before relying on legal advice that strikes them as implausible or wrong. Indeed, there is something astounding about a former attorney general characterizing this kind of hesitation as ‘timidity’. Anyone who reads the memos will understand immediately that the CIA and Justice Department each sought to absolve itself from responsibility for torture by basing its actions on transparently worthless assurances from the other. It would be a good thing if CIA interrogators hesitated before entering into this kind of arrangement again.

Collusion or top-down orders were no valid excuse at Nuremberg. Nor should they be here in the United States, regardless of who may have broken faith with the will of the people by breaking them.  And no amount of diversionary tactics or shiny objects should be allowed to deflect the fact that this is a nation of laws. 

I hope you will join us for what promises to be an excellent discussion this Thursday at 3 pm ET/12 pm PT.