via Sanchez, Paul: Obama Torture Decision Wrong .
Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.), chair of a judiciary subcommittee that has been investigating Bush Administration misdeeds since Democrats took control of Congress, is disappointed in President Obama’s decision not to prosecute CIA officials who tortured detainees, as long as the torture was deemed legal at the time by the White House.
“I still believe that we need to hold people accountable when they break the law and I personally would have liked to have seen some accountability for the actions of people in the last administration,” Sanchez said Friday on the Bill Press Show.
“I know it’s a difficult line to walk, but I don’t think that you become a better democracy or stronger democracy by ignoring these kinds of things,” she said.
SPC England and SPC Graner posing behind a pyramid of naked Iraqi prisoners
There is precedent for this. Lynndie England and several others were convicted in 2005 by an Army courts-martial of “of inflicting sexual, physical and psychological abuse on Iraqi prisoners of war.” Since the torture and other heinous acts at the prison at Guantanamo Bay was committed on a U.S. Naval base, the perpetrators should be bound by the same Universal Code of Military Justice laws (UCMJ codes) that convicted England and company.
From an About.com article entitled Civilian Contractors Now Subject to the UCMJ:
Jan 8 2007U.S. Military Contractors operating in combat zones are now subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). Congress quietly made this change as part of the FY 2007 Military Authorization Act.The provision makes a very small, but important change to Article 2 of the UCMJ. Under previous law, the UCMJ only applied to civilians in combat areas during periods of war declared by Congress.Paragraph a (10) of Article 2 originally read, “(10) In time of war, persons serving with or accompanying an armed force in the field.”
A case can be made that those operatives, other than the military interrogators, are in fact “accompanying an armed force in the field.” So if England and her crew can go up in flames for this, then everyone involved with torture at any military installation can burn also.
There seems to be a sense or a feeling floating about that we somehow have to defend the underling for following orders when we actually sent underlings to prison for following orders just four years ago. You don’t have to go all the way back to WWII. There is also some speculation floating around that Obama is letting the underlings go and waiting for actionable evidence that higher-ups are prosecutable. The prosecutor in Spain didn’t think he had to wait for evidence, he seemed to think there was enough.
Three things can happen here:
- The DOJ can prosecute neither underlings nor higher-ups because Obama doesn’t like to look over his shoulder.
- The DOJ can prosecute just the operatives, re: Lynndie England, and ignore the higher-ups as was the case at Abu Ghraib prison.
- The DOJ can prosecute everyone concerned from George Bush down to Agent whoever and send a sharp message to anyone who ever considers doing this again. (my choice)
____________________________________________________________
UPDATE: April 17, 12:20 PM
From The Progress Report, The Progress Report [progress@americanprogressaction.org]
The Torture Memos
In response to a longstanding American Civil Liberties Union Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, the Obama administration yesterday released four Bush-era legal memos dating back to 2002 and 2005 that provide legal justifications for the CIA to torture al-Qaeda detainees. In a statement, President Obama asserted that the Justice Department would not seek to prosecute CIA officers who carried out the torture techniques approved by former President Bush’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC).
If the justification for not prosecuting CIA officers is “just following orders” then the case against Lynndie England and all the rest should be open for review. They got shafted.
Follow me on Twitter!
