{"id":7638,"date":"2014-12-26T03:36:55","date_gmt":"2014-12-26T03:36:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=7638"},"modified":"2014-12-26T03:36:55","modified_gmt":"2014-12-26T03:36:55","slug":"hold-torturers-to-account","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=7638","title":{"rendered":"Hold torturers to account"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>The New York Times is no friend of political conservatives. Thus, it shouldn&#8217;t surprise the reading public that the newspaper editorial board would jump down the throats of those who were responsible for employing torture techniques on prisoners taken right after the 9\/11 attacks.<\/p>\n<p>The Times did so in an editorial published this past Sunday.<\/p>\n<p>It wants the government to investigate and prosecute those responsible for what it contends are illegal acts committed against suspected terrorists.<\/p>\n<p><iframe class=\"wp-embedded-content\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts\" security=\"restricted\" title=\"Prosecute Torturers and Their Bosses\" src=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/svc\/oembed\/html\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2014%2F12%2F22%2Fopinion%2Fprosecute-torturers-and-their-bosses.html#?secret=u7M6AjmCJg\" data-secret=\"u7M6AjmCJg\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Of all the officials named, the one that stands out is former Vice President Richard B. Cheney, who&#8217;s been out front and vocal in his criticism of a Senate Intelligence Committee report contending that the Bush administration acted illegally when it subjected detainees to what&#8217;s euphemistically called &#8220;enhanced interrogation techniques.&#8221; (Let&#8217;s call &#8217;em EITs to save space, shall we?)<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s the key question: Suppose prosecutors are able to convict Dick Cheney of wrongdoing? What then? Throw him in federal prison?<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not opposed to clearing the air on what the vice president ordered, what he knew and when he knew it. Nor am I opposed to putting it all on the record, into the public domain to let the public hash out what&#8217;s legitimate and what&#8217;s not.<\/p>\n<p>As the Times noted, Republicans &#8212; except for one high-profile official &#8212; have been quiet about all of this: &#8220;One would expect Republicans who have gone hoarse braying about Mr. Obama\u2019s executive overreach to be the first to demand accountability, but with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/politics\/first-draft\/2014\/12\/09\/?entry=6819\">one notable exception<\/a>, Senator John McCain, they have either fallen silent or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/michael-b-mukasey-the-cia-interrogations-followed-the-law-1418773648\">actively<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/marcorubio\/status\/542356968737107968\">defended<\/a> the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.buzzfeed.com\/andrewkaczynski\/congressman-senate-report-not-torture-just-people-having-to?utm_term=4ldqpia&amp;bftw=pol\">indefensible<\/a>. They cannot even point to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2014\/12\/08\/world\/does-torture-work-the-cias-claims-and-what-the-committee-found.html\">any results<\/a>: Contrary to repeated claims by the C.I.A., the report concluded that \u201cat no time\u201d did any of these techniques yield intelligence that averted a terror attack. And at least 26 detainees were later determined to have been \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2014\/12\/09\/world\/cia-torture-report-document.html\">wrongfully held<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Here is where a presidential pardon could be used.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t want to see Cheney locked up. He does, though, need to be taken down a peg or two by a tough-minded <em>independent<\/em> prosecutor who could convince a jury that what the Bush administration did to those detainees violated federal law. Cheney has said he&#8217;d use the EITs again &#8220;in a minute.&#8221; The Senate report, issued by Democrats, reflects a different view.<\/p>\n<p>Who&#8217;s right? Who&#8217;s wrong?<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s get to the bottom of it.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The New York Times is no friend of political conservatives. Thus, it shouldn&#8217;t surprise the reading public that the newspaper editorial board would jump down the throats of those who were responsible for employing torture techniques on prisoners taken right after the 9\/11 attacks. The Times did so in an editorial published this past Sunday. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=7638\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Hold torturers to account<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,13],"tags":[95,785,1380,1538,4212,4223,4560],"class_list":["post-7638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international-news","category-national-news","tag-95","tag-bush-administration","tag-dick-cheney","tag-eits","tag-senate-intelligence-committee-report","tag-senator-john-mccain","tag-terror-suspects"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7638\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}