Great piece by David Bromwich on Huffpo calling for a full investigation of the torture-orderers, so as to establish why they did it, and to prevent the repetition of such power-grabs. Names Jane Harman as a rationalizer of torture: "I'm OK with it not being pretty" –on extreme interrogation. And makes this point I've seen nowhere else:
The Bill of Rights outlaws torture, explicitly, in two of its ten
amendments, the fifth and the eighth. All Americans ought to know this;
and President Obama might take the opportunity to say it some day: it
could not hurt his position. "No person," says the fifth amendment,
"shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against
himself." Torture is compulsion; its purpose, when used as evidence in
a military tribunal, is to compel the prisoner to serve as a witness
against himself. As Leonard Levy points out in Origins of the Bill of Rights,
the history of this particular right lies in the horror of the American
founders at the arbitrariness of Roman law and its legacy of ex officio
oaths and coerced confessions. The non-conforming Protestants whose
spirit animates the Constitution were looking to assure that nothing in
the history of this country would resemble the Star-Chamber proceedings
under Charles I. The language of the eight amendment is even plainer:
"Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor
cruel and unusual punishments inflicted." Writes Levy: "Cruel and
unusual punishment referred to methods of punishment as well as their
severity; they had to be as swift and painless as possible and in no
circumstances involve a lingering death or any form of torture." Any
form of torture: let those words stand alone against the hairsplitting
sophistries of John Yoo and Jay Bybee.
