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  Is It a Crime To Have Authorized Torture ... Even After You Stop?

  Posted Thursday, February 12, 2009 1:57 PM | By E.J. Graff

  Dahlia, thank you for pointing to that poll. One of the things that makes me feel ashamed, occasionally, is that I lived through an era in which my country tortured—and I did nothing about it. Seeing these numbers helps lift that feeling of shame. You point out that 38 percent of those polled want a criminal investigation. The more moving thing, to me, is that an additional 24 percent want an independent panel to investigate. Only 34 percent want us to forget all about it and move on.

  The best reasoning I've heard yet for investigating instead of pretending that now everything is peachy keen, despite the fact that our nation violated some core Constitutional principles, international laws, and moral foundations: without an investigation, all the people and principles that brought us to torture will remain unquestioned—and can easily return to power in another era. Let's air the dirty laundry and name the dirty launderers. Nixon's pardon left us with Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. Do we want the likes of John Yoo, David Addington, and their own pro-torture followers waiting in public life for decades, saying that no authority ever explicitly rejected the horrific moral reasoning that they put in place—and taking their places in future administrations?
  

  Speaking of which: In a few weeks, I'll be at a weekend seminar on constitutional issues with  Prof. John (Torture Memo) Yoo himself, along with a panel of other legal luminaries. If anyone wants to send me some homework and reading, and perhaps some questions you'd like me to ask Mr. Torture, please, please do.
  

  Filed under: Obama, criminal investigations, Bush Administration, david addington, john yoo

About E.J. Graff

• E.J. Graff is associate director and senior researcher at Brandeis University's Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, where she directs the Gender & Justice Project. She is a resident scholar at the Brandeis Women's Studies Research Center. As a journalist and author, her work has appeared in such venues as The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy magazine, The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, Columbia Journalism Review, Good Housekeeping, The Nation, The New Republic, and in more than a dozen anthologies. She collaborated on former Massachusetts Lt. Governor Evelyn Murphy's book Getting Even: Why Women Don't Get Paid Like Men--and What To Do About It (Simon & Schuster, 2005). Her first book, What Is Marriage For? The Strange Social History of Our Most Intimate Institution, has been widely cited in legal journals, reprinted for academic use, entered as courtroom exhibits, and quoted by government policymaking bodies.

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