In the aftermath of what's known as this nation's Vietnam Era, the cartoonist Garry Trudeau penned a Doonesbury strip about a former Vietnamese soldier who was taking a holiday trip to Cambodia. Everywhere the former soldier went, he was devastated to realize that the tourist sites were now rubble. He commented to a local man that the museum he had wanted to see must have been destroyed during what in this country became known as the Secret Bombings, because they had been authorized by the Nixon administration without congressional approval. The man had been the museum's curator, and he responds that those bombings weren't secret at all. Everyone there knew all about them. Of course, while the bombings ended up being part of the charges for which Nixon would have been impeached, had he not first become what is still the only U.S. president ever to resign, not one person responsible for the carnage ever went to prison for it. Far, far away, the people in this country can effectively shrug and move on. The victims of imperialistic carnage cannot.

There was outrage by many when President Ford pardoned Nixon, although many of the era's Important People said it was for the good of the country; but how much outrage will there now be as the authors and perpetrators of torture similarly walk free, and in many cases with great personal wealth? The Obama administration long ago made clear that it would prefer to move on. Bush and Cheney and their ilk continue to cash in, with book sales and media appearances, and both those involved in the torture regime and their mindless enablers continue to froth about American exceptionalness and awesomeness, and throw tantrums about anyone who says or does anything that might call their one-dimensional, monochrome cartoon consciousness into question. But the reality is that the release of the heavily redacted torture report isn't going to harm national security. The reality is that when government officials prove to be above the law, not only will more government officials violate it, but in some cases the same government officials who violated it in the past will find their way back into positions from which they can violate it again.

Everyone already knew there was torture. The victims and their families and their compatriots knew there was torture. The details weren't all known, and because of the redactions and the limited scope of the Senate investigation they still aren't all known, but for more than a decade, people all around the world have known there was torture. Those who care about basic human rights for even the very worst of very bad people already knew there was torture. Those who hate the United States and want to see it destroyed, and those who love the United States and want to see it thrive, and those who are indifferent to the United States and don't care about nationalisms but do care about the state of humanity all already knew there was torture.

This isn't about how bad some of the tortured might be, it's about the United States responding on their level. It's about how bad the United States can be. This isn't about the basic truth that torture doesn't work, it's about who and what the United States is. And the United States is a nation that tortures people. Even if it starts with rogue personnel, both in the prisons and in the halls of power, if those personnel on all levels are not brought to justice, they are no longer rogue personnel. They are part of a regime of torture. And that regime is then validated, and the entire government is then complicit. And not only the government of one administration. The entire system of governance is complicit. In horrific crimes against humanity.

On Friday, the international outcry was still building.



Ben Emmerson, the UN special rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism, said Eric Holder, the US attorney general, is under an international obligation to reopen inquiries into senior officials alleged to have breached human rights.

In a previous statement, following the damning Senate report on the CIA’s use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” such as waterboarding, Emmerson pointed out that the UN convention against torture requires states to prosecute acts of torture where there is sufficient evidence to provide a reasonable prospect of conviction. He pointed out that President Barack Obama had already admitted five years ago that the US regarded the use of waterboarding as torture. “There is therefore no excuse for shielding the perpetrators from justice any longer,” said Emmerson, a British international lawyer serving in the independent post since 2010. He made the comments immediately after the report was released by the Senate intelligence committee on Tuesday.

And note that his portfolio is not only human rights but also counterterrorism. He knows what works. He knows what is right. He knows what is horrifically wrong.But there almost certainly will be excuses, and there almost certainly won't be any bringing to justice. Both domestic and international experts on human rights and international law join Emmerson in continuing to call for the United States to launch criminal investigations and prosecutions , but no one expects them to happen. Other nations investigate the criminality of torture, but the United States doesn't. In fact, despite pleas from international human rights experts , the Obama administration never wanted the full facts about torture to be made public, and even now continues to argue that the facts that are still secret must remain secret ; and it's no secret that for complex reasons the administration has no interest in prosecuting anyone legally culpable. And just days after the public release of the inadequately investigated and heavily redacted Senate torture report, and with no one even pretending there will be legal accountability for the people and agencies responsible for the torture, the Republican-led House of Representatives easily approved the funding of those agencies for another year.

It's not the release of the torture report that can damage national security, it's that the torture happened in the first place. But the greatest damage comes when the entire system of governance is complicit. The national security of the United States is grievously and dangerously undermined when its government does nothing to prove to the nation itself and to the entire world that the United States does indeed abide by basic standards of law and morality and human decency. The national security of the United States is grievously and dangerously undermined when its government proves that the opposite is true.

The facts are known. The perpetrators walk in freedom, and many live in affluence. And those who have made known what facts about the torture are known themselves receive as much criticism as do those responsible for the torture. The United States tortures people. The existence of the torture never was in question. The question was whether the United States would ever do anything about it. The question was whether the United States government abides by not only its own and international laws, but by basic standards of morality and human decency. The question no longer appears to be a question.