From Saturday’s NYT Editorial:
Bush administration officials came up with all kinds of ridiculously offensive rationalizations for torturing prisoners. It’s not torture if you don’t mean it to be. It’s not torture if you don’t nearly kill the victim. It’s not torture if the president says it’s not torture.
It was deeply distressing to watch the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit sink to that standard in April when it dismissed a civil case brought by four former Guantánamo detainees never charged with any offense. The court said former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the senior military officers charged in the complaint could not be held responsible for violating the plaintiffs’ rights because at the time of their detention, between 2002 and 2004, it was not “clearly established†that torture was illegal.
The Supreme Court could have corrected that outlandish reading of the Constitution, legal precedent, and domestic and international statutes and treaties. Instead, last month, the justices abdicated their legal and moral duty and declined to review the case.
[ . . . ]
In effect, the Supreme Court has granted the government immunity for subjecting people in its custody to terrible mistreatment.
Shameful actions, no? I fear that some think it’s just the last bits of the horrors of the Bush Administration being dusted away. Well, remember:
The party that urged the Supreme Court not to grant the victims’ appeal because the illegality of torture was not “clearly established†was the Obama Justice Department.
