Bush officials defend physical abuse described in memos released by Obama.

I suppose they have no option other than to try and defend themselves. So we should not be surprised that they have gone where they have gone:

Senior members of the Bush administration today defended the physical abuse of prisoners by CIA operatives at Guantánamo and elsewhere round the world set out in graphic detail in secret memos released by president Barack Obama.

General Michael Hayden, head of the CIA under president George Bush, and Michael Mukasey, who was attorney-general, criticised Obama for releasing the memos. The two accused him of pandering to the media in creating "faux outrage", undermining the morale of the intelligence services and inviting the scorn of America's enemies.

But the interrogation techniques outlined in the memos prompted a flood of calls from human rights groups and others for the prosecution of politicians, lawyers, doctors and CIA operatives involved.

It is impossible to read about what was authorised - the beatings, the sleep deprivation, the leaving of people tied to chairs for three weeks at a time, the waterboarding - and not to conclude that this was a system designed to torture people into giving information.

And, as Obama has already stated that no CIA personnel who obeyed such orders will ever be prosecuted, Hayden's fake concern for the morale of the CIA is there for everyone to see. Hayden is outraged because what they did in secret, and what they believed would always be secret, has been dragged screaming and kicking into the light.

And, with the release of these memos, Obama has made the prospect of prosecution more likely, even if it still remains a faint possibility. Obama has thrown open the doors to the dirty world which the Bush operatives inhabited and, I believe, is waiting to see if public anger at what was done will demand prosecutions.

"The release of CIA memos on interrogation methods by the US department of justice appears to have offered a get-out-of-jail-free card to people involved in torture," Amnesty International said. "Torture is never acceptable and those who conduct it should not escape justice."

I understand the point which Amnesty are making, but I think Obama - by clearing CIA officers from future prosecution - is inviting people to ask who, if anyone, should be prosecuted if one absolves the CIA from engaging in practices which they were assured was legal.

Obama is asking the public to look much further up the food chain at the people who gave the orders and at the lawyers who mangled what they knew to be the law to make the case that such barbarity was, indeed, legal. And, of course, to the people at the very top of that food chain - Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld - who gave the order for this barbarity to become official US policy.

The Centre for Constitutional Rights called for prosecutions: "Whether or not CIA operatives who conducted water boarding are guaranteed immunity, it is the high level officials who conceived, justified and ordered the torture programme who bear the most responsibility for breaking domestic and international law, and it is they who must be prosecuted."

But the language of Hayden and Mukasey as they seek to justify what they did, leaves one open mouthed:

"Disclosure of the techniques is likely to be met by faux outrage and is perfectly packaged for media consumption. It will also incur the utter contempt of our enemies.

"Somehow, it seems unlikely that the people who beheaded Nicholas Berg [the US businessman who was killed in Iraq] and Daniel Pearl [the US journalist killed in Pakistan], and have tortured and slain other American captives, are likely to be shamed into giving up violence by the news that the US will no longer interrupt that sleep cycle of captured terrorists even to help elicit intelligence that could save the lives of its citizens."

There is nothing "faux" about the outrage which many of us feel when the world's leading democracy engages in actions which would not have been out of place in the days of the Spanish Inquisition.

Nor is there any sense of shame in Hayden and Mukasey's defence of what was done. Indeed, they appear to think that what was done was justified. With every word and with every "faux" justification, they hang themselves.

They are now publicly arguing the case for torture.

The terrorist Abu Zubaydah (sometimes derided as a low-level operative of questionable reliability, but who was in fact close to KSM and other senior al Qaeda leaders) disclosed some information voluntarily. But he was coerced into disclosing information that led to the capture of Ramzi bin al Shibh, another of the planners of Sept. 11, who in turn disclosed information which -- when combined with what was learned from Abu Zubaydah -- helped lead to the capture of KSM and other senior terrorists, and the disruption of follow-on plots aimed at both Europe and the U.S. Details of these successes, and the methods used to obtain them, were disclosed repeatedly in more than 30 congressional briefings and hearings beginning in 2002, and open to all members of the Intelligence Committees of both Houses of Congress beginning in September 2006. Any protestation of ignorance of those details, particularly by members of those committees, is pretense.

They are clearly arguing that the end justifies the means.

History will condemn them, as it will the entire logic with which the Bush administration blackened America's name.

The only question now is whether or not the Obama Justice Department will step in and do the right thing by prosecuting these people, or whether they will be left to simply face history's disapprobation.

I would strongly argue that what is desperately needed is the former. If there is no prosecution, then future administrations might be able to argue that there is precedence for the use of torture in exceptional circumstances. In a civilised society that is a view that cannot be allowed to stand.

Stacy Sullivan, of Human Rights Watch, echoed this: "President Obama said there was nothing to gain 'by laying blame for the past'. But prosecuting those responsible for torture is really about ensuring that such crimes don't happen in the future."

There is a huge difference between "laying blame for the past" and "assigning responsibility for crimes". I can think of no other crime for which an American president would argue that we should "look forward and not backwards." A crime was committed here. And, as Mukasey and Hayden make abundantly clear, the criminals feel no shame at what they have done. Indeed, they are condemning Obama for having the temerity to expose them.

They are stating that they would do it again.

That is why prosecuting them is of such importance. A line needs to be drawn in the sand.

UPDATE:

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Turley: You know, it's not retribution to enforce criminal laws. But it is, is obstruction to prevent that enforcement, and that's exactly what he's done thus far. He is trying to lay the groundwork to look principled when he's doing an utterly unprincipled thing. There's very few things worse for a president to do than to protect accused war criminals, and that's what we're talking about here.

UPDATE II:

I am pleased to note that Glenn Greenwald is also of the opinion that Obama is laying the way for public anger to demand prosecutions and that there is already evidence that the public favour prosecutions:

But more crucially, it is also the responsibility of the citizenry to demand that this happen. What Obama did yesterday -- whether by design or not -- provided the most potent tools yet to create the political pressure for prosecutions. As Kevin Drum makes clear, no decent human being reading those memos would be anything other than repelled by what was in them. Polls already found that large percentages of Americans, majorities even, favor investigations and/or prosecutions for Bush crimes. The onus is on those who believe in the rule of law to find ways to force the government to criminally investigate whether they want to or not (this petition demanding that Holder appoint a Special Prosecutor is a very good place to begin, though it will require much more than just petitions).

Americans need to make their voices known on this issue. Left only with the O'Reilly's and the Rove's of this world, it is possible to believe that most Americans don't care about what was done in their name.

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Tags: Hayden, Mukasey, Obama, war crimes, torture, CIA, memos, 9-11