Saying No to Torture: A Gallery of US Heroes

[polly7]

Tuesday, 10 February 2015 12:36
By Rebecca Gordon, TomDispatch | Op-Ed


John Kiriakou, a retired CIA agent, has recently been released from prison after blowing the whistle on the Bush administration's torture program. In 2007, Kiriakou became the first CIA official to publicly confirm and detail the agency's use of waterboarding. (Photo: Troy Page / t r u t h o u t)

.....And any attorney in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel would naturally have written the "torture memos" that John Yoo and Jay Bybee created in 2002, in which they sought to provide legal cover for the CIA's torture practices by redefining torture itself more or less out of existence. For some act to count as "severe physical suffering" and therefore as torture, they wrote, the pain inflicted would have to be of a sort "ordinarily associated with a… serious physical condition, such as death, organ failure, or serious impairment of bodily functions."

Wouldn't anyone do what these men did, if they, too, were frightened out of their wits? Actually, no. In fact, the sad, ugly story of the U.S. response to the criminal acts of 9/11 is brightened by a number of people who have displayed genuine courage in saying no to and turning their backs on torture. Their choices prove that Bush, Cheney, & Co. could have said no as well.

Though you'd never know it here, no level of fear in public officials makes acts of torture (or the support of such acts) any less criminal or more defensible before the law. It's remarkably uncomplicated, actually. Torture violates U.S. and international law, and those responsible deserve to be prosecuted both for what they did and to prevent the same thing from happening the next time people in power are afraid.

Some of those who rejected torture, like CIA official John Kiriakou and an as-yet-unnamed Navy nurse, directly refused to practice it. Some risked reputations and careers to let the people of this country know what their government was doing. Sometimes an entire agency, like the FBI, refused to be involved in torture.

I'd like to introduce you to six of these heroes:

Full article: http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/29042-saying-no-to-torture-a-gallery-of-us-heroes