Can We Have Some Idictments Now?

Writer Christopher Hitchens is the latest journalist to voluntarily undergo waterboarding.

His reaction?:

As if detecting my misery and shame, one of my interrogators comfortingly said, "Any time is a long time when you're breathing water." I could have hugged him for saying so, and just then I was hit with a ghastly sense of the sadomasochistic dimension that underlies the relationship between the torturer and the tortured. I apply the Abraham Lincoln test for moral casuistry: "If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong." Well, then, if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture.

The highest government officials have already admitted that we employed this tactic:

Over the last several months, there has been a gradual, but unrelenting, outing of the highest level U.S. government involvement in the sordid business of torture. CIA Director Michael V. Hayden admitted, in his February testimony before Congress, that the Central Intelligence Agency used a technique known as waterboarding on three high-profile Al Qaeda detainees. He also said the CIA had not used the technique in five years -- though the administration seems to be asserting that the agency can use it, when necessary.

As amusing as it to see that pompous blowhard Hitchens tortured and wetting his pants, his story hopefully will stop people (like the president, for example) from saying that the United States doesn't torture. We do torture. There's no way around that. We have violated the Geneva Conventions, quaint though they might be.

Of course, it's a fantasy that anyone will ever be held accountable for this or any of the other extralegal transgressions of this administration. The irony is that Bush came into office trumpeting a new era of personal responsibility when what we've had instead is the era of no consequences. No consequences for:

• Outing a CIA agent (in a time of war)
• Violating international treaty obligations
• Politicizing the DOJ (and virtually every other branch of government)
• Lying to get the American people to support a pre-emptive war
• Wiretapping domestic phone calls and intercepting emails in violation of FISA
• Detaining American citizens without charges indefinitely

That's only the tip of the iceberg. I suspect we'll find out more as the administration leaves office and investigators, inspectors general and other oversight officials are actually able to do their work.