> Guantánamo leadership wanted to understand the legal gymnastics that would be required to implement a program of their own. “Torture has been prohibited by international law, but the language of the statutes is written vaguely,”
and
> Bush Administration lawyers had taken the position that “enemy combatants” could be held indefinitely, without trials, and that in order for something to qualify as “torture” it “must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death.”
[0] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/22/guantanamos-da...
The United States Senate ratified, and President Reagan signed the The U.N. Convention Against Torture, which states that “no exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.”
No amount of legal hand waving by the Bush administration can justify what was done.
Likewise, there is no excuse for the Obama administration refusing to prosecute the crimes that occurred.
In other words, do you really think such people got off easy before the Nuremberg trials? If anything, much worse has happened to them throughout history, because the kings and dictators didn't have to put them through a judicial process.
[1] _sigh_ Oliver North, honestly America... why did you never... eh.
