Torture. Waterboarding. Disgusting.

Emptywheel is reporting:

According to the May 30, 2005 Bradbury memo, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in March 2003 and Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in August 2002.

From page 37 of the memo:

The CIA used the waterboard "at least 83 times during August 2002" in the interrogation of Zubaydah. IG Report at 90, and 183 times during March 2003 in the interrogation of KSM, see id. at 91.

And sums it up:

The CIA wants you to believe waterboarding is effective. Yet somehow, it took them 183 applications of the waterboard in a one month period to get what they claimed was cooperation out of KSM.

That doesn't sound very effective to me.

It's been public knowledge for sometime that President Obama won't be prosecuting the CIA officials who did the waterboarding.

But as Richard Kim of The Nation points out:

However politically expedient, Obama's nearly carte blanche absolution of torture was morally wrong, and his justification of it, from a professor of constitutional law, is intellectually dishonest.

It's also, it seems, a violation of international law itself. From the BBC:

The UN special rapporteur on torture, Manfred Nowak, says the US is bound under the UN Convention against Torture to prosecute those who engage in it.

Nowak goes on:

The United States, like all other states that are part of the UN convention against torture, is committed to conducting criminal investigations of torture and to bringing all persons against whom there is sound evidence to court.

As Kim points out, Obama's explanation:

In releasing these memos, it is our intention to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution.

Just doesn't hold stand up to scrutiny:

Obama's argument here is gravely disturbing. He asserts, in essence, that because the OLC says it is right, it is--that CIA agents should have absolute confidence in anything and everything approved by the OLC and/or ordered by the executive branch.

Even if it's against the law - including UN Convention against Torture, where Article 2 states:

1. Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction.
2. 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.
3. An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.

(Signed by Ronald Reagan in 1988, ratified in the Senate, 1994 - so according to Article VI of the Constitution, it's the law.)

Kim goes on:

Of course, higher-ups who ordered and sanctioned torture should be prosecuted as well, including the authors of the OLC memos. But that does not mean that the actual interrogators should be let off the hook en masse. Whether or not CIA interrogators should have refused orders or should have known that such orders were legally or morally wrong is a matter to be determined in trial, a matter of justice. It is not a question that can be swept away by the claim that they were just doing their jobs, that they were just being obedient subjects.

From the New York Times editorial board:

After all, as far as Mr. Bush’s lawyers were concerned, it was not really torture unless it involved breaking bones, burning flesh or pulling teeth. That, Mr. Bybee kept noting, was what the Libyan secret police did to one prisoner. The standard for American behavior should be a lot higher than that of the Libyan secret police.

At least Mr. Obama is not following Mr. Bush’s example of showy trials for the small fry — like Lynndie England of Abu Ghraib notoriety. But he has an obligation to pursue what is clear evidence of a government policy sanctioning the torture and abuse of prisoners — in violation of international law and the Constitution.

Investigate and prosecute the war crimes, Mr President. It's the law.

And it's the right thing to do.