American Torture: I Know Who's Going to Pay

The 183 instances of waterboarding authorized by the Bush administration is the smoking gun. It's now impossible to overlook that there existed a program of systematic American torture.

This is a problem for the new administration. Torture trials are not going to get them any credit, or earn them any favors. They'll take the moral superiority, but would just as soon leave aside the practicalities of placing specific blame.

They're worried, though, that it's not going to go away. They're obviously going back and forth right now, trying to figure out which side they ought to be on. The decision to release the secret reports was one impulse; the move to reassure the CIA torturers that they're above board, another.

But it's pretty unavoidable. Because the torture was carefully rationalized, the documentation is going to be bureaucratic and meticulous. We will have dispassionately recorded in hundreds of hours of video unimaginable brutality--our dispassion will make the brutality all the more vicious. And it will reach, of course, to ever-and-ever higher places. You don't do this stuff without covering your ass.

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