Ending torture: The ACLU's Accountability for Torture project

Glenn Greenwald is highlighting the ACLU's new Accountability for Torture project to pressure the White House and Congress for thorough investigations and prosecutions of torture perpetrators.

Glenn writes:

Disclosure and transparency are the linchpin of meaningful, informed debates. By contrast, suppressing information is what uniquely enables a government to lie and deceive. Dick Cheney can run around making claims about the legality of the torture and rendition programs only because the current administration continues to engage in such extreme measures to block any judicial review or disclosure. Identically, Cheney is free to claim that the abuses of Abu Ghraib were isolated aberrations because the current administration continues to suppress the photographs of detainee abuse that prove the opposite: the abuse seen at Abu Ghraib was anything but isolated, asthe tactics used at there were used at virtually every American "War on Terror" detention facility because they were the by-product of policies approved at the highest levels of government. That is why principles of transparency generally and FOIA specifically are so vital: as Sen. [Sheldon] Whitehouse said, they are the only checks against the sort of rank deceit that has dominated debates over Bush-era policies and accountability for them.

Here is the ACLU's video promoting their project:



This post at the ACLU's Blog of Rights has a podcast of Glenn interviewing two attorneys with expertise in the Cheney-Bush torture program and transitional justice issues.

accountability for torture, torture