The whole world is watching to see if the people of the United States can hold their government to the rule of law against the use of torture. It looks like President Obama's attempt to "move forward" and not look at past crimes of the Bush-Cheney regime is not tenable.

Obama's new Attorney General has appointed a Special Prosecutor to investigate the crimes of torture that were revealed in the media all over the world.  The photos from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the revelations of torture at Guantanamo prison in Cuba  and in secret locations in other countries have shamed Americans and outraged decent people everywhere.

According to an article by Carrie Johnson in the Aug. 25, 2009 issue of the Washington Post, " Holder has named longtime prosecutor John H. Durham, who has parachuted into crisis situations for both political parties over three decades, to open an early review of nearly a dozen cases of alleged detainee mistreatment at the hands of CIA interrogators and contractors. 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/24/AR2009082401743.html

Some mainstream news outlets have sought to diminish the horror of the Bush-Cheney administration's torture sessions by using euphemistic code terms instead of torture, such as "harsh measures. Yet according to the Post article, " In all, more than 100 detainees died in U.S. care, most of them under military custody, according to previous government reports and congressional inquiries. It is not known how many of the cases in the new review by Durham involve detainee deaths."

Meanwhile, former Vice President Dick Cheney has been openly defending the "interrogation techniques" as a great success in the so-called "war on terror".  This has been disputed by professional interrogaters as a way to get false information to justify wars with no intention to prosecute detained suspects in a court of law.

Cheney remains defiant. He now says he might not cooperate with new U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder's probe into possible abuses by the Bush administration.  Everything from outright lies to go to war to confessions under torture to justify the wars is being questioned far and wide as possible grounds for prosecution. Yet Holder may have already signalled his game plan by stating that those who followed the "guidelines" set by the Bush administration will not be prosecuted.

According to the inspector general report, the interrogation tactics were "not within established guidelines". The guidelines themselves were written by Justice Department lawyers like John Yoo and Judge Bybee, and they have been  criticized as political cover for Bush administration violations of U.S. and international law. It would be ironic if these legal briefs are allowed by Holder and Duram to take no legal action against the authors and their bosses who used torture. 

Citizens from several organizations have been protesting at the UC Berkeley Law School against the return of John Yoo from "public service" to teaching law. The National Lawyers Guild, Progressive Democrats of America, Code Pink Women for Peace, World Can't Wait, and the National Accountability Action Network took the demonstration to the doors of Yoo's classroom on  August 17 as they called for Yoo to be fired, disbarred, and prosecuted for his role in providing legal cover for the crimes of torture committed under the guidelines he wrote. Yoo's memos basically said that if the President says it's okay, then it's ok. Attorney Dan Siegel, a graduate of UC Berkeley's law school from the era of the Free Speech movement, stated that John Yoo's writing of legal briefs as cover for torture by the Bush-Cheney regime is not a matter of "free speech". It is a crime to use your position in violation of the US Constitution and Bill of Rights as well as the treaties that the US has signed as the law of the land, namely the Geneva Conventions. See video clips of their demonstration at YouTube.