Maybe, just maybe, now that the words (emphasis added) have been spoken on the record, the spell will be broken.

“After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes,” [Maj. Gen.] Taguba wrote. “The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”

Taguba, whose 2004 investigation documented chilling abuses at Abu Ghraib, is thought to be the most senior official to have accused the administration of war crimes. “The commander in chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture,” he wrote.

A White House spokeswoman, Kate Starr, had no comment.

[snip]

Leonard Rubenstein, the president of Physicians for Human Rights, said there was a direct connection between the Pentagon decisions and the abuses his group uncovered. “The result was a horrific stew of pain, degradation and … suffering,” he said. Source

Not a scintilla of reasonable doubt.

Such is not us — not We The People — not in any manner, way, shape or form.

The very soul of America and of freedom has been violated. Bring the inhuman, inhumane cretins to task.

Absolutely and indubitably a must-read (emphasis added):

Thomas Romig, a major general who was the Army’s judge advocate general from 2001 to 2005, agreed that the JAGs were pushed to the side: “It was a disaster,” he said.

[snip]

“As they viewed it, due process is legal mumbo jumbo,” said Romig, who’s now the dean of Washburn University’s law school. “They wanted to get them, get the facts and convict them. … If you’re caught as a terrorist, you’re presumed guilty and you have to prove you’re innocent. It was crazy.”

When Romig objected to pushing the boundaries of interrogation procedures during meetings in late 2002 or early 2003, he recalled that civilian defense officials replied that the time for law had passed.

“Guys, it’s time to wake up and smell the coffee. It’s time to take the gloves off,” Romig said he was told by Marshall Billingslea, a deputy to Douglas Feith — who was then the undersecretary of defense for policy, the Pentagon’s third-ranking official.

Romig said that he and other military officers asked, “Do you realize the implications of what you’re saying?” Source

’nuff said.

The universality of the essential toolbox of liberty today has been reiterated.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s opinion for the majority in Boumediene v. Bush (06-1195) and Al Odah v. U.S. (06-1196) was an almost rhapsodic review of the history of the Great Writ. The Suspension Clause, he wrote, “protects the rights of the detained by a means consistent with the essential design of the Constitution. It ensures that, except during periods of formal suspension, the Judiciary will have a time-tested device, the writ, to maintain the ‘delicate balance of governance’ that is itself the surest safeguard of liberty.” Those who wrote the Constitution, he added, “deemed the writ to be an essential mechanism in the separation-of-powers scheme.”

Even though the two political branches — the President and Congress — had agreed to take away the detainees’ habeas rights, Kennedy said those branches do not have “the power to switch the Constitution on or off at will.” Source

A bit more:

Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the court, said, “The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times.” Article

That 5-4 margin for the supremacy of the Constitution — of it being a living documentation of inalienable creed — is, once again, a key reason why the occupant of the White House should not be an adherent nor espouser nor enabler of dogmatically retrogressive ideological blather (i.e., John Sidney McCain III). Who were that dissenting 4 who raised the flag of fear above the flag of law? Justices Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Roberts (attribution).

Lady Liberty cannot — must not — be waterboarded; her torch once quenched allows — nay, encourages — the reign of darkness.