"Our nation bears responsibility to learn from the mistakes of this dark episode. Even if criminal prosecutions should not result, Congress, for sure, and, I believe, the American public must ultimately know what really happened behind the sanitized legal descriptions of individual techniques, and in what conditions, intensity and duration. This accounting will not be easy or proud, but it will help

show the world that the America it knew

and counted on is back."

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-RI,

Nat. Law Journal. May 4, 2009.

On April 24, in "Our clear choice: Who or what is king?" I laid out the case for prosecuting the George W. Bush administration and those who carried out criminal policies and practices, citing what seemed pertinent laws, policies and international agreements. I have not changed my mind.

On May 13, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, subcommittee chairman of the Senate Judicial Committee, had a hearing titled: "What went wrong: Torture and the office of legal counsel in the Bush Administration." I saw a short clip somewhere and filed the memory away. This past Tuesday, I called Whitehouse's office to thank him for keeping the issue alive. An aide e-mailed a link to the full two-hour plus webcast.

(You can watch at judiciary.senate.gov/hearings/hearing.cfm?id=3842. Or you can read some of the testimony. I encourage at least that much today, July 3, in preparing for a celebration of not just our independence as a nation -- but our avowed principles as well.)

None of the senators attempted to make the case that what was called "enhanced interrogation" was not more honestly and accurately torture. Neither did four of the five expert witnesses. The exception was Jeffrey Addicott of St. Mary's University School of Law, San Antonio.

Addicott is ex-military, a former legal adviser to the U.S. Army's Special Forces. In 2002 he published a lengthy essay in the Ohio State Law Journal, "Storm Clouds on the Horizon of Darwinism." It was a defense of including intelligent design in public school curricula. Teaching Darwinian evolution, he asserted, could be considered religion itself and thus violate the Establishment Clause of the U.S Constitution. Interpret that as you will. I found his argument vacuous.

The only Republican lawmaker to actively participate was Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C. Graham did his best to call for a truce. He did not argue that torture had not occurred, but that the policies and practices were implemented in an atmosphere of near panic with the intent to protect the country. "Some very good people," he said of the Bush administration and its policies, "made some very bad mistakes, and it came back to bite us. It always does."

Graham noted what he saw as similar mistakes by other presidents. Lincoln had shelved habeas corpus during the U.S. Civil War. FDR had ordered the imprisoning of Japanese Americans in World War II. Both presidents, Graham argued, had violated the Constitution, but neither had been prosecuted. Instead, he said, the nation learned from it and moved on. In essence, the senator from South Carolina was proclaiming extenuating circumstances and preaching forgiveness.

But Graham's citation of Lincoln' and Roosevelt's violations of the Constitution, while correct, seemed to me an apples-and-oranges comparison. And I regretted also the narrow focus by the committee on the single torture technique of water-boarding.

In the June 22 issue of the New Yorker, Jane Mayer details another sort of torture, this one in Abu Ghraib. "A forensic examiner found that he (the prisoner) had essentially been crucified; he died from asphyxiation after having been hung by his arms, in a hood, and suffering broken ribs." It is but one example of many more already documented. With the operation of CIA "black sites" and "extra-ordinary renditions," much of it hidden from Red Cross and other human rights groups, many believe we have seen only a fragment of the whole truth.

Another disturbing fact barely mentioned in the Judicial Committee hearing is much of the torture came at the hands of private contractors who were not professionally trained interrogators. We should demand to know who hired, who designed, who approved, who oversaw their actions. CIA and FBI interrogators have testified consistently of the ineffectiveness of torture in gaining critical information. Ex-Vice President Dick Cheney vigorously and repeatedly has claimed otherwise. Whatever the case, the argument that "torture works" is self-serving and flawed.

As if we needed still another legal basis, the Convention Against Torture, ratified by the U.S. in 1994, requires all signers to prosecute all acts of torture. Thomas Paine reminded us in 1776. "In free countries the law ought to be King, and there ought to be no other."

If now we decide the president, the vice president and others involved are above the law, if we decide they are not accountable to prosecution, if we stand meekly by, we do so at our grave peril.

Bob Hooper is a fourth-generation western Kansan who writes from his home in Bogue.

celtic@ruraltel.net