Cao open to torture prosecutions.

[BlueJessamine]

Source: Think Progress

Yesterday, the Times-Picayune reported that Rep. Anh "Joseph" Cao (LA) is one of the few Republicans in Congress who have agreed that the door to possible prosecutions for torture architects in the Bush administration should be left open:

But on Monday, Obama, while maintaining that CIA operatives should be spared legal scrutiny, said: "With respect to those who formulated those legal decisions, I would say that that is going to be more of a decision for the attorney general, within the perimeters of various laws."

Rep. Anh "Joseph" Cao, R-New Orleans, whose father, a former South Vietnamese Army officer who spent seven years in a North Vietnamese re-education camp after the fall of South Vietnam, expressed a similar view.

"I agree we have to look to the future, not the past, but if people broke the law, I believe that no one is above the law and if people violate the law they have to face the consequences of what the law dictates."


Read more: http://thinkprogress.org/2009/04/24/cao-torture/

[Barrett808]

1. "Torture architects in the Bush administration"

Love that phrase.

[JDPriestly]

2. The Vietnamese immigrants know very well what these torture

techiniques mean. As do those who survived the Holocaust and their children and grandchildren. No torture. No way. That's just a bottom line that cannot be crossed.

Those claiming that torture is OK because it brought results think that they are applying a cost/benefits test. They need to do that test again. The costs in terms of moral and political degradation of our society are simply not worth the benefits of torture.

We have heard a lot of talk about the chilling effects that prosecutions would have on the low-level CIA operatives who carried out the torture orders. But think about the chilling effects that knowledge that detainees, captives, prisoners taken by the Americans are likely to be tortured will have on independent individuals who might provide us very valuable information but who would fear being tortured themselves if they demonstrate that they know something? Doesn't this make cooperating with Americans a riskier venture. After all, the Americans might torture you if they think you know something.

Think also about the chilling effect that this might have on allies who would like to cooperate with us but also want to win elections in countries that strongly disapprove of torture? And how about the chilling effect on dissent (of the right or left) at home if it is known that the American government tortures?

When you look at the balance, gains from torture are rare and not really worth much if they exist at all compared to the loss of trust that torturing prisoners -- who have not been charged or tried -- means to us as a nation.

I feel sorry for the CIA people out in the field these days. The truth about what the Bush administration did had to come out. We have to clean out the filth. But, it must be tough right now to be trying to contact people in hostile parts of the world when it is now widely known that America has tortured. This makes us no better than the people we are fighting.

How in the world could anyone convince themselves that you can torture your way to freedom? Impossible.

We don't allow slavery. We cannot allow torture. Those who authorized the torture should be prosecuted. They broke important laws.

[Iliyah]

3. Yeah right

Cao will be put in his place by the masters of the GOP. Prosecution will be far from his mind once they get a hold of him. That said, if he is American born or too young, he doesn't truly know about torture nor the war, personally, only by what his family has told him.

Bottom line, he will change his tune.

[SpartanDem]

5. Maybe not

Cao is in a very blue district that he won becuase the previous rep got caught in a scandal. It might do him well in 2010 to go along with the Dems on this issue.

[Journeyman]

4. It's rightly said, the man being tortured may be guilty of a crime . . .

but the person torturing him definitely is.

[Senator]

6. K&R