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The Green Light

"As the first anniversary of 9/11 approached, and a prized Guantánamo detainee wouldn’t talk, the Bush administration’s highest-ranking lawyers argued for extreme interrogation techniques, circumventing international law, the Geneva Conventions, and the army’s own Field Manual. The attorneys would even fly to Guantánamo to ratchet up the pressure—then blame abuses on the military."

Philippe Sands, writing in Vanity Fair, follows the torture trail, and holds out the possibility of war crimes charges.

Over at Harper's Magazine, Scott Horton writes on the same subject based on the Vanity Fair article.

“It’s a matter of time,” the judge observed. “These things take time.” As I gathered my papers, he looked up and said, “And then something unexpected happens, when one of these lawyers travels to the wrong place.”

"Those are words for members of the torture team to contemplate. In the meantime, they should think twice before traveling abroad. Around the world, and increasingly within the United States itself they are regarded as criminals whose day of reckoning is drawing closer on the horizon."

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