One defining characteristic of the Bush administration is that ‘the buck stops there.’ Whether it’s ‘a few bad apples’ caught torturing prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison, or the head of FEMA doing a ‘heckuva job’, the President and his closest advisers deny responsibility for any of the appalling failures and crimes that have taken place on their watch.

Lack of leadership can certainly lead to failures and crimes, but the use of torture as a means of interrogation is not an aberration. Putting the torturers in prison while the military insiders and contract outsiders go free is like jailing the hit man and never going after the guy who paid him.

The Bush administration has always taken refuge behind a ‘trickle up’ explanation: that is, the decision was generated by military commanders and interrogators on the ground. This explanation is false. The origins lie in actions taken at the very highest levels of the administration by some of the most senior personal advisers to the president, the vice president, and the secretary of defense. At the heart of the matter stand several political appointees–lawyers who, it can be argued, broke their ethical codes of conduct and took themselves into a zone of international criminality, where formal investigation is now a very real option. This is the story of how the torture at Guantanamo began, and how it spread.

Phillipe Sands, Vanity Fair ‘The Green Light’ , read the rest here.

Our next president will have the task of repairing our reputation and bringing us back to our real American values. We respect the law. We obey the law. The American people do not give our leaders or anyone else the permission to torture in our name.