The Justice Department said Thursday that it has closed the long-running inquiry by New Haven-based prosecutor John Durham into post 911 CIA interrogations of terrorist detainees without bringing criminal charges.

The decision Thursday by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder concludes a wide-ranging investigation of interrogation practices by the U.S. around the world during the administration of President George W. Bush.

Durham, a career Connecticut prosecutor who has been involved in numerous high-profile cases in the state, was appointed in 2008 by former Attorney General Michael Mukasey to conduct a criminal investigation into the destruction of CIA interrogation videotapes... more from The Hartford Courant here

Well, that's that. Or, have the torturers just opened the door to international prosecution?

CODEPINK and Ann Wright stage citizens arrest at RNC event

Condi Rice as a symbol of female power? Only if by power, we mean the power to put thousands of Iraqi women in graves all in the name of a war based on lies that she actively promoted...

Nothing to Celebrate

Former Bush officials now have new roles in society: professor, lawyer, corporate manager, etc., etc. Some have moved on into the Obama administration where current officials pursue many of the same policies. It is our responsibility to call them out and to demand that these criminal activities cease and that legal proceedings take place and in a timely fashion.

CIA agents have written books about it. Former President George W. Bush has explained why he thought it was necessary and legal. Yet the al Qaeda suspects who were subjected to so-called harsh interrogation techniques, and the lawyers charged with defending them at the Guantanamo Bay military tribunals, are not allowed to talk about the treatment they consider torture...

don't even think of saying the "T" word

I'm sure our friend Candace Gorman will have more to say about this; stay tuned.

A Question of Torture author and historian Alfred W. McCoy has produced a new book exposing the bipartisan effort to cover up U.S. torture policy from post-World War II to today.

McCoy writes: President Obama has closed the CIA's "black sites," its secret prisons where American agents once dirtied their hands with waterboarding and wall slamming. But via rendition -- the sending of terrorist suspects to the prisons of countries that torture -- and related policies, his administration has outsourced human rights abuse to Afghanistan, Somalia, and elsewhere.  In this way, he has avoided the political stigma of torture, while tacitly tolerating such abuses and harvesting whatever intelligence can be gained from them...

see Impunity at Home, Rendition Abroad: How Two Administrations and Both Parties Made Illegality the American Way of Life

Thanks to Congress and the President who signed indefinite detention into law as part of the NDAA, the United States may soon become a country that not only kills its citizens without charges or trial, but buries them alive on the say so of the executive branch...

Terror Tuesdays

"Unknown Target" photo adaption by Lance Page / t r u t h o u t

As Chris Floyd and many others have noted, this plan has gone live...

Is America the World's Largest Sponsor of Terrorism?

Titled "Cross Cultural, Rapport-Based Interrogation," the document encourages the isolation of detainees for several days before questioning. The American Civil Liberties Union responds:

"FBI agents should not be asking foreign governments or other agencies to engage in conduct that FBI agents are prohibited from engaging in. This is especially true when that conduct--like the use of isolation interrogation--raises serious human rights concerns and could lead to violations of international and domestic law."

see Torture Creep