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PROVIDENCE -- U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, speaking at a conference for health and medical professionals at Brown University yesterday, made the case for holding the Bush administration accountable for changing the nation's policy on torture.

"We need to follow this thing into those dense weeds and shine a bright light into what was done," said the state's junior senator. "We can paper it over if we choose, but the blueprint is still lying there for others to do it all over again. ... It's important that we not let this moment pass."

Whitehouse, a Democrat, spoke at the close of the first of two days of the Physicians for Human Rights' National Student Conference, an annual gathering of medical, public health, nursing and undergraduate school students.

Challenging the former administration's use of torture has been one of the key areas of advocacy for the D.C.-based organization, and its leaders passed on to Whitehouse a petition signed by conference goers calling for Congress to form a committee to investigate the federal government's use of torture and other coercive methods of interrogation.

Nearly 400 students from 75 schools across the nation were at yesterday's conference.

Whitehouse focused his remarks on why the nation, despite the daunting challenges it faces on the economic front, must confront the issue of torture early in the Obama administration.

Under Bush, "the U.S. government took part in inhumane, brutal interrogation techniques that were torture," he said. "The question is, what does it mean when a country as a whole heads down a road like this? It is an important story to tell to understand the way democracy works."

The former state attorney general and former U.S. Attorney for Rhode Island has become a vocal figure nationally on issues of torture and abuse as a member of the Senate Judiciary and the Senate Intelligence committees.

Whitehouse explained how in 2002, the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel issued a memo that became the standard for how the federal government under Bush would define acts of torture -- as those acts that caused organ failure or death in their subjects.

"They got that standard, from all places, from health-care reimbursement law," said Whitehouse. "The words happened to be useful to them, but they were taken out of context."

Whitehouse pointed out that the Department of Justice in the 1980s prosecuted a county sheriff in Texas for using waterboarding (the practice of simulating drowning by covering a victim's face with a towel and dousing him or her with water) to coerce confessions from suspects.

Even then, the U.S. government had deemed waterboarding as torture, he said.

"It's beyond malpractice," said Whitehouse of the 2002 ruling. "It raises the specter that these things were overlooked" purely for political ends, he said.

Some have argued that digging into the actions of the Bush administration would open deep wounds at a time when the nation is trying to heal. But those at the conference, including Whitehouse, disagreed.

"It's an issue of accountability," said John Bradshaw, chief policy officer for the Physicians for Human Rights. "We need to re-establish the fact that no one is above the law."