Say what you will about President Obama—and some here say he’s the worst President ever—he’s promoted the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on post-9/11 torture that will be be released later today. The report is said to recount graphically how the CIA dealt with prisoners (waterboarding, etc.) in Guantanamo and elsewhere.

Obama has also called for the Cuban detention facility to be closed, and for prisoners to face trials on U.S. soil, but he’s been blocked by the House of Representatives.  In other words, Obama’s been doing all the right things, but Republicans have blocked him at every turn. Is he really worse, than, say George W. Bush, who ordered the torture in the first place?

Bush acted with the complicity of CIA officials, and his policies are now being defended not only by Bush and ex-CIA staffers, but by Dick Cheney and the Republicans in Congress. They oppose the release of the torture report, not because it will incite unrest (which it will) but because it makes the Bush administration look bad. Even Secretary of State John Kerry seems to have advised Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Committee that produced the report, to hold back its release, for he fears a Middle Eastern meltdown when the dirty facts are revealed. And indeed, Marines are standing ready all over the Middle East, prepared for some nasty violence.

That violence will happen, and my response is this: too bad, for we brought this on ourselves by violating the law. The U.S. is not supposed to torture people, period, even under the euphemism of “enhanced interrogation.” We need to get the facts in the open. The base at Guantanamo is a travesty and the torture didn’t work. As CNN reports:

The long-delayed report on the use of torture — “enhanced interrogation techniques” — by the U.S. government is expected to be released Tuesday morning and it concludes that the CIA’s use of torture did not lead to “actionable intelligence,” Sen. Angus King, a member of the committee, told CNN.

“Did we torture people? Yes. Did it work? No.,” King, a Maine independent who caucuses with Democrats, said on CNN’s “New Day.

But I’m proud of Feinstein, her committee, and Obama for making this go forward, and shedding some light on the illegal and unethical practices of the U.S. Yes, those who attack us in and from the Middle East don’t themselves refrain from torture, executing kidnapped American and British civilians, beheading children, and committing other war crimes, but we’re supposed to be better than that.

So what about those who broke the law? Should Bush and others be charged as criminals? I go back and forth on this, but see a lot of sense in today’s New York Times op-ed  by Anthony Romero, head of the liberal and admirable American Civil Liberties Union. Romero once urged prosecution, but now sees that this won’t fly in today’s political climate. He urges instead a “formal” pardon rather than just a “tacit” pardon (a failure to prosecute), as the formal pardon emphasizes that the conduct was illegal. As Romero said:

That officials at the highest levels of government authorized and ordered torture is not in dispute. Mr. Bush issued a secret order authorizing the C.I.A. to build secret prisons overseas. The C.I.A. requested authority to torture prisoners in those “black sites.” The National Security Council approved the request. And the Justice Department drafted memos providing the brutal program with a veneer of legality.

. . . An explicit pardon would lay down a marker, signaling to those considering torture in the future that they could be prosecuted.

Mr. Obama could pardon George J. Tenet for authorizing torture at the C.I.A.’s black sites overseas, Donald H. Rumsfeld for authorizing the use of torture at the Guantánamo Bay prison, David S. Addington, John C. Yoo andJay S. Bybee for crafting the legal cover for torture, and George W. Bush andDick Cheney for overseeing it all.

While the idea of a pre-emptive pardon may seem novel, there is precedent. Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson pardoned Confederate soldiers as a step toward unity and reconstruction after the Civil War. Gerald R. Ford pardoned Richard M. Nixon for the crimes of Watergate. Jimmy Carter pardoned Vietnam War draft resisters.

The spectacle of the president’s granting pardons to torturers still makes my stomach turn. But doing so may be the only way to ensure that the American government never tortures again. Pardons would make clear that crimes were committed; that the individuals who authorized and committed torture were indeed criminals; and that future architects and perpetrators of torture should beware. Prosecutions would be preferable, but pardons may be the only viable and lasting way to close the Pandora’s box of torture once and for all.

We can argue about that, but what is not in doubt is that this report must be issued—now. Americans and citizens of other countries need to know that our nation will not tolerate torture. And we need laws forbidding that explicitly, even with an executive order like the one Bush issued.  (Good luck getting such laws through a Republican-controlled Congress!)

As always, the Republicans are showing their true colors (that of aposematic snakes) by opposing the issue of this report, and they continue to defend the use of torture during the G. W. Bush era.  Ceiling Cat bless Senator Feinstein, who said this:

“We have to get this report out,” she told the Los Angeles Times in an interview Sunday. “Anybody who reads this is going to never let this happen again.”

Let us hope so.