This formerly confidential ICRC report from February 2007 is easily the most damning blow to the Bush legacy.  It details, at length, from perhaps the most legitimate and trusted source for reporting treatment of captive persons, the harsh ill-treatment of the what the report calls “the fourteen,” or the highest value detainees in US custody.  These include Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

While most of what is contained in this report comes as no surprise to me, and probably most of you, it is important because of its source and its intended audience.  Drafted as a summary report for the CIA, this is far from an attention-seeking expose designed to grab media headlines, and furthermore, the ICRC is far from a left-wing media outlet.  Indeed, they are the gatekeepers of the Geneva Conventions.  This is about as legit as it gets.

The conclusion?

Moreover, and in addition to the continuous solitary confinement and icommunicado detention which itself was a form of ill-treatment, twelve of the fourteen alleged that they were subjected to systematic physical and/or psychological ill-treatment.  This was a consequence of both the treatment and the material conditions which formed part of the interrogation regime, as well as the overall detention regime.  This regime was clearly designed to undermine human dignity and to create a sense of futility by inducing, in many cases, severe physical and mental pain and suffering, with the aim of obtaining compliance and extracting information, resulting in exhaustion, depersonalisation and dehumanisation.

The allegations of ill-treatment of the detainees indicate that, in many cases, the ill-treatment to which they were subjected while held in the CIA program, either singly or in combination, constituted torture.  In addition, many other elements of the ill-treatment, either singly or in combination, constituted cruel inhuman or degrading treatment.

Now, out with those memos.  Let’s see the twisted logic and slimy opinions of Yoo, et al, that rationalized this torture.

Let them be laid bare for all the world to see.