The morning started off with the news that an Italian court had convicted 23 Americans of illegally kidnapping and renditioning a Muslim cleric to be tortured.
The early afternoon carried another snappy news item, wherein the former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan said the CIA renditioned detainees to Uzbekistan, where they were raped with broken bottles:
The CIA relied on intelligence based on torture in prisons in Uzbekistan, a place where widespread torture practices include raping suspects with broken bottles and boiling them alive, says a former British ambassador to the central Asian country.
Craig Murray, the rector of the University of Dundee in Scotland and until 2004 the UK's ambassador to Uzbekistan, said the CIA not only relied on confessions gleaned through extreme torture, it sent terror war suspects to Uzbekistan as part of its extraordinary rendition program.
"I'm talking of people being raped with broken bottles," he said at a lecture late last month that was re-broadcast by the Real News Network. "I'm talking of people having their children tortured in front of them until they sign a confession. I'm talking of people being boiled alive. And the intelligence from these torture sessions was being received by the CIA, and was being passed on."
And then just before I got ready to go home, came the latest ray of sunshine, courtesy of the Obama Administration: we're disappointed with the convictions in Italy of 23 US secret agents
We are disappointed by the verdicts against the Americans and Italians charged in Milan for their alleged involvement in the case involving Egyptian cleric Abu Omar, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters.
Disappointed? Yes, the Nazis were disappointed in the verdicts at Nuremberg, too.
What have we come to as a country when we continually and continuously break the laws of God and man, and torture or send to be tortured other human beings?
And why, for God's sake, is the present administration unwilling or afraid to prosecute the perpetrators of these acts. Acts which were at all times relevant herein illegal under the Convention Against Torture:
No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.
An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.
No State Party shall expel, return ("refouler") or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.
For the purpose of determining whether there are such grounds, the competent authorities shall take into account all relevant considerations including, where applicable, the existence in the State concerned of a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights.
What is it going to take to get this Administration to fulfill its campaign promises to restore the Rule of Law and institute transparency in government?