Major media outlets are reporting on a follow-up finding by a group of physicians that the participants and supporters of enhanced interrogation techniques (aka torture) practiced on detainees were both unethical and potentially prosecutable as war criminals. But, nobody's saying by whom. The Physicians for Human Rights report recommends:

Recommendations

Based on the findings of this investigation, the United States should take the following actions: President Obama must order the

1. attorney general to undertake an immediate criminal investigation of alleged illegal human experimentation and research on detainees conducted by the CIA and other government agencies following the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

2. The secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services must instruct the Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP) to begin an investigation of alleged violations of the Common Rule by the CIA and other government agencies as part of the "enhanced" interrogation program.

3. Congress must amend the War Crimes Act to eliminate changes made to the Act in 2006 which weaken the prohibition on biological experimentation on detainees, and ensure that the War Crimes Act definition of the grave breach of biological experimentation is consistent with the definition of that crime under the Geneva Conventions.

4. Congress should convene a joint select committee comprising members of the House and Senate committees responsible for oversight on intelligence, military, judiciary and health and human services matters to conduct a full investigation of alleged human research and experimentation activities on detainees in US custody.

5. President Obama should issue an executive order immediately suspending any federally funded human subject research currently occurring in secret — regardless of whether or not it involves detainees.

6. The Department of Justice’s Office of Professional Responsibility should commence an investigation into alleged professional misconduct by OLC lawyers related to violations of domestic and international law and regulations governing prohibitions on human subject experimentation and research on detainees.

7. President Obama should appoint a presidential task force to restore the integrity of the US regime of protections for human research subjects. This task force, comprising current and former officials from the Department of Health and Human Services, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, the human rights community, and leading health professional associations, should review current human subject protections for detainees, and recommend changes to ensure that the human rights of those in US custody are upheld.

8. States should adopt policies specifically prohibiting participation in torture and improper treatment of prisoners by health care professionals. Such participation is considered professional misconduct and is grounds for loss of professional licensure. Proposed legislation in New York State provides a model for such policy.

9. The United Nations special rapporteur on torture should undertake an investigation of allegations that the United States engaged in gross violations of international human rights law by engaging in human subject research and experimentation on detainees in its custody.

Which leads me to observe that what we have is an enforcement problem. The Constitution assumes that agents of government are hired to perform specific functions that are clearly spelled out and, when they don't, either by not performing or going overboard, the enforcement mechanism is that they are fired.

The criminal law assumes an element of personal satisfaction derived by a person from a particular act. When an agent of government acts to promote a personal agenda that's contrary to the Constitutional mandate, the crime is defined as "deprivation under color of law." Non-feasance in office, which is evidenced by agents of government not doing a job, is typically enforced, as noted above, by un-employment, one way or another.

So far, there seems to be no evidence of personal gratification by those who committed systematic torture under orders (the Abu Ghraib pranksters were punished for their delights). So, they can't be accused of "deprivation under color of law." What they engaged in was "deprivation under cover of law," but that's not a crime, especially not when the agents of government are directed by the belief that the essence of government is to be an agent of deprivation -- that the purpose of government is to deprive individuals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, unless they prove themselves worthy of surviving by being obedient. That's how we get to

Freedom is Obedience to the Law

Also--

The conservative perception of government is of it as a punitive, deprivation-causing institution, whose functions (warfare, crime fighting, security) are restrained by people being obedient to the law, whatever the law-givers decree it to be.

Visualize guard dogs who are trained to attack anyone that moves.

Given that perception, interception, interrogation and torture are "lesser included" or, if you will, "non-lethal" strategies to achieve the same aim as warfare and capital punishment and pest eradication. Torturing foreign detainees is less-lethal than wiping them out with missiles in foreign lands.

Given the conservative mindset, we should have expected nothing less than what we got. And our only excuse is that we were ignorant of how depraved the true believers are. But then, we were also ignorant of the behavior of priests whose vows of celibacy merely meant that they could satisfy their lust without concern for either their partners or the consequence of their actions.

Who knew that a vow of celibacy was designed to liberate men from marital and paternal responsibility? Who knew that hiring private corporations for military tasks was designed to liberate the agents of government from the responsibility of respecting Constitutional restraints?

And the answer is:

The conservative hierarchy in church and state knew.