Navy JAG Andrew Williams Resigns Over Torture

As reported by ThinkProgress, a JAG officer with the U.S. Naval Reserve has resigned his commission over the alleged use of torture by the United States and the destruction of video tapes said to contain instances of that torture.

Explaining his resignation in a letter to his Gig Harbor, WA, newspaper — the Peninsula Gateway — Williams said Hartmann’s testimony was “the final straw”:

The final straw for me was listening to General Hartmann, the highest-ranking military lawyer in charge of the military commissions, testify that he refused to say that waterboarding captured U.S. soldiers by Iranian operatives would be torture.

His testimony had just sold all the soldiers and sailors at risk of capture and subsequent torture down the river. Indeed, he would not rule out waterboarding as torture when done by the United States and indeed felt evidence obtained by such methods could be used in future trials.

Thank you, General Hartmann, for finally admitting the United States is now part of a long tradition of torturers going back to the Inquisition.

If we can't state categorically that waterboarding is torture, then you can be certain the practice will be used on any of our own military men or women unlucky enough to be captured by someone determined to show the world what a hypocrite the United States has become. Read the rest of the story here.