Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


PROSECUTING FOR TORTURE….Susan Crawford, head of military commissions, says charges can’t be brought against Mohammed al-Qahtani because she has determined that he was tortured during his interrogation. Matt Yglesias argues that this demonstrates why Barack Obama should be willing to open prosecutions against Bush administration officials for authorizing torture:

We have here a legal determination that a captive in US custody was tortured. And if he was tortured, that means someone tortured him. And torture is a crime….To me, it doesn’t make any sense to say that we’re going to have determinations that people were illegally tortured and yet we’re just not going to do anything about it. It’d be one thing to pardon people for this kind of thing as part of some larger legal or investigative strategy. But to just leave it hanging? If Crawford thinks Qahtani can’t be prosecuted because he was tortured, then it stands to reason that there’s someone who can be prosecuted for the torturing.

I won’t pretend that I don’t have mixed views on this, but basically I agree. There’s one thing I’d be interested in seeing first, though, that I don’t think I’ve seen before: a sober legal analysis of whether torture prosecutions are likely to succeed. The fact that Qahtani’s case has been tainted is based on a certain set of legal principles, and Crawford almost certainly made the right ruling here. But there’s a whole different body of statutory law and evidentiary requirements that would come into play if a prosecutor were trying to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a specific person was guilty of breaking U.S. law by ordering or carrying out the torture of Qahtani. That’s a much, much harder case to make.

I guess this is my worst case scenario: we end up bringing charges against Bush administration officials and then they get off. That would be tantamount to an official sanction for this stuff.

Now, obviously no prosecution is ever certain, and fear of failure is a poor reason for doing nothing. But I’d still like to know that there’s a decent chance that the legal case here is strong enough that convictions are at least likely. And I’d like to hear it from someone without a huge vested interest one way or the other. Without access to all the evidence this would be something of a whiteboard exercise, but still, has anyone with the appropriate background ever scoped this out?

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate