It is a sad day when someone has to spellout that torture is not acceptable. In Australia we wait in vain to hear from just one politican with enough principle to speak out about the treatment of Julian Assange. It is time to stop licking the boots of the U.S.

Individual torturers, of whatever rank, need to be sought out and outed by name, rank and serial number on a permanent web site. No lawyers disputing jurisdiction, no "I was ordered" - just did or didn't the person torture anyone? To cope with libel laws, some of the torturers could be given fictional - but individual - identities. They would know their real names could be released at any minute. Nebulous behind-the-scenes entities like "the US Government" and out of reach key leaders can be berated from now to doomsday and this won't deter the torturing. Only individual outing of perpetrators at the coalface will do that.

I admit I did not read the whole article but I hope you covered the hypocrisy that relates to the International Court of Justice and how it is has jailed or in the process of jailing many people BUT they have not got 1 person from a western country like Bush or Rumsfeld who ordered torture or Obama with the drones killing people. I can't think of 1 Western leader or underling being bought before them.

Obama is no better with the use of these Preditor Drones.Hundreds if not thousands of innocent people have been murdered by them.

Both George Bush and Tony Blair were found guilty of war crimes in Kuala Lumpa last year.That did not make the news.

Marjorie Cohn has some interesting articles on OO, but I can't quite work out if she's posting them herself, or perhaps someone who thinks that torture overseas - as opposed to torture happening today in Australia, is topical. Chomsky and Herman(1994) note this as a diversionary tactic- "things are terrible, just look over there and see" while here there is nothing but deafening silence on human rights of Australians detained here - many more ATSI people, than refugees.

Perhaps the readers can contextualize Cohn's damning commentary about torture, noting that torture is ongoing today in Australia - our own nation, in our own detention centres, police lockups, police stations and prisons. Why don't your authors or the ICC care about that? And, why doesn't Amnesty International or the ubiquitous media, or the ICRC? With our weak constitution, and the US not being a member of the ICC, and their impending bases in our remote desert areas, we are effectively sanctioning their abjectly unacceptable practices here - would Rudd/McClelland have rubber-stamped that?

So the 2000 WA Prison Torture Report by the DICWC(WA) detailed and evidenced torture of detainees, so did the RCIADIC, and countless inquiries since - so why is systemic reform the government's only answer for the criminal offence of assaults contained in these torturous acts? Former DPP Lloyd Rayney said WA's criminal laws could simply not successfully prosecute government torturers, and McClelland ratified the OpCat specifically calling for a criminal offence of torture. Clearly there is a need to address the legal shortfalls in prosecuting torture in Australia for the criminal offence that it is.