Torture can’t be more wrong

Re “Keeps on ticking,” editorial, Nov. 13

I agree with the proposition in your editorial that torture ought to be banned altogether, but it already is outlawed. When the United States became a party to the Geneva Convention, that treaty’s prohibition of torture, including waterboarding, became the law of the United States. For Congress now to pass a law outlawing waterboarding implies that current law does not already do that, and makes it easier for the administration to dance around other torture issues by inferring that only an exhaustive list of specific prohibitions by Congress can tie the administration’s hands.

Only a country in which the head of the executive branch feels free to ignore the law would be faced with this circumstance, and the solution is not to pass new legislation duplicating what we have in place. It’s to replace the administration with one that believes in the rule of law and to impeach officials who violate their oaths of office by flouting the Constitution.

Stuart Meiklejohn

Ojai