Tortured guidelines

???The latest effort by the U.S. Government to provide more transparency to its citizens is a release of memos detailing how the Department of Justice (DOJ) carried out certain torture methods.

???Methods include how to slam prisoners against a wall, how many days a prisoner be deprived of sleep and what is said before locking the prisoner in a box with an insect.

???The issue is: where is the accountability?

???We are disclosing these documents to widen the scope of what the American public should have known a while back. Now that we are aware of these transgressions, it only breeds more questions about what happens behind closed doors.

???Assistant attorney generals were given the task of figuring out how to provide wiggle room for acts that can be viewed as illegal, immoral or a violation of this country's basic principles.

???The memos are a weird combination of legal jargon and considerable amorality in regards to actions the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) took.

???John Bybee, a federal judge and former assistant attorney general, wrote with admiration about a contraction for water boarding that would lurch a prisoner upright if he stopped breathing while being doused with water.

???It is beginning to sound like some weird movie where lawyers are actively pursuing how much their clients can get away with even after admitting their crimes. The CIA is learning how to abuse people from the DOJ. It all played out with the blessing of the upper echelons of government.

???These memos merely address how little Americans still know about the surveillance program that is taking place, both foreign and domestic. Nobody really understands what any of the rules were. No government official described what was lacking in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, just that the government did what was needed to protect the country.

???Americans have never been comfortable with the idea people were just doing a job. The administration of President Barack Obama has stated that operatives would not be prosecuted for actions that their superiors told them were legal.

???The reality is we don't know what was done and who was giving the go-ahead. ???Many people in this nation have criticized the justice system for allowing too much to go through their proverbial hands.

???There is no question that if we want to resume being the "leaders of the free world," these issues must be addressed and corrected.

???America has always been held to higher standards in the world; we signed the Geneva Convention that stipulates that all combatants in any the fight are to be treated humanely and not subjected to outrages of personal dignity.

???Releasing memos once deemed to be top secret is a good idea for transparency, but without any official taking responsibility, it is all just more smoke and mirrors.