This morning the Senate Intelligence Committee held a hearing on the Bush administration's torture program and as I write this, the Senate Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing on the same subject. These inquiries are long overdue, but hopefully they will reinvigorate the push for accountability for those who designed and implemented the torture policy of the past eight years. Among the witnesses whose testimony provides a compelling and convincing voice against torture is former FBI interrogator Ali Soufan, who last month wrote in the New York Times that torture "is un-American, ineffective and harmful to our national security." Also testifying was Philip Zelikow, former top aide to Secretary of State Condoleezza, whose dissenting memo arguing against torture was buried by the Bush administration.

Meanwhile, word comes that the Obama administration has decided to fight the release of highly-anticipated photos showing more abuse of prisoners in U.S. custody. "The Obama administration announced today that it is reversing its promise to make public photos depicting detainee abuse by U.S. personnel overseas," the ACLU said in a press release. "... This decision is particularly disturbing given the Justice Department's failure to initiate a criminal investigation of torture crimes under the Bush administration."

Follow this and other stories in AlterNet's Rights & Liberties Special Coverage. Thanks for reading.

Liliana Segura

Editor, Rights & Liberties Special Coverage

Plot Thickens After CIA 'Ghost Prisoner' Tortured Into Giving Iraq-al Qaeda Connection Is Found Dead in Libya
By Andy Worthington, Andy Worthington's Blog
Was it a suicide, as Libyan authorities claim? Or was he murdered? Read more »

90 Afghan Schoolgirls Poisoned in 'Taliban Gas Attack'
By Jerome Starkey, Independent UK
The incident is the third attack on a girls' school in three weeks, raising fears about increasingly vicious methods to terrorize girls. Read more »

'The Most Humiliating Experience I Have Ever Had' -- Why Is the Supreme Court So Callous About Privacy?
By Liliana Segura, AlterNet
A teenage girl is strip-searched and gets snickered at by old men in robes for challenging it -- what's so funny about the Fourth Amendment? Read more »

Revealed: British Military Intelligence Agents' Secret Attempts to Recruit Prisoners at Guantanamo
By Robert Verkaik, Independent UK
MI5 agents promised to protect British prisoners from their American captors and help secure their return home to the United Kingdom. Read more »

Is a Cheney Cover-Up Scandal Brewing?
By Nick Baumann, David Corn, Mother Jones
Cheney may be responsible for deep-sixing an important torture memo -- an act that could be a crime. Will Dems bring the truth to light? Read more »

Fighting Rich Lobbyists to Save Health Care Reform Is AlterNet's Top Take-Action Campaign of the Week
AlterNet
Powerful medical lobbyists stand in the way of health care progress in the name of profits. We must put an end to it. Read more »

Outrageous: Torture Lawyer John Yoo Gets a Column at the Philadelphia Inquirer
By Liliana Segura, AlterNet
Yoo joins an 'increasingly rightward-tilting lineup' that includes former Senator Rick Santorum and torture fan Michael Smerconish. Read more »

Conservatives Outraged Over Release of Torture Photos, but Not Over Actual Torture
By Ali Frick, Think Progress
It's not the pictures that recruit suicide bombers; it's what the pictures depict. Read more »

Torture Report Contradicts Cheney; White House Preparing to Release 'Holy Grail' Report
By Sam Stein, Huffington Post
Waterboarding neither "efficacious or medically safe." Read more »

Naomi Klein, Matt Taibbi, and Bill Maher on Investigating the Bush/Cheney Torture Program
By Isaac Fitzgerald, AlterNet
Should we sacrifice justice for political gain? Of course not, but not everyone feels that way. Read more »