Washington Post opinion writer Dan Froomkin expresses the outrage many of us feel upon the release of White House torture memos.

The profoundly disgusting memos made public yesterday — in which government lawyers attempted to justify flatly unconscionable and illegal acts — provide a depressing reminder of a time when the powerful and powerless alike were stripped of their humanity.

These memos gave the CIA the go-ahead to do things to people that you’d be arrested for doing to a dog. And the legalistic, mechanistic analysis shows signs of an almost inconceivable callousness. The memos serve as a vivid illustration of the moral chasm into which the nation fell — or rather, was pushed — during the Bush era.

Here’s my message to my political representatives. Hopefully if enough voices are raised, people will go to jail for their illegal torture advocacy.

To: President Barack Obama
CC: Senator Dick Durbin, Senator Roland Burris, Congressman Mike Quigley

A Call for a Special Prosecutor to Investigate Torture

Dear sirs:

The release of the Central Intelligence Agency interrogation memos, coupled with other alarming information that has trickled out in books and newspapers in recent years, has made clear the real possibility that war crimes were committed by leading members of the Bush administration.

In response to these contraventions of American law and moral standards, a special prosecutor needs to be appointed to investigate these abuses of the rule of law and human decency. Otherwise, the standards of justice and decency our country has long espoused will be forever tarnished.