Could we expect the war criminals responsible for this be prosecuted now?
You're not a war criminal unless you lose the war.
Unfortunately, this is the reality.
Nope! Because the Office of Legal Counsel made a good faith effort when they (incorrectly) opined torture was legal, none of the torturers will be held liable. After all, the government told them it was legal. It doesn't matter that the OLC later decided that torture is in fact illegal. The "torture memos" article on Wikipedia has more details. tl;dr blame John Yoo
Ah the good old days, when state crimes required a facade of reasonability, an abundance of ass-covering, and the assurance of good-faith.
That's the Nuremberg defense. It's a valid defense if you are on the winning side.
Or at least, the New York Times to stop publishing op-eds by those war criminals.
(The Times pretty regularly features op-eds by Rumsfeld, and had one by John Yoo just a couple days ago.)
I was appalled by that Yoo piece/ them giving him that platform
It's a long shot. That'd require either 1) an administration to prosecute them in our own courts or 2) the US to surrender people to the ICC or something. The US has historically been reluctant to do 2 because the US doesn't want to have the liability of actually following international law. The first is also somewhat unlikely because it would be the kind of thing that consumes a lot of an administrations time and political capital that they'd much rather spend passing new legislation.
This is super important. The west can not claim moral high ground if we torture people.
Too little, too late. After Iraq, Lybia, Syria, and soon Iran, the West has lost any moral clout whatsoever.