Both of them were murder by torture, out of the dozens of cases of murder by torture, and the hundreds (probably thousands) of cases of torture without a death being involved.
As Glenn Greenwald observes, it doesn't matter, because the Obama administration has ruled out prosecuting anyone who authorized torture but did not actually physically conduct it themselves:
In August, 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder -- under continuous, aggressive prodding by the Obama White House -- announced that three categories of individuals responsible for Bush-era torture crimes would be fully immunized from any form of criminal investigation and prosecution: (1) Bush officials who ordered the torture (Bush, Cheney, Rice, Powell, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld); (2) Bush lawyers who legally approved it (Yoo, Bybee, Levin), and (3) those in the CIA and the military who tortured within the confines of the permission slips they were given by those officials and lawyers (i.e., "good-faith" torturers). The one exception to this sweeping immunity was that low-level CIA agents and servicemembers who went so far beyond the torture permission slips as to basically commit brutal, unauthorized murder would be subject to a "preliminary review" to determine if a full investigation was warranted -- in other words, the Abu Ghraib model of justice was being applied, where only low-ranking scapegoats would be subject to possible punishment while high-level officials would be protected.Adam Serwer makes the obvious conclusion, that absent prosecution of those who authorized torture, it will happen again.
In the matter of crimes against humanity, of which torture is one, the cover-up is a crime as well, and it is ongoing, and so not (yet) subject to the statute of limitations, so I hope that some future Justice Department will take the time to criminally investigate the Obama administration on this. (Unfortunately, this would almost certainly involve a Republican President)
Otherwise, torture is the law of the land right now.
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