The recent statement by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility that the lawyers who wrote the so called “torture memos” exercised “poor judgment” in writing legal opinions related to the use of torture techniques is a disservice to justice. It is a topic that should be properly addressed by a serious inquiry to establish if there were any violations of the law.

According to the Justice Department’s ethics watchdog, lawyers John Yoo and Jay Bybee wrote opinions on the subject that “contained significant flaws.” In addition, investigators found that Yoo had “violated his duty to exercise independent legal judgment and render thorough, objective and candid legal advice.” As for Bybee, they determined that he had “acted in reckless disregard” of ethical obligations for his actions regarding those memos.

However, the report containing these conclusions stated that Yoo and Bybee were not guilty of professional misconduct that might have led to their disbarment. This is a puzzling statement if one considers that Yoo and Bybee’s actions led to serious violations of national and international law.

It is even more puzzling if one considers that a cover letter accompanying the report stated that an earlier version of the report found “professional misconduct” by the two lawyers. David Margolies, a senior career official at the Office of Professional Responsibility in charge of reviewing the report overruled that finding.

“Justice Department lawyers have an obligation to uphold the law, so when they write legal opinions that are designed to provide legal cover for torture, they need to be accountable with more than a slap in the wrist,” stated Andrea Prasow, senior counterterrorism counsel at Human Rights Watch. She added, “Last minute changes in the Justice Department’s findings should not stop state bars from investigating whether these men violated their ethical obligations as lawyers.”

The “torture memos” sought to provide legal cover for US interrogators to use abusive interrogation techniques such as sleep deprivation and waterboarding. This last practice has been prosecuted as a war crime in the United States. In 1947, the US charged a Japanese officer, Yukio Asano, with war crimes for carrying a form of waterboarding on a US civilian. Asano was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, when Taliban and al-Qaeda operatives were captured, CIA interrogators sought authority to use coercive means of interrogation. These methods were then cleared not only at the White House during the Bush administration, but also by the Justice Department, according to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

CIA officers used waterboarding at least 83 times against Abu Zubaydah and 183 times against Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, according to a 2005 Justice Department legal memorandum, even though the United States had historically treated waterboarding as torture. “We prosecuted our own soldiers for using it in Vietnam,” said Attorney General Eric H. Holder.

Information obtained from waterboarding may not be reliable because a person under duress may admit to anything. “It is bad interrogation. I mean, you can get anyone to confess to anything if the torture is bad enough,” said former CIA officer Bob Baer.

In December 2008, Robert Muller, Director of the FBI, stated that despite Bush Administration claims that waterboarding has “disrupted a number of attacks, may be dozens of attacks,” he didn’t believe that evidence obtained by the US government through enhanced interrogation techniques such as waterboarding disrupted any attack. Despite numerous and serious abuses, not a single CIA official and only a few military personnel have faced meaningful punishment.

There are widespread demands for the Justice Department to broaden its preliminary investigation of CIA abuses and on the role that Bush administration lawyers played in justifying those abuses. Former Vice President Dick Cheney boasted that he was a big supporter of waterboarding. President Obama stated at the beginning of his term, “I believe waterboarding was torture and it was a mistake.” By conducting a proper inquiry on the matter, his administration can show that it is still adhering to those same beliefs.

Cesar Chelala is a co-winner of an Overseas Press Club of America award for an article on human rights.