Quoth the Raven, "Forevermore".

Torture is forever.

Those, like our current president, who think it best to ‘look forward’ rather than scour out the filth from our recent past eventually will be frustrated when others discover the truth and assign the blame for the official practice of torturing defenseless detainees conducted by the United States of America.

As has often occurred, the British are far ahead of us, and it is surely an irony of our decade that it is the Conservative Party there taking the lead. Prime Minister Cameron launched an executive review to be led by a judge with the aim of ‘restoring British moral leadership in the world’.

That seems to be a low priority here in our country where the possession of massive stocks of weaponry acts as a substitute for silly old ‘moral leadership’. But Obama and the foreign policy establishment should not underestimate the slow, corrosive effect of having the truth of their brutalities come dribbling out.

Already the British papers are assembling evidence that British intelligence agents stood by while detainees were tortured in Pakistan, Egypt, the Emirates, Bangladesh and of course Afghanistan and Iraq. Even slippery Tony Blair is unlikely to escape given the paper trail already leading towards his unctuous and smarmy person.

Blair has fallen back on the lawyerly constructions about whether he condoned or authorized ‘torture’, allowing himself wiggle room to continue to dodge the precise, smoking-gun evidence of his collusion with crimes against humanity. Eventually, however, the Iraq and Afghan wars will wind down, and the public’s fascination with torturing news of the ‘ticking time-bomb’ out of hapless suspects will fade into embarrassment.

Curiously, it is the heart of the British establishment itself that is pushing for a housecleaning to remove the taint of the torture years. The steady revelations generated support for a special investigation not only from Cameron and his deputy P.M. Clegg but also a foreign secretary from the Thatcher years (Lord Howe) and a top army staff officer (Lord Guthrie). This suggests that the Brits see real damage done to their interests by the unleashing of Star Chamber tactics of yesteryear and want to put an end to the chapter promptly.

Meanwhile, back in the U.S. there are other signs of disquiet about the introduction of medieval practices prohibited under Anglo-American jurisprudence for 500 years. The American Psychological Association told a Texas licensing board earlier this month that Dr James Mitchell should be stripped of his license for aiding the CIA’s torture of a detainee.

Just the beginning! As the months and years grind on, those who sold their souls to the national security apparatus and forgot their professional ethics will face the harsh glare of publicity—while the higher-ups who utilized them like Blair and Rumsfeld enjoy their golf games. It will be so unfair!