I was a Japanese-language military intelligence officer in World War II, trained to interrogate Japanese prisoners of war and translate captured documents.

It never would have occurred to me to humiliate, let alone torture, captured Japanese soldiers. Nor did it occur to our military and political leaders to authorize "enhanced interrogation methods," to use the Bush administration's euphemism.

In World War II, Japanese soldiers fought not only tenaciously, but fanatically, as we learned in Guadalcanal, Tarawa, the Philippines, Okinawa, Iwo Jima, and elsewhere. As Ulrich Straus noted in his excellent study The Anguish of Surrender, the Japanese army's field service code, Senjinkun, decreed it impermissible for soldiers to be taken as prisoners of war.

To many Japanese soldiers, capture was a fate worse than death - a dishonor to them, their families, and their country. Many were convinced that, once captured, they were without a country; after the war, they would try to go to the United States, Australia, or Africa - anywhere but home. Considering themselves beneath contempt, captured soldiers contemplated killing themselves, and some did.

Terrified at what the Americans might do to them, they were surprised, relieved, and forthcoming when we treated them humanely. The American government abided by the Geneva Conventions during the war not only because it was the right thing to do, and not only in the hope (if not necessarily the expectation) that our own captured soldiers would be treated decently, but also because it made strategic sense.

Individuals undergoing torture - including waterboarding, sleep deprivation, stress positions, hooding, sexual humiliation, the use of dogs, and "walling" - will usually say anything to make the torture stop. As we have seen, they will make up information that sends our agents on wild goose chases.

But the Bush administration took a different view of the Geneva Conventions. Then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales summed it up in a memorandum to the president in January 2002, declaring that "the nature of the new war ... renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions."

Lawyers in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel spelled out in considerable detail how far the methods of interrogation could go: very far.

President Obama has said that no action will be taken against CIA agents who followed the opinions of the Office of Legal Counsel.

But what of the lawyers? According to the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility, they were guilty of serious lapses of judgment.

That's it? Who gave the lawyers their orders?

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.) has called for a commission to investigate what happened and who requested the legal opinions. Obama has been less than enthusiastic about the idea. Some Republicans argue that the Obama administration should not investigate or prosecute Bush administration officials over "policy differences."

But torture is not a matter of lapses of judgment or policy differences. It is a crime. Either we believe in the rule of law, or we don't.

We are not merely exacting vengeance when we investigate and prosecute embezzlers, rapists, and purse-snatchers. We are holding people responsible for their crimes.