Until today, I saw two options for the Obama administration on the issue of prosecution of the past administration for torturing suspects in U.S. custody. Option one: they continued with their "we're looking forward, not backward" line and worked swiftly to put into place safeguards to keep this from ever happening in this administration. Option two: they declared the actions of the past administration illegal.
Let me draw the lines a little better between these options, and in so doing better explain, I hope, why this "looking forward" nonsense needs to stop.
In Option One, here's what you could expect: the closure, in a short amount of time, of Guantánamo Bay, the literal and symbolic home of torture in the Bush administration; shuffling of staff in every significant department with potential oversight of interrogation techniques, including the appointments of stridently anti-torture candidates; broad, reassuring statements from our leaders that they would never condone, encourage, or excuse torture on their own watch. All of this is reassuring, and yes, happening right now. It seems like a step -- like many steps -- in the right direction, and it is likely that within a few months, we'll all be distracted by the glimmer and shine of a new president against the bleak balck-hole of the financial crisis, and will therefore forget that we ever had a nasty little torture habit.
Here's the problem. If the Obama administration chooses to "look forward, not back" about torture, it is a de facto acceptance of torture as a tool available in interrogation. Even if Barack Obama never orders a single person to waterboard anyone, even if he spends every day retraining the military and intelligence communities about the intricacies of interrogation and international law, even if he establishes a new cabinet-level office -- the Secretary of We Do Not Torture -- to oversee our goodness now and forever, by only acting to prevent future acts, he is allowing the next president (Sarah? Jeb? You listening?) to reverse everything he does.
Presidents don't exist in a vacuum. Nearly anything Obama does in the next four or eight years can be undone by his successor. We've just learned this lesson, thanks to President Bush. The only guarantee of future behavior in the presidency is intervention through law.
So, as I see it, the Obama administration has two options: first option, choose not to prosecute members of the Bush administration for authorizing and participating in torturing suspects, and in so doing expand the belief that there is some wiggle room in the law for torture to happen.
The second option is to open the door for prosecution.
Option Two differs from Option One by only a very narrow thread: in option two, we can expect the same steps (GitMo closure, anti-torture appointments, strict adherence to the letter of the Geneva Conventions), but with one added detail: the administration, instead of saying "we won't do that because it's wrong," will say, "we won't do that because it is illegal."
Stating aloud and officially that the specific abuses doled out in interrogations were illegal, instead of just wrong, makes clear that existing laws have been broken. Suddenly, the question changes from, "How do we make sure this never happens again?" to "How did this ever happen at all?"
In finding the answer to the second question, we must look backward. And when we look back, if we're honest, we'll see major problems: broken laws, but also a broken system, where dozens of people were allowed and even encouraged to break the law under the nose of two separate agencies charged with monitoring their behavior.
I said that I believed the Obama administration had two options until today, because today, at his confirmation hearing, Attorney General-designate Eric Holder said that water-boarding is both torture and illegal and not under the president's purview to order. Holder will soon be in charge of the Department of Justice, and if he's to be taken at his words -- that the DOJ must reestablish its independence, and act as a check upon presidential excess -- then he must push for investigation and prosecution of past crimes as a defense against any in the future.
If water-boarding is illegal now, it was illegal last year. It was illegal ten years ago. And if it is illegal, it must be prosecuted.
The problem with looking only forward is that prevention isn't a cure. The system -- our system -- has been infected by bad behavior of the worst degree. For Obama to say that he'll never do those things is a good personal step, but the presidency is larger than one man. The presidency is whoever is in the office at the time. If the Obama administraton refuses to look back, they open the door for the next president to do just that, and to take these lessons -- that torture can be used, that waterboarding is OK, that the president is above the law -- and learn well from history that which they refused.
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Catherine Forsythe
Writer to the Stars
Emily Holleman
Iron Skillet
Leslie Harpole
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I completely shunned work today in order to listen to the hearing/questioning/whatever-is-the-correct-term. My boss wanted to do the same, but I (somehow) failed (or forgot) to show her how to stream NPR on her computer ...
At least Nixon admitted wrongdoing and cared about the honor of the office, though. The big thing missing for me in tonight's outgoing message from Bush was a sense of admission of wrongdoing. He admitted he knew others thought he had not done well. But he didn't own it. And someone must. It should be him and his administration.
The incoming Obama administration is sending signals that it likely will look forward, not back, and that means people who allegedly tortured or who allegedly ordered or authorized torture will never be called to account for what they did. Not in this lifetime anyway.
If we don't at least look back for a moment and address it, and/or prosecute those responsible, once Mr. Obama is no longer President, those who disagree with his views will feel licensed to start it back again. There MUST be repercussions, in my opinion. Looking forward is great, but sometimes we have to stop and take a look back for perspective and the preservation of the future.
(rated)
The law is meaningless unless it is enforced.
"If water-boarding is illegal now, it was illegal last year. It was illegal ten years ago. And if it is illegal, it must be prosecuted."
Shout that loud and clear. Would we be talking about "looking forward" if murder had been committed in the White House? What about "looking forward" if it was discovered a cabinet member had stolen millions of dollars?
"Looking forward" is nothing but a cowardly attempt to bury heads in the sand and pretend nothing happened. Your argument that investigation and prosecution where justified is the best way to prevent it from happening again is the best argument I have heard.
Secondly, I am concerned that any prosecution of the administration would be an exercise in futility that would end up trickling down to more Linndie Englands and not the deserving war criminals that have been running roughshod over any sense of moral decency this country may have enjoyed. I guess my political soul is so broken that although I have hope, I don't have much faith in government to do the right thing.
Bush & Cheney should have been impeached for their crimes against the state.
There have been enough lawyers, defense and prosecution, along with just about a million jurists, working at it for enough time to come to conclusions and take corrective action NOW! I demand to know what backroom politics led to Mr. Holders statements.
It's not as if folks sat on their hands for six years. To come up with this useless precursor excuse for failing to take immediate actions that should have been defined, challenged, and refined multiple times and years ago, is instantly insincere and assailable.
I take it personally that Bush/Cheney held those people for so long without accomplishing one thing, except to illegally detain and torture them.
As for the eight year law breaking spree. This is a weak administration in it's desire to appease all sides, expecting to easily get "forward looking" programs enacted.
Hopefully, the Obama administration is finding out that it was hired to do the tough work, also. This is work where appeasement will not be part of the tool kit.
The tough work includes robust prosecution and justice for any and all criminal enterprises of the Bush/Cheney administration, no matter what the Republican Right Wing, or the Rollover Democrats think.
We didn't elect the man so that the Right Wing could continue to influence the making of dysfunctional decisions. And many of the Leftist old big mouths need to back off, too. We're not here to support their excuse making for their role in this mess. Most of them were elected simply for being "Not the Republican Candidate", and they need to remember that.
Thanks for another lucid, enlightening article. I agree that you should be on the cover page.
Well written and rated!
Why? Because the persons primarily implicated in the authorization of torture is none other than George Bush and Dick Cheney! The trail leading up the chain of command is very brief and very clear. It began with John Yoo giving a shaky (essentially false) legal opinion on what constituted torture. High ranking justice department officials were party to discussing and accepting these documents, and Cheney has more or less admitted that he signed off on them too. Its crystal clear where the authorization for torture came from - the oval office. The Buck stops there.
I'm not sure how justice can be reconciled with the technical and practical implications of putting a former president on trial, immediately after he leaves office. Of all the political psychosis that would come out of that, we could rest 100% assured that Republicans would find something to put Obama on trial for after he left office.
But there is somewhat good news. I disagree that neglecting to prosecute these crimes would leave the door open for torture in the future. The fact is that we are where we are today precisely because congress has been complicit in undoing the laws against torture. We should all remind ourselves of the contents of the military commissions act:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Commissions_Act
Prosecutions or not, the most effective thing that we can do is rebuild and strengthen human rights legislation in this country to unequivocally outlaw torture.
The Geneva Conventions only apply to uniformed armies of other countries. Even going back to WWII you will find that they did not apply to groups like the French Underground because they were not in uniform combat troops. It did apply to them then, and it doesn't apply to those in Gitmo now.
Look, all the haters of the current administration just need to drop all the "let's file charges" crap. It's not going to happen. How about using your time wisely and do something that you can make happen?
It will not be an easy case to make, but prosecution even without conviction would offer some measure of cleansing of what has become a corrupted D of J.
And excuse my saying so, but Lake Johnson offers one of the weakest excuses I've heard for not prosecuting:
"Clearly the last attorney general did not see waterboarding as illegal, so you are essentially prosecuting someone for something that was not illegal at the time it was done."
If legality depends on pronouncements from the corrupt mind of Alberto Gonzo, this in not a nation of laws, but a nation of fiat of fools. Easily resolved: Prosecute Gonzo, Addington, Libby and Yoo for their part in this debacle, too. If this country didn't want it to come to this, there were two choices:
No Nuremberg Trials
No Torture
Let bush and cheney contemplate their travesty in a non-white-collar prison. Better yet, rendition them to Syria.
This is not about prosecuting Bush, or Cheney, or Rumsfeld however satisfying those actions might be. It is about making certain that Pres. #48, or #52 doesnt think to dip into that jar for some supposed necessary purpose.
Well done, Saturn.
There is the quantitative reason: so many people are implicated-- in Justice, in the CIA, in military intelligence, in the NSA, in the Vice President's office--that to put them all before grand juries and then try them could only unfold as a full scale national obsession. Of course morality demands obsession, as Kant's categorical imperative demonstrates, but as a political matter I wonder whether the nation would be able to conserve sufficient attention for everything else that needs doing.
There is also a qualitative reason, which Lake raised, which is that prosecution of the torture regime would be tantamount, among and for the political class, to prosecution of the Republican Party. That in turn would ensure that the Republicans on the hill would not only take all available measures to jam the legal engines at work, thus drawing the process out and making it an endless time-and-energy suck, but would also in their sense of grievance and resentment would try and jam *everything* else the democratic administration was attempting as well.
Since moral and political logic cannot be reconciled in this case, I would propose an admittedly imperfect compromise between them (since politics is the art of compromise, my solution inevitably favors the political side of things--hence its imperfection as compromise). Select one or a very few members of the torture regime and make an example of him/them and then having won a conviction, pardon the remainder. The convictions will signal to all future miscreants that their place in government will not immunize them. The convictions will also give the pardons some teeth, i. e. it will show they forgave actual crimes rather than simply "creating" them in the absence of legal proceedings.
Finally, I think you communicate to the Republicans that if they choose to subvert the legal prosecutions of the few, then Holder et al will proceed with the prosecution of everyone. But if they co-operate in putting the few on trial, they can avoid seeing the party as a whole stigmatized. What do you say, let's start with Dick Cheyney?
If one were to let the punishment fit the crime...rendition in the middle of the night 9for George W and Dick) to some third world country, followed by generous amounts of waterboarding, and humiliation. Then perhaps a leisurely unescorted stroll outside the Green Zone after Al Jeezera announces this stroll to the Arab world.
Yes, correct. That is why the Geneva conventions state that any unlawful combatants should then be tried as criminals (hence the term unlawful). The major distinction is that you can't execute POW's, you can execute criminals.
Exactly. Which is why I favor impeachment, or, failing that, criminal charges at home, or war crimes charges at The Hague.
There is some controversy surrounding the notion that former office-holders could be impeached after leaving office.
Addington and Yoo should be included simply for their godawful testimony before Congress in which neither man would even rule out torturing the child of a terrorist -- in the interest of national security, of course. I hate the comparison, but it's there staring you right in the face - these men are no different than the Nazis.
If convicted, I can't think of a more fitting punishment than that all of these men be punished under the "enhanced interrogation techniques" "authorized" by Yoo's memo. Maybe then they'll come around to the view that water-boarding and the rack are indeed torture.
It's sort of satisfying to see OS (a/k/a Obama Supporters) of the party line set themselves up for yet another major disappointment from the candidate they worked so hard for on the mistaken assumption that he would be so loyal as to adhere to their radical liberal, and on this issue, destructive agenda.
By the way, TC, Lake Johnson is quite correct on the law. It's called ex post facto. I believe it's in the Constitution, along with bills of attainder. Good reading, that.
Your legal theory didn't work out too well for Scooter Libby, and it may not be over yet for his unindicted co-conspirators. And it will be very interesting to see how many of these men want to test your legal theory by traveling abroad.
When all the canaries in this administration start singing, their favorite tune will be "Pardon Me".
I do enjoy your political analysis.
"If water-boarding is illegal now, it was illegal last year. It was illegal ten years ago. And if it is illegal, it must be prosecuted."
We all have to pick the hill we want to die on at some point. Yes, it might bring great personal satisfaction to many of us to see the Bush/Cheney crowd being tried, but to gain what? Revenge? I do not believe the fear of prosecution has ever kept any criminal from a crime, and prosecution of this won't either. How come the U.S. Congress is not on your radar screen here? That contingent of clowns supported the war, the so-called Patriot Act, and just about everything else that so many of us find reprehensible. Where were the statesmen in our country when we needed them? The Obama administration has to spend its energy and political capital on moving this country in another direction. To revisit this stuff will only embolden the right-wing Republican party, and give them something to rally around. The best treatment of Bush/Cheney is to get us to January 20 and then sinmply ignore these losers.
Thanks for your piece and I look forward to many more.
Rated
I agree with the many others that it is politically unpalatable, if not impossible, to indict & prosecute. However, that doesn't mean it shouldn't be or can't be done. I can't presume to guess what will happen, but I hope that the "sweep it under the rug" mentality does not win out.
If further evidence of the above is needed, it might be well to check out some news and commentary sources that do not suffer from OS suffocation and inbreeding.
The person who wrote the above statement is, at minimum, incomprehensibly stupid and immoral. And I'm trying to be polite.
This is absolutely disgusting.
Shalom,
ZWrite
I'm all for prosecution if those found guilty are the high ups who gave the orders. Those who followed them certainly suck as ethical human beings -- but they were ethical human beings in Cuba with only one way home courtesy of the U.S. government that gave the order. So they suck but were in some way imprisoned themselves. The people who authorized torture yet were too good to perform themselves need to be prosecuted, on TV, with video of what they authorized. We can't be that much better than the Nazis. The video existed as documentation.
"the persons primarily implicated in the authorization of torture is none other than George Bush and Dick Cheney"
Did anyone ever seriously doubt it?
Gary, the hope that I have should they still choose not to prosecute is that there are already cases making their way through the justice system, and even the Supreme Court -- this Supreme Court! -- seems to acknowledge something must be done.
Katina, I think you're right on the difficulties of closing Guantánamo, certainly, but there must be a way to hold these people in accordance with the laws of our country and the international community -- we've been through too many wars for there to be no precedent. And I agree on your point that we may face some danger of a "trickle down" of punishment. I really am hopeful that this won't happen, since Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. Myers are named in the currently climbing law suits that the Supreme Court granted a hearing (in a lower court).
Dinner!
Their own words are duplicitous, and in my view sufficient to warrant further investigation. During their congressional testimony, they denied authorizing torture (by their definition), but they testified that it was within the president's power to authorize ANYTHING he deems necessary to force testimony from anyone. They refused to admit that setting someone on fire, burying them alive, or torturing their child to force information from them was beyond the bounds o human decency, and repeated their claim that such acts were legal if a president ordered them.
By any reasonable understanding of the word that is torture, and it is the same sort of moral degeneracy that brought us the Holocaust. It's sad that you cannot see the connection between Addington and Yoo and those who issued the orders in the Nazi regime, orders they were tried and convicted for at Nuremberg.
Lake, you say, "A dangerous precedent could be set by a president being able to prosecute his predecessor. I see party-on-party retribution happening when a new president hires an attorney general who declares that an old president's actions are illegal." And I agree with this completely (which is I think also part of Justin's point about fearing future prosecution for Obama), because I don't think laws can be made retroactive. But in this case, if the laws on the books at the time were knowingly -- and it seems they were -- violated, then I'm all for investigation and prosecution by either party. In truth, I wish a bipartisan group of congresspeople had started this, as was their job, but barring them -- an independent prosecutor appointed by the Justice Department seems the best way to go, with a transparent and deliberate investigation.
Justin, you're right, the MCA is the difference between today's law and yesterday's, and offers a valiant step forward for Congress. I'm not sure that the idea of partisan backlash can be said to hold true after the Clinton impeachment. If parties automatically sought revenge based on politcal moves like that, well, wouldn't the Democrats have tried at some point to impeach Bush?
Ah, Catnlion, but I don't yet believe that this isn't going to happen, so I do think I'm spending my time wisely. (And I do think strict adherence to the Geneva Conventions in conventional warfare will become a cornerstone of our participation in Iraq as part of a move to show firmly that the U.S. doesn't torture).
Libertarius, I agree with you that the huge span of implicated officials makes total prosecution difficult, but I like your plan. Start with Cheney, indeed!
Wayne, I'm increasingly in favor of a trial at The Hague, but curious as to the jurisdictional questions.
GordO, I'm usually careful not to use the term "war crimes," because that has a military prosecution/international element that to me has little to do with what's within the purview of the executive and judicial branches.
Dcvdickens -- the shark line cracked me up. Ha!
I have to sleep now, folks. Thanks again for the commentary. And to spread the discussion out a bit, Stim has a post on the symbolism of prosecution that's worth talking over: http://open.salon.com/content.php?cid=84900
with his yes vote on the FISA bill, after initially vowing to fili-
buster it? (Wasn't the FISA bill was one way to prosecute the
illegal wiretapping done by the administration?)
Excellent post as usual dear Saturn.
I think the wrongheadedness of your post is appropriately encapsulated in the idiotic comment above that further attacks on U.S. soil after 9/11 were as likely as sharks appearing in a lobby.
By providing safety for U.S. citizens, the Bush Administration has given some malcontents the security to carp on marginal issues. (And yes, I consider isolated instances of "torture" against captured terrorists in the cause of preventing future terrorist attacks to be marginal in the extreme.) In this sense, Bush has been the victim of his own success. However, victim is a misnomer for given the general impotence of the bashing, it is no wonder that he is able to both smile and sensibly assess the pros and cons of his presidency, while his detractors nastily pound away on their Remington Rands.
the US after 9/11 because the WTC attacks gave him all the
power he needed or wanted. I think the attacks were allowed
to happen or, at the very least, the warnings were ignored.
Same result.
Saturn: Obama has said many things and gone back on many
of them. His word means squat to me.
Rands"? Christ man. It's 2009, not 1980.
I doubt that your delusional theory that the terrorists were blood-surfeited after 9/11 would be supported even by OS's groupies. Speaking of same, perhaps the always instructive Mr. Thomas, whose writing style and yours are similarly, shall we say, basic, could weigh in on that.
The other caution he will take into account is that if any of the Gitmo people are released and then participate in a terror attack, he knows that he will go down as Jimmy Carter...weak and naive.
I suspect the real intent of Holder's comments is to signal to Bush that people may be at risk of prosecution so that Bush will issue pardons and save Obama from having to deal with both the issue and pressure from his left-wing supporters.
Nancy Pelosi, for example, was briefed on the use of waterboarding on detainees and the fact that the White House was surveilling all Americans back in 2002. She said nothing then and has done nothing since and in fact she's been a key obstacle to impeachment and prosecutions.
Obama, for his part, has spoken out against impeachment repeatedly, misciting the grounds of impeachment in the process ("you reserve it for grave, grave breaches" when the basis for impeachment is misuse and abuse of office on top of which if launching an illegal and unjust war under false premises (the highest war crime of all), carrying out torture as policy, allowing Katrina to ravage New Orleans and not come to their rescue in a timely manner, etc., etc., then what is a "grave breach?") and saying this even on the day that Bush admitted approving of torture - see dennisloo.blogspot.com/search?q=%22Bush+Admits+Approving+Torture%22 - (there doesn't even need to be a trial, the guy just admitted it!).
I've written in exactly the same vein in several different articles as Saturn here (for example, "Of Whales and Worms" at Counterpunch www.counterpunch.org/loo06162008.html): if you allow these criminals to openly flout the law and to commit monstrous crimes against humanity (people like Gordon O think these aren't crimes since they were committed allegedly to protect AMERICAN lives, so ergo, torture et al are somehow less blameworthy) then it doesn't matter how good a citizen Obama is, or any of the next five presidents are, the precedent has been allowed to stand that a president can do whatever he or she wants, including defying Congress and breaching the rule of law, shredding the Constitution and carrying out torture. And I haven't even mentioned poorly known provisions such as the John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007 that gives the president the power on his own or her own say so to declare a "public emergency" (i.e., declare martial law) and carry out mass roundups, arrests and detentions. Any tyrant in office, in other words, has the legal right at this point to point to an incident, either here or abroad, as grounds for a public emergency and suspend the Constitution.
Holding criminals to account such as the Bush regime is the very minimum that the American people must and should demand if they really care about "democracy" and "liberty." How dare Bush talk about liberty! How dare the Democrats shield Bush and Cheney from justice!
I hope that Bush will issue no pardons whatsoever in this matter.
If some crackpots want to pursue this impossible dream, let Obama feel and deal with the pressure, and let the lunacy of the claims face the scrutiny of the American people, who will not appreciate the diversion of resources one bit.
Obama says no one is above the law but he wants to look forward. But if the World Court arrests Bush, Cheney, and their henchmen on foreign soil and tries them for war crimes in The Hague, won't Obama find it difficult to look only forward?
And even when he does look forward, it's not far enough forward. Failure to prosecute our war criminals now will make it easier for future administrations to torture because they can cite Bush & Co. as having done so without penalty.
But here's the thing: the US has a strong tradition of sending poor people to prison and letting rich criminals go free. Will today's politicians be willing to break with that traditions despite the fact that to do so will negatively affect campaign contributions by the obscenely rich?
We shall see, but let's not hold our breath.
Hawley, you say, "Failure to prosecute our war criminals now will make it easier for future administrations to torture because they can cite Bush & Co. as having done so without penalty."
Many Presidents have presided over torture. Go to Wikipedia and read about the torture manual that was published in 1963 by JFK's administration. Here is a quote from the article:
****The first manual, "KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation," dated July 1963, is the source of much of the material in the second manual. KUBARK was a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency cryptonym for the CIA itself.[12] The cryptonym KUBARK appears in the title of a 1963 CIA document KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation which describes interrogation techniques, including, among other things, "coercive counterintelligence interrogation of resistant sources". This is the oldest and most abusive manual, such as two references to the use of electric shock.[12]****
Not recent enough for you? Here is a link to how the rendition program begin under Bill Clinton.
News Article
Like I said in my earlier comments, Obama is cautious and he knows he likely to have to do some things that get his hands dirty. It's part of being President. So, I don't see him prosecuting.
"On April 21, 2008, CBS News reported that Dr. Ira Katz, the VA's head of Mental Health, in internal emails, admitted that there 'are about 18 suicides per day among America's 25 million veterans.' This, according to CBS, works out to 6,570 suicides per year. Since we have been in Iraq since March 2003, this translates to, conservatively, somewhere over 30,000 soldiers committing suicide. In other words, seven and a half times as many American soldiers have died by self-inflicted means than have been 'killed in action.'" (McClellan's Memoir: An Advance Preview" dennisloo.blogspot.com/2008/05/mcclellans-memoir-advance-preview.html)
If you don't care about the 1.2 million Iraqis needlessly and shamefully killed because of our immoral invasion of their country, and you only care about American lives, then consider the tens of thousands of GI's who have died because of Bush and Cheney's policies. How is this not a terrible "diversion of resources?"
The body of laws that define a war crime are the Geneva Conventions, a broader and older area of laws referred to as the Laws and Customs of War, and, in the case of the former Yugoslavia, the statutes of the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague (ICTY).
Article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention defines war crimes as: "Wilful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, including... wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement of a protected person, compelling a protected person to serve in the forces of a hostile power, or wilfully depriving a protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial, ...taking of hostages and extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly."
Slobodan Milosovic, was President of Serbia and of Yugoslavia, and was indicted while still a sitting head of government. Other "high level" indictees included Milan Babic', President of the Republika Srpska Krajina; Ramush Haradinaj, former Prime Minister of Kosovo; Radovan Karadžic', former President of the Republika Srpska; Ratko Mladic', former Commander of the Bosnian Serb Army and Ante Gotovina, former General of the Croatian Army.
It seems clear that much precedent exists for the indictment of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and others for their involvement in war crimes, ranging from waterboarding and other forms of torture, to extraordinary rendition (illegal transportation) of not only prisoners, but of people merely accused of terrorist connections, some of whom were later found to be completely innocent. These included Canadian citizen Maher Arar, later released without any charges brought against him.
Here's what talk radio host Gene Burns, who had previously
dismissed accusations of torture and other illegal acts, now says:
"I now believe that some international human rights organization ought to open an investigation of the Bush Administration, I think focused on Vice President Dick Cheney, and attempt to bring charges against Cheney in the international court of justice at The Hague, for war crimes. Based on the manner in which we have treated prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, and the manner in which we have engaged in illegal rendition–that is, surreptitiously kidnapping prisoners and flying them to foreign countries where they could be tortured by foreign agents who do not follow the same civilized standards to which we subscribe."
Is the evidence of torture at Gitmo, just the ranting of "liberals"?
Consider this:
Former Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld, a former U.S. prosecutor at Guantanamo, told the BBC that Guantanamo detainees were treated in a “wrong, unethical and finally, immoral” manner. Vandeveld was so “appalled” by the conditions at Guantanamo that he consulted his Jesuit priest, who told him to resign.
'Nuff said?
I agree fully with the idea you support here. There is no question that laws were broken, and the issue is really more a matter of whom and how many should be prosecuted. If we consider the prosecutions after WWII as models for this current administration, the list of offenders could become quite long.
What we are talking about here in legalistic terminology (and I’m not a lawyer) is “setting precedents” that could be seriously detrimental in the future. Pelosi et al have already done this for Congress, and it would/will be a mistake for Obama to follow Pelosi’s lead on this matter. Bush/Cheney et al should have been investigated a long time ago, and even though there might not have been enough votes to push through impeachment, the vigorous stand made by many in the Congress AGAINST those who advocated impeachment set a terrible precedent on which future congressional members may rely.
We are living interesting times for political junkies, no?
RATED
I said Bush didn't need another attack.
Your sense of humor is archaic.
GordO - had you lived in Germany in 1933, little Joseph (Putzi) Goebbels would have considered you an ideal citizen.
I have a feeling that, after the new crew gets their hands on all of that classified, and very ugly, information, the final tally of crimes just might be so overwhelming that it will cost hundreds of millions to complete a basic investigation.
Hell no!
He should just declare the top hundred or so "unlawful enemy combatants" and "terrorists", ship them off to Black prisons and torture every one of the bastards to death over the course of at least a year or two.
The question is: will the US take steps to restore our national honor and the rule of law by investigating and prosecuting these crimes ourselves?
We cannot look forward to the survival of constitutional democracy unless we look back and make it clear that our laws apply to the criminal actions of all, including government officials
"GordO - had you lived in Germany in 1933, little Joseph (Putzi) Goebbels would have considered you an ideal citizen. "
Catherine Deneuve is suing over a less slanderous statement than this.
If I thought you had the ability to amass any significant amount of cash during your lifetime, I might consider doing the same. But it's difficult to get blood out of a turnip, and with statements like this, you are clearly a turnip. Shameful. This kind of racist name-calling is a dead giveaway that the name caller's intelligence is of the lower orders. Give my best to Cheetah.