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Prosecute Them
The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan —
The NYT takes a stand, the only credible legal stand, given where we now are: A prosecutor should be appointed to consider criminal charges against
top officials at the Pentagon and others involved in planning the
abuse. That must include the commander-in-chief and his vice-president. This is where the criminality came from and it's unjust to punish people down the line more than those at the very top. If Obama wants to avoid even the appearance of retribution, he should first appoint a Truth Commission of independent, outside but experienced public officials from both parties - along the lines of the 9/11 Commission - to ...
Will Obama Ignore Evidence of War Crimes by the Bush Administration?
Open Left - Front Page —
Today a New York Times editorial is calling for the appointment of a prosecutor to investigate war crimes against Donald Rumsefeld and others in light of a Senate Armed Services Committee report that implicates them. Dick Cheney is on record as "helping to clear" legal hurdles and "supporting" the CIA's plan to commit certain acts of torture (or, in their Orwell-speak "enhanced interrogation"). The problem is, just a month ago, members of Barack Obama's transition team virtually ruled out prosecuting Bush Administration figures. They seem to believe it would be overly political. The attitude seems to be "what happened in the past stays in the ...
Horrors Of Abu Ghraib
Jules Crittenden —
[image] « Eureka! Horrors Of Abu Ghraib NYT ed board finally gets it right: Most Americans have long known that the horrors of Abu Ghraib were not the work of a few low-ranking sociopaths. Yeah. It went straight to the top. A psychopath named Saddam Hussein was behind it all. The torture, the murder. People held in definitely for no good reason at all. Thank God the United States brought an end to that in 2003. Remarkable that the NYT ed board is finally getting around to recognizing that. Hang on a sec. All but President Bush’s most unquestioning supporters recognized the chain of unprincipled decisions that led to the abuse, torture and ...
Logan Nakyanzi Pollard: Bush orders. Spitzer says, I'll have what he's having
Politics on HuffingtonPost.com —
... Spitzer's offenses that made the shame stick. That and the fact that the former NY governor admitted he did wrong. Bush by contrast is today's teflon man. He has been able to unstick himself from accusations of murder, lies, torture, corruption connected to his presidency not only because he didn't himself do it, but also because these crimes, by their very nature, are more complex and hard to believe. We can understand a cheating husband for example, we cannot so easily understand waterboarding. What's more, we have not escaped our love for a kind of brutality which we've ...
Instahoglets for Dec. 19th, 2008
Newshoggers.com —
... With all the talk of Warren and Blagojevich, I suppose you can be forgiven if you missed the The Torture Report in the NY Times. Greenwald produces ...
Shahid Buttar: Could Gitmo Get Worse? The Policy Implications of Executive Accountability
Politics on HuffingtonPost.com —
As Congress and the Obama Administration start to clean the mess left by Bush, Cheney, and their respective minions, Washington's highest priorities will include restoring the Rule of Law. A fundamental bedrock of modern democracy, it has withered under a multi-faceted assault by the White House entailing executive secrecy, self-aggrandizement, cronyism, corruption, and violations of various statutory, constitutional, and international legal obligations.
To repudiate the Bush legacy and restore fundamental American values, few steps would cover as much ground as ending surveillance, detention and torture. Obama's impending inauguration offers hope for ...
