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BUSH: Your White House War Criminal Will Elude Prosecution! And America Will Remain A "Torture Nation"!

Just as talk of impeachment is now almost extinct, the notion that any
of the administration's numerous outlaw operatives will face charges
of CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY is itself seldom under discussion.

So giddily happy is the nation to be ridding itself of the worst and
most criminal presidency in history that a political weariness has set
in.  And a national disinclination to delve into the scope and depth
of eight years of war crimes means Bush and company will literally get
away with murder.

No news there.  But it's bad news for America's legacy, honor and
moral authority.

---------------------------------
"After the Torture Era"

By Eugene Robinson
Tuesday, November 18, 2008; A27


"I have said repeatedly that I intend to close Guantanamo, and I will
follow through on that. I have said repeatedly that America doesn't
torture, and I'm going to make sure that we don't torture. Those are
part and parcel of an effort to regain America's moral stature in the
world."

That unequivocal passage from President-elect Barack Obama's first
extended interview since the election, broadcast on "60 Minutes"
Sunday night, was a big step toward healing the damage that the Bush
administration has done not just to our nation's image but to its
soul.

Amid the excitement of the election and the urgency of the economic
crisis, it has been easy to lose sight of the terrorism-related
"issues" that defined George W. Bush's presidency and robbed America
of so much honor, stature and goodwill.

I put the word issues in quotation marks because torture can never be
a matter of debate. Yet the Bush administration sought to numb
Americans to what has traditionally been seen as a clear moral and
legal imperative: the requirement that individuals taken into custody
by our government be treated fairly and humanely.

This doesn't mean handling nihilistic, homicidal "evildoers" with kid
gloves. It means being as certain as possible that the people we are
holding are, indeed, real or would-be terrorists, not unlucky
bystanders; and treating these detainees in accordance with
international law, as we would expect detained U.S. personnel to be
treated.

At Guantanamo, at Abu Ghraib and in a little gulag of secret CIA
prisons overseas, the Bush administration failed to live up to these
basic responsibilities and thus sullied us all.

We will look back on the Bush years and find it incredible, and
disgraceful, that individuals were captured in battle or "purchased"
from self-interested tribal warlords, whisked to Guantanamo,
classified as "enemy combatants" but not accorded the rights that that
status should have accorded them, held for years without charges --
and denied the right to prove that they were victims of mistaken
identity and never should have been taken into custody.

A new study by researchers at the University of California at
Berkeley, based on interviews with 62 men who were held for an average
of three years at Guantanamo before being released without being
accused of a crime, found that more than a third said they were turned
over to their American captors by warlords for a bounty. Those who
reported physical abuse said most of it occurred at the United States'
Bagram air base in Afghanistan, where about half the men were
initially held before being taken to Guantanamo.

Two-thirds of the former detainees reported suffering psychological
problems since their release, and many are now destitute, shunned by
their families and villages. None has received any compensation for
the ordeal, according to the report, titled "Guantánamo and Its
Aftermath."

Years from now, we will be shocked to see those pictures of naked
prisoners being humiliated and abused at Abu Ghraib -- and we will be
ashamed of a U.S. government that punished low-level troops for their
sadism but exonerated the higher-ups who made such sadism possible.

Years from now, we will know the full truth of the clandestine, CIA-
run prisons where "high-value" terrorism suspects were interrogated
with techniques, including waterboarding, that both civilized norms
and international law have long defined as torture. From what we
already know, it's hard to say which is more appalling -- the torture
itself or the tortured legal rationalizations that Bush administration
lawyers came up with to "justify" making barbarity the official policy
of the U.S. government.

Obama's clarity on the issues of Guantanamo and torture stands in
contrast to his necessary vagueness about how he will deal with the
economic crisis. Torture is wrong today and will still be wrong
tomorrow, whereas today's economic panacea can be tomorrow's drop in
the bucket. Who would have thought that these "war on terror" issues
would be the easy part for the new president?

Not that easy, though. More reports like the UC-Berkeley study will
come out, but this is not a task that can be left to academic
researchers alone. The new Obama administration has a duty to conduct
its own investigation and tell us exactly what was done in our name.
Realistically, some facts are going to be redacted. Realistically,
some officials who may deserve to face criminal charges will not. But
to restore our national honor and heal our national soul, we at least
need to know.

eugenerobinson@washpost.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/17/AR200811170
2920.html

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