Weekly Standard Backs Prosecution Of Bush Officials
Weekly Standard Backs Prosecution Of Bush Officials
Don’t they? Here’s a May 17, 2004, editorial on the perpetrators of the Abu Ghraib atrocities:
They have endangered any American unlucky enough to find himself at the mercy of our enemies in the war on terror. They have impeded our progress in that war. More fundamentally, they traduced their mission, betrayed their fellow soldiers, and disgraced their country. Anyone up or down the chain of command who was criminally complicit should be prosecuted, too.[...]
There’s only one way to drain this poison, and it isn’t further breast-beating, from the administration or its foes. Bring on the trials, and the punishment.
Quite right! As the report (pdf) of the Senate Armed Services Committee makes (even more) clear, the abuses at Abu Ghraib were the direct result of policies implemented by the Bush administration:
Once they were accepted, the methods became the basis for harsh interrogations not only in CIA secret prisons, but also in Defense Department internment camps at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in Afghanistan and Iraq, the report said.
Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the committee, said the new findings show a direct link between the early policy decisions and the highly publicized abuses of detainees at prisons such as Abu Ghraib in Iraq.
“Senior officials sought out information on, were aware of training in, and authorized the use of abusive interrogation techniques,” Levin said. “Those senior officials bear significant responsibility for creating the legal and operational framework for the abuses.”
Speaking to CBS this morning, Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, who ran Iraq prisons in 2003, including Abu Ghraib, “was insistent that all orders on interrogation practices came from the top down during the Bush administration.”
“These soldiers didn’t design these techniques on their own…we were following orders,” Karpinski told Harry Smith. “We were bringing this to our chain of command and they were saying whatever the military intelligence tells you to do out there you are authorized to do.”
So will the Weekly Standard editors stand by their previous assertion that those complicit should be prosecuted? Or are they still happy to let the grunts go to jail while their friends in the Bush administration get off?
6 Responses to “Weekly Standard Backs Prosecution Of Bush Officials”
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I think that what the Neoconservatives(Bushies)did to this country in 8 years will take decades to correct. They should all be held accountable tried in a ‘Real’ court of law, found guilty of treason, obstrucrion of justice, petjury, kidnapping and crimes against humanity and hung I’d ride from Maine to DC to see ‘W’ swing from the Lincolm Memorial. But until the media and the citizens of this country get some balls the Repulicans will keep dragging this country thru the muck and mire. Let Obamma try but give him just a little support We need some one with vision in the Whitehouse for a change. Let science and reason lead all our policies for a while and see how good it will turn out
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:39 pmWhat an excellent catch.
Reminds me of Bill O’Reilly’s declaration, now lost down the Memory Hole, that if WMD were not found in Iraq, he would not trust George W. Bush again.
Wankers, every single one of them. G*d*mned f**king liars, every single one of them.
April 22nd, 2009 at 3:28 pmI think the security is not torture people
April 22nd, 2009 at 4:05 pmLet’s waterboard Cheney and find the truth …..
April 22nd, 2009 at 6:15 pmIt amazes me how so many of those on the right..have taken their hatred of President Obama and all those on the left…to justify, even embrace such a horrific policy as illegal torture.. (It must be close to impossible to function on a normal level, through that haze of all-consuming, white-hot hatred)…or perhaps they are just ignoring the facts in their unadulterated hatred….
April 23rd, 2009 at 2:41 pmNew reports are pointing to the timing of these “enhanced interrogation”…it seems the policy was being planned and implemented around the time that Joe Wilson (Valerie Plame) published his op-ed on “no yellow-cake connection..between Hussein and Nigeria” the whole phony excuse for illegally invading Iraq was coming undone…and so the torturing began…desperately trying to get a “confession of a Hussein/Al Qaeda connection” to justify to the American people (who were starting to grumble in light of some of the information)the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq (for oil?) The Bushies, not only invested in illegal torture (along with illegal wiretapping…spying on those who might blow the whistle?) to justify their phony “war” but they smeared and “outed” any one, who had the audacity to get in their way (with the truth)
Thus far, the GOP legislators have been so busy trying to deflect the conversation that they haven’t answered the question: Do you agree or disagree that torture legal? Until they do that, they are irrelevant.
The “ends justify the means” argument is invalid if you agree with the basic tennant that Torture is illegal.
The GOP talking heads are using the “SAFE” argument, and that is the same contextual argument of “don’t ask don’t tell”…it doesn’t change the facts: 1. We tortured our enemy and 2. Not talking doesn’t change one’s sexuality.
April 24th, 2009 at 1:00 pm