Tag: War Crimes Prosecution

Crossposted from Antemedius

Yesterday was a very dark day. Most who know me know how hard and unmercifully I slammed Obama and Holder, but Obama especially since he is Holders superior, for their excusing and shielding of CIA torturers from prosecution based on nothing more than the universally repudiated Nuremburg defense of “just following orders”. Many may even think that I was and am being too inflexible in my criticisms and direct comparison of Obama to Bush over this matter with my opinion that he is also shielding Bush and Cheney with his actions.

Protecting and shielding war criminals.

That remains my opinion, and will remain my opinion unless and until a Special Prosecutor is appointed and George Bush and Dick Cheney are sitting in a prisoners dock charged with war crimes for which there is more than ample evidence, above and beyond their own public confessions and gloating, that they committed.

To be honest I really don’t care whether the CIA Interrogators are ever prosecuted. They will have to live with what they did, and they will probably be shunned for the rest of their lives by anyone with any remnants of humanity left in their souls.

It is one thing to shield the followers of orders. It is an entirely different thing to shield and protect the issuers of those orders. To do so is to be complicit in the crimes and no better and in fact worse than the perpetrators, in my opinion.

But to give Obama some small credit where due, he and Holder did leave themselves an opening, and in fact not only left an opening but created that opening with their actions yesterday. We can even speculate that perhaps did what they did yesterday they did in an attempt to create enough public anger and drum up enough public support to make it politically possible to prosecute Bush and Cheney.

If, and it’s a very big if that still appears very doubtful, If Obama and Holder did what they did yesterday as setup for future prosecutions of Bush and Cheney then they will earn a little of my respect back.

Bush and Cheney must be prosecuted.

Glenn Greenwald this morning:

In the United States, what Obama did yesterday is simply not done.  American Presidents do not disseminate to the world documents which narrate in vivid, elaborate detail the dirty, illegal deeds done by the CIA, especially not when the actions are very recent, were approved and ordered by the President of the United States, and the CIA is aggressively demanding that the documents remain concealed and claiming that their release will harm national security.  When is the last time a President did that?