Tuesday, August 25, 2009

The inevitability of justice

Our system of justice, despite all its flaws, does have certain institutional pressures that provide it a relentlessness once some wrongdoing comes to light.

Political pressure can delay, obscure and deflect criminal prosecutions but it can rarely stop it altogether. More than six decades later the occasional Nazi still goes to trial. After 30, 40 or even 50 years Civil Rights cases have resulted in convictions. War crimes, especially, are unbounded in time except for death. That is why culpable individuals such as John Yoo, David Addington, Dick Cheney and even George Bush should be very worried about the legal process that is starting to unfold.

Scot Horton, as always, sums things up very well here with seven points about the recently released report on torture. The most chilling may his first point: the worst is yet to come.

1 comment:

Paul said...

I think the responsibility lies at the top of the administration that asked for torture to begin by renaming it as “enhanced interrogation techniques”, (even Ronald Regan, called the practice of torture “abhorrent”), is anyone surprised that Cheney is now crying about the investigations.

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