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.

War crimes cannot be pardoned

Scott Horton makes some interesting points about the limits on the U.S. government's poweres to shield Bush-era officials from war crimes prosecutions. Read the whole thing here, http://www.harpers.org/subjects/NoComment#hbc-90004897 but the bottom line is that former Bush officials linked to the torture polices should be very wary about overseas travel -- ever.

The worms begins to turn

First off, when Fourth-graders begins to ask about torture (and Rice has to respond with legalisms to her vain attempt to defend it) then I think we can see signs that the tide is turning.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/03/AR2009050301739.html

On top of that, the latest New York Times article featuring dramatic CYA by Porter Goss and Condi Rice is more evidence that things are going south for the torture crowd very fast.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/04/us/politics/04detain.html?ref=politics

I think that Cheney, Addington, Yoo and others should be getting very, very worried. Their unindicted co-conspirators are scrambling for the exits and they will be left holding the bag. What is interesting is whether Bush, himself, will be held accountable or Cheney will take the fall.

One amazing thing about all this is how quickly it's unravelling. Indeed. if it were not for the economic crisis this would probably be transfixing the nation. The economic crisis will ebb, but the problem for war criminals is that their crimes never become too old to deal with. Cheney's health may eventually save him from the worst ( a la Pinochet), but younger guys like Addington and Yoo may see justice done.

Forever at risk

Meanwhile, (Phillip) Sands reiterated a warning that he made in his book. “If I were they,” he said, referring to the former officials in question, “I would think carefully before setting foot outside the United States. They are now, and forever in the future, at risk of arrest. Until this is sorted out, they are in their own legal black hole.”

The article: http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2009/04/13/090413ta_talk_mayer?ref=fp5

It's official: Bush authorized war crimes

Scott Horton explains:
This week the Senate Armed Services Committee issued a powerful report, released jointly by chair Carl Levin and ranking member John McCain, that received the unanimous support of its Democratic and Republican members. The report concluded that Donald Rumsfeld and other high-level officials of the administration consciously adopted a policy for the torture and abuse of prisoners held in the war on terror. It also found that they attempted to cover up their conduct by waging a P.R. campaign to put the blame on a group of young soldiers they called “rotten apples.” Lawyers figure prominently among the miscreants identified. Evidently the torture policy’s authors then enlisted ethics-challenged lawyers to craft memoranda designed to give torture “the appearance of legality” as part of a scheme to create the torture program despite internal opposition.

The Senate Report summary can be read here: http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/pdf/12112008_detaineeabuse.pdf?sid=ST2008121101970&s_pos=list

Just one of the conclusions of this daming report (emphasis mine):

(U) The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of “a few bad apples” acting on their own. The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees. Those efforts damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority.