Bush and Cheney's "torture trio": Donald Rumsfeld, David Addington and John Yoo.
On "The Chris Matthews Show" this morning, conservative writer Andrew Sullivan (of the Atlantic these days) dropped one hell of a prediction, saying, to paraphrase, that as a result of the latest revelations about what the legal staff of the White House was advising on the potential parameters of the treatment of detainees by the U.S. military, Donald Rumsfeld, former Cheney adviser David Addington and Deputy Assistant Attorney General / serial torture memo author John Yoo "had better not leave the country any time soon. At some point, they will be indicted for war crimes."
That's a hell of a prediction, and it's not at all unlikely. a criminal complaint was filed against Mr. Rumsfeld in Germany in 2004 by a pair of human rights groups, as was reported in Deutsche Welle at the time:
The New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and Berlin's Republican Lawyers' Association said they and five Iraqi citizens mistreated by US soldiers were seeking a probe by German federal prosecutors of leading US policymakers.
They said they had chosen Germany because of its Code of Crimes Against International Law, introduced in 2002, which grants German courts universal jurisdiction in cases involving war crimes or crimes against humanity.
It also makes military or civilian commanders who fail to prevent their subordinates from committing such acts liable.
... "We filed these cases here because there is simply no other place to go," CCR vice president Peter Weiss said in a statement, adding that the US Congress had "failed" to seriously investigate the abuses. "It is clear that the US government is not willing to open an investigation into these allegations against these officials."
The complaint was prompted by the now infamous abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, for which only low level U.S. servicemen were prosecuted. A Pentagon investigation earlier that year cynically absolved those higher up the chain of command, but the groups named them anyway, including Mr. Rumsfeld, "former CIA director George Tenet, Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Steven Cambone, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, Brigadier General Janis L. Karpinski and other military officers who served in Iraq." It was filed on behalf of five former Iraqi prisoners. Yoo wasn't on the list then, but he has certainly moved ahead in line.
In theory, trying former U.S. officials for war crimes is entirely possible, because once they have left office, these officials lose their immunity from such prosecution. Rumsfeld got the message and cancelled a trip to Germany in 2005 as a result.
John Yoo's Memorandum, as intended, directly led to -- caused -- a whole series of war crimes at both Guantanamo and in Iraq. The reason such a relatively low-level DOJ official was able to issue such influential and extraordinary opinions was because he was working directly with, and at the behest of, the two most important legal officials in the administration: George Bush's White House counsel, Alberto Gonzales, and Dick Cheney's counsel (and current Chief of Staff) David Addington. Together, they deliberately created and authorized a regime of torture and other brutal interrogation methods that are, by all measures, very serious war crimes.
If writing memoranda authorizing torture -- actions which then directly lead to the systematic commission of torture -- doesn't make one a war criminal in the U.S., what does?
Good question, and it's one the United States Congress will never take up, at least not while there are politicians there -- a point Greenwald picks up nicely:
The political reality is that high government officials in the U.S. are never going to be held accountable for war crimes. In practice, "international law" exists as a justifying instrument for powerful countries to impose their will on those which are less powerful, and war crimes tribunals are almost always a form of victor's justice. So neither John Yoo, David Addington nor Alberto Gonzales, and certainly not their bosses at whose behest they were working, are going to be sitting in a dock charged with war crimes any time soon -- regardless of whether they ought to be.
But those who propound these principles and claim to believe in them ought to apply them consistently. John Yoo is not some misguided conservative legal thinker with whom one should have civil, pleasant, intellectually stimulating debates at law schools and on PBS. Respectfully debating the legality and justification of torture regimes, and treating systematic torture perpetrators like John Yoo with respect, isn't all that far off from what Yoo and his comrades did. It isn't pleasant to think about high government officials in one's own country as war criminals -- that's something that only bad, evil dictatorships have -- but, pleasant or not, it rather indisputably happens to be what we have.
Worse, we have a media establishment that is singularly uninterested in such things as U.S. government complicity in torture, or even in the stunning revelations of the sitting attorney general -- the alternatively ignorant and ignominious Michael Mukasay -- that we had intelligence about phone calls from an Afghan safehouse where terrorism was afoot BEFORE 9/11 but did nothing about it, because the Bush administration hadn't found a legalistic justification to spy on Americans yet. That too, passes into the good night, in favor of endless discussions of the Democratic horse race and Barack Obama's inability to bowl. (Andrew Sullivan channels Greenwald on that subject here.)
<%
dim done
done = request.form("done")
if done = "" then
done = "No"
%>
Tell a friend
<%
Else
if request.form("done") = "Yes" then
'sets variables
dim email, sendmail
email = request.form("email")
Set sendmail = Server.CreateObject("CDONTS.NewMail")
'put the webmaster address here
sendmail.From = "webmaster@aspbasics.com"
'The mail is sent to the address entered in the previous page.
sendmail.To = email
'Enter the subject of your mail here
sendmail.Subject = "Check out this website"
'send a specific page or send a site url
dim url
'url = Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_REFERER")
url = "http://www.aspbasics.net"
'This is the content of the message.
sendmail.Body = "Site recommendation from a friend!" & _
vbCrlf & vbCrlf & "A friend has sent you this email and thought you would should check out this site." & _
vbCrlf & url & vbCrlf
'this sets mail priority.... 0=low 1=normal 2=high
sendmail.Importance = 1
sendmail.Send 'Send the email!
response.redirect Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_REFERER")
'Response.write ("Sent to ") & email
End if
End if
%>
"[T]he practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.' Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 84, August, 1788
