Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Torture Investigations

In the first version of The New Common Sense, I found myself defending Lynndie England and the rest of the enlisted, accused in the Abu Ghraib scandal. The way I saw it, there was no way that this small group of what the Bush administration called bad apples, were out there on their own. It was just too organized, and too close to the old line, School of the Americas playbook. As details of what Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld and Bush, himself, authorized came out, it became impossible to deny that the actions of Lynndie England, and the others court marshaled for Abu Ghraib, were not being directed by those above them in the chain of command. I'm willing to admit that those pulling the strings might have been CIA or civilian contractors. That's still in question, but clearly what they did was authorized, and it was unjust, that only those on the bottom of the torture food chain were charged.
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Now, it looks pretty probable that Attorney General Eric Holder will be looking into illegal torture authorized by the Bush administration. If Holder indicts field agents of the CIA, and civilian contractors, as he should, but not higher ups, I'll think it all a wasted effort. I would hope that the four I've already mentioned end up in the dock. I doubt they will. I'm not sure the Obama administration is willing to take the political fall out, and I can see that harsh, political reality. Such indictments would be so big, that it might not be possible to address any other problem. But come on, at least John Yoo should go to prison.

1 comment:

Tom Degan said...

Yeah. Let the investigations proceed and the chips fall where they may. In the course of destroying this country, George W. Bush (the First Fool as I loved to call him) undid DECADES of diplomatic protocol.

Were these morons able to get information via torture? Sure they did. Most of that info was false. You see, under those circumstances, the person being tortured will say just about anything. It is quite interesting: no one in this administration (Excuse me, I meant to say, “THAT administration) was smart enough to figure this out.

http://www.tomdegan.blogspot.com

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY