Put the evil bastards on trial: The case for trying Bush, Cheney and more for war crimes (Salon)

[inanna]

We’ve seen it in Ferguson, Missouri, with Darren Wilson getting off scot-free for killing Michael Brown. And we’ve seen it again in Staten Island, with Daniel Pantaleo getting off scot-free for killing Eric Garner. So why shouldn’t scores of CIA agents, contractors, higher-ups and other government officials—including former President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney—get off scot-free for torturing hundreds of detainees, including some complete innocents? That, apparently, is the reigning logic following the release of the Senate torture report.

But just as genuine legal experts have been appalled by the perversion of normal and normative legal process in the grand jury proceedings in St. Louis County and Staten Island, there’s been a sharp line drawn by human rights lawyers and advocates in response to the Senate torture report, calling for prosecutions to match the crimes. A 2011 report from Human Rights Watch, “Getting Away With Torture: The Bush Administration and Mistreatment of Detainees,” argued, among other things, for the criminal prosecution of former President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and CIA Director George Tenet. Nothing has changed since then, HRW executive director Kenneth Roth told Salon.

<snip>

As for the legal obligations involved, “The torture convention requires that acts of torture be referred to the competent authority for the purpose of prosecution,” Roth said. “The United States has an obligation to prosecute torture.” Ben Emmerson, the U.N. special rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights, agreed. “The individuals responsible for the criminal conspiracy revealed in today’s report must be brought to justice, and must face criminal penalties commensurate with the gravity of their crimes,” he said.

<snip>

The need for such action is only made more urgent by the fact a new Pew poll shows 56 percent of Americans believe the lie that torture provided intelligence that helped prevent terrorist attacks, and relatedly that 51 percent think that “the CIA’s interrogation methods … were justified.”

Link: http://www.salon.com/2014/12/20/put_the_evil_bastards_on_trial_the_case_for_trying_bush_cheney_and_more_for_war_crimes/

[shraby]

1. The only thing the poll numbers mean is that propaganda works.

[Danascot]

2. That and the fact that

Iraq was behind 911 and Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.

In case there's any doubt:

[OrwellwasRight]

3. If people cannot trust that government officials aren't "above the law"

they lose all faith in democracy -- democracy simply isn't "rule by the people" if the people can't hold their representatives accountable.

It's not mystery why so few vote, and even fewer vote smartly (not meaning that people are "dumb" to vote Republican, meaning too many don't bother to educate themselves deeply on the issues of the day, they don't require reporting on more than the "horserace" bullshit). Why bother when the govt again and again violates its own laws (whether spying on citizens, torturing people, shooting unarmed children, engaging in secret and illegal wars, not prosecuting the 1%, or whatever)?

Trying Cheney would be a good start but hard to make up for more than 40 years of undemocratic behavior.