For obvious reasons, the most blindly loyal Bush followers of the last eight years are desperate to claim
that nobody cares any longer about what happened during the Bush
administration, that everyone other than the most fringe, vindictive
Bush-haters is eager to put it all behind us, forget about it all and,
instead, look to the harmonious, sunny future. That's natural. Those
who cheer on shameful and despicable acts alwa
Dick Cheney has publicly confessed to ordering war crimes. Asked about waterboarding in an ABC News interview, Cheney replied, "I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared." He also said he still believes waterboarding was an appropriate method to use on terrorism suspects. CIA Director Michael Hayden confirmed that the agency waterboarded three Al Qaeda suspects in 2002 and 2003.
U.S. courts have long held that waterboarding, where water is poured into someone's nose and mouth until he nearly drowns, constitutes torture.
A month before he takes office, it has become the conventional wisdom in our conventional media that Barack "No Drama" Obama will not seek or even allow any prosecution of Bush administration officials for crimes committed over the past eight years-not even for authorizing and promoting the illegal use of torture on captives of America's wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and "terror."
As the officials of the Bush administration pack up in Washington and
move into their posh suburban homes around the country, will they be
able to rest easy, or will they be haunted by the fear that they will be
held accountable for war crimes committed during their reign?
The Atlantic's Ross Douthat has a post today
-- "Thinking About Torture" -- which, he acknowledges quite remarkably,
is the first time he has "written anything substantial, ever, about
America's treatment of detainees in the War on Terror." He's abstained
until today due to what he calls "a desire to avoid taking on a fraught
and desperately importantly (sic) subject without feeling extremely
confident about my own views on the subject."<
In October, the extremely pro-war, neoconservative New York Sun ceased operations, and its journalists are now finding a warm and welcoming home, appropriately and revealingly enough, at The New Republic. Sun reporter Eli Lake was quickly hired as a TNR Contributing Editor (where he now "exposes" and Posted in war crimes
