"Beyond being undemocratic, hiding the evidence may itself be a criminal act."

Given House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's acknowledged skill at torturing the Bush Administration in recent years, it no doubt afforded her critics some pleasure yesterday to watch her twist in the wind in front of the press over what she knew and when about the CIA's terrorist interrogations. With mockery even from Jon Stewart on Comedy Central, Mrs. Pelosi has turned herself into a spectacle about a subject that she and fellow Democrats had themselves reduced to a spectacle of demagogic accusation and blame, repeatedly threatening to put Bush officials in the dock for "condoning torture."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124234147580621265.html#mod=djemEditorialPage

And:

"On Sept. 12, 2001, it is highly doubtful that any member of Congress was worried that our government would be too harsh in its treatment of terrorists. When countries are threatened, basic survival trumps civil liberties not just for enemy combatants but for citizens as well. Our priorities change."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124234559143121723.html#mod=djemEditorialPage

"Our system is based on openness."

It was, anyway. But it hasn't been that way for a long time.

And don't forget, Obama continues to intentionally conflate
Afghanistan, Al Queda and the Taliban to create the impression that our troops are fighting Al Queda in Afghanistan. This was similar to the grounds for prosecuting Bush for murder for knowingly putting our troops in harms way under false information.

I guess if rothschild were president he would go into the white house with his superhero uniform on and right all injustice overnight

unfortunately, Obama has to deal with something called reality

by the way,

how many of these holier than though types, like rothschild, were actually totally behind "doing whatever" even torture, in the days right after 9/11

I'll bet you many of them were, and they don't even have the decency to admit it now, that they have changed their minds

is that a "crime"?

Not only that but there could be a 'limited release' of the photos to key individuals that can make decision regarding the photos and what evidence they represent and what actions need to occur to redress the violations. No one is demanding they be released for the terrorists to peruse. All Cheney is doing is creating an environment where a trial will need to occur to satisfy the need and right of Americans to know the truth. What kind of idiots do we have running the government anyways? They can't even be smart about keeping us safe and keeping us free too, because they are too dumb to know how to do two things at once? This is crazy.

" History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. "-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Obama has gone far beyond the indignity of mere silence on the Bush Gang's war crimes. He is "actively" helping to protect them from prosecution.

The Cowardice (it needs to be capitalized) of the Democratic party has grown exponentially until it has now found its True Champion in the lying, groveling Obama, the Reagan of the coopted, conventional American "left". The taxi cab yellow streak down his back can be seen even through his clothes. They say the man is intelligent but this Cowardice is the trait that will finish off his presidency. Once you get into the habit of being frightened, once equivocation becomes a religion . . . you're done.

Yes, Matt, "hiding the evidence may itself be a criminal act." The American corporate controlled -- and that's global-corporate controlled -- government and mainstream media have been hiding evidence, distorting evidence, and destroying evidence for decades.

Remember the assassination of President Kennedy? Remember what the government did with all the evidence it was able to confiscate? They locked it up. That's "hiding the evidence."

Remember the Gulf of Tonkin incident that President Johnson used as a pretext to invade and occupy South Vietnam? The evidence for the incident was doctored. That's distorting evidence.

Remember World Trade Center building 7 and how it suddenly collapsed smoothly within its own footprint on 9/11, though it was neither struck by an airplane nor did it burn with jet fuel? Remember how the government swept up the remains and shipped it off to China for recycling? That's destruction of evidence.

All who give consent to these and other abominations (for example, torture) are accessories after the fact to crimes of the past. Since most of us are going along as though it's business as usual, that leaves only one conclusion.

"Obama Is Becoming an Accessory after the fact to War Crimes"

I'm sure the president is aware of this because I wrote an email to the Whitehouse pointing out this very fact. He hasn't written back yet because I'm sure he gets lots of mail and might not have gotten to my message yet. But I'm sure that once he does, he will think again about his course. Once he gets to my message things will surely change.

Mrs. Alan Greenspan (Andrea Mitchell) is on MSNBC right now explaining to us how the CIA did not mislead Congress.

Or, this happened:

"Dear President Obama,

I got KBR and Blackwater and Triple Canopy and Dynergy and a few dozen others on a leash. For now.

Shut the f@#k up and do as you're told or the leash comes off.

Sincerely,

Richard Cheney."

"YES WE CAN!!...but we won't" - Barak O'Bush

"The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing, to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts." - John Keats

Matt,

Quit complaining.

A acant 6 months ago, didn't you insist that we all get together in getting behind Obama as the great agent of change?

Didn't yout heap scorn and renuciiations on anyone who tried to explain to you that ALL evidence pointed to an Obama who would be exactly the warmongering corporate shill that is so apparent now? I'm no clarivoyant genius, but I among many others could see exactly what kind of scumbag Obama was ever since his DNC speech in 2004!

Didn't you slander Ralph Nader at every opportunity?

And, bit off topic, I will never forget the way you and your fellow female Zionist associate (forgot her name) made cause with the scumbag Dershovitz in on the witch-hunting of Norman Finkelstein out of his academic career.

I will also never forget the way you have refused to renounce in unambiguous terms, the war crimes of Isreal, first in Lebanon, then in Gaza.

Obama is becoming an accessory with relation to torture? What a short and selective memory. How about every member of Congress is a war criminal who approved a preemptive attack on a sovereign nation? Or turned a blind eye to war profiteering or funded the use of indiscriminate weapons used on a civilian population, or the destruction of civilian infrastructure or. . .

"After the fact"!?!

Rothschild should read appendix M of the Army Field Manual. Obama hasn't really banned torture.

BTW has habeous corpus has been restored? The prisoners of Guantanamo freed? Bagram Air Base closed? The Iraq and Afghan ended? Are we no longer bombing Pakistan? Funding and supporting Israel's wars? Have we ended our policy of extraordinary rendition? etc... etc...

"He is staining himself with the crimes of his predecessor. And that's a crime."

WTF?!? If McCain was President we would say he is "continuing" the crimes of his predecessor. Obama is committing the SAME crimes as Bush/Cheney. This is getting ridiculous.

So let me get this straight. The enemy is supposed to be inflamed if the pictures are released, but not inflamed if the pictures are not released, if there is a coverup, and if they have to imagine anything they want to imagine is in the pictures that they don't get to see?

I think they are going to be very inflamed either way.

So sorry, but if you are going to cover up things, at least come up with a better reason than that.

I just read a piece by William Rivers Pitt stating that the torture at Abu Ghraib was far worse than water boarding. Seymour Hersh has testified that the Pentagon has tapes with soundtracks of young boys being sodomized and shrieking by Americans in front of their mothers in Abu Ghraib. That is one tape I do not want to see. But just how much are the American people willing to take? That too? Pitt claims that Cheney is running around talking his head off to forestall the release of those tapes, because of the outrage against him they would spark. It is Pitt's opinion that the public would demand Cheney go to jail. Would they? I had heard stories in the past of children being sodomized, but no hard evidence. So there is hard evidence. Has Obama seen and heard the tapes?

I think less and less of him all the time. I was willing to take a chance on him, knowing I could be wrong. And I was willing to give him a chance to do the right thing. But now I see I was wrong. He isn't doing the right thing, or anything anywhere near it.

His performance in that town hall meeting showed me who he really is. When a questioner asked him about single payer the audience burst into loud applause. At first he stumbled, then found his footing and started smooth talking points. He got some applause, but not a lot. I do think he will end up being a one term president if he doesn't start coming clean with us. And now I don't see that on the horizon. And yes, he fooled me. As of now, I wouldn't vote for him. He isn't walking his talk. At least we got a good Labor Secretary out of it. Wouldn't have gotten that from McCain. But if I knew then what I know now I still wouldn't have voted for him. For him to participate in the Abu Ghraib cover up is inexcusable. Yes, he is becoming an accessory, in addition to racking up some war crimes of his own.

http://www.truthout.org/051509J

Americans are really good at turning their faces away when they don't want to face something. Even this? And I agree. Those photos would cause quite a backlash against American troops. Is that any reason to hide the truth? The cat is out of the bag and I think it's going to come out anyway, somehow. Over and over we have found that cover up is even worse than the original crime in the public's eyes. Obama is crossing that line, although it's hard to believe in this case, raping little boys in front of their mothers. How bad can it get? Are we ashamed to be Americans yet?

Under the surface in this country there is a hideous stench. It won't go away and it contaminates everything.

When the people fear their government there is tyranny,
when the government fears the people there is liberty.
~ Thomas Jefferson

Obama was left up the creek without a paddle, but so far he has not even been willing to hike out of the right wing wilderness.

Who knows, maybe the truth is there was no torture, and that is what is being hidden.

Mathew is right,failure to prosecute is a violation of the oath of office.an impeachable offence and the entire Congress and Senate are also complicit accessories. So now what do we do ? peace

Accessory after the fact of war crimes is itself a war crime. Thus Obama is a war criminal. Pelosi knew about torture--either that it had occurred or that it would--and did nothing. This also makes her an accessory after the fact, and thus also a war criminal. If these people are re-elected, it will be with the public knowledge that they have colluded in war crimes. Let's be clear about what kind of people we are.

"Obama Is Becoming an Accessory after the fact to War Crimes", Matthew Rothschild says, for article title.

More-or-less, almost entirely every war crime the Bush administration was and remains guilty of!

But what everyone on the topic of the torture for false confessions theme or avenue is doing is ignoring the fact that Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld, Powell, and others were all indictable, convicatable, sentenceable as of the moment the war on Iraq was launched and as, basically, explained in my following post; among similar posts (one or two) I made here at CD over the past day or two.

(url broken over two lines in order to fully appear)

http://www.commondreams.org/
view/2009/05/15-6#comment-1204703

People have been ignoring this, idling, living stagnantly, ... ever since the war was launched, and, today, they continue delaying, with all of this pretension that to be able to indict, etcetera, we supposedly need to prove that the torture was used to extract false confessions the Bush admin. used, a little, to so-called justify war on Iraq. We don't need that and never did in order to be able to indict, convict and sentence the whole bloody lot of them.

It might help with additionally incriminating Cheney, as well as Bush, since he signed to grant permission or for directing to torture, though I haven't yet read that he is claimed to have known that this was for the purpose of obtaining false confessions, for any purpose, whether it be for justifying war on Iraq or for other reasons. He signed though, and this in itself was a criminal act.

But for stopping the wars of aggression, which should be the TOP PRIORITY of or for everyone, we don't and never did need these additional crimes to be proven or even investigated. We already knew about them as related crimes and could convict on this basis, but didn't need these to be able to indict, convict and sentence the Bush administration for the wars of aggression that it launched.

What did you expect from the guy who stole the nomination?

I disagree with the basic premise of the article;

1. Obama ... is NOT "becoming" anything other than that which he has been all along.

An accomplice to the ongoing crimes against humanity being committed not by "the Bush administration" but by the entire criminal enterprise itself, comprised of the largest industrial owners and their paid public and political shills, of which he is merely...one. This entity is NOT an "American" endeavour of local sociopaths, but is endemic to the entire planet and is represented in every single so called "nationstate". It is working in perfect order, and is manipulating the planet´s populace at will.

2. The additional criminals, accomplices as it were, are all members of the defuncted US Congress who consciously voted FOR what they knew to be a crime against humanity founded on deliberate lies.

3. The additional criminals, accomplices as it were, are all the members of the media corps who willfully and deliberately printed as fact what they knew to have no basis in reality, for a personal profit in the form of a paycheck.

4. The additional criminals, accomlices as it were, are all the serving members of the armed forces who continue to willfully participate in the execution of orders they KNOW to be founded on criminal intent and in contradiction of the laws they swore to protect.

5. The additional criminals, accomplices as it were, are all the members of the body politic (YOU) that continue to willingly and deliberately pay for actions they KNOW to be crimes against humanity, international statutes, the US Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.

Our boy is nothing more than a serving political shill to the criminal regime that controls the planet temporarily,

Democrats and Republicans, indeed. A nation of apathetic slobs unable to stagger out of the fog long enough to see it coming, that´s all.

Obama is "not becoming" an accessory. As senator he voted to fund the wars more than once so he's been an accomplice, aider and abettor for more than 5 years, and so is his entire rotten Democratic Party. Next article.