This isn't going away

Mark Danner reports for the New York Review of Books on a confidential report from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on how the torture policy operated in the Bush Gulag (Al Gore's name for the Cheney-Bush administration's series of secret prisons and torture centers): US Torture: Voices from the Black Sites 03/12/09; 04/09/09 issue. He also discusses it in a podcast, Mark Danner on the ICRC Report on US Torture 03/14/09.

Larry Wilkerson, Colin Powell's longtime friend and assistant, also writes about the torture policy in Some Truths About Guantanamo Bay 03/17/09 at Steve Clemons' Washington Note blog. Wilkerson still tries to minimize or avoid the significance of his friend Powell's highly-likely participation in war crimes as Bush's Secretary of State. But he makes some very important points, such as the fact that those first captured in Afghanistan to be sent to the Gulag were haphazardly selected for imprisonment and torture:

... several in the U.S. leadership became aware of this lack of proper vetting very early on and, thus, of the reality that many of the detainees were innocent of any substantial wrongdoing, had little intelligence value, and should be immediately released.

But to have admitted this reality would have been a black mark on their leadership from virtually day one of the so-called Global War on Terror and these leaders already had black marks enough: the dead in a field in Pennsylvania, in the ashes of the Pentagon, and in the ruins of the World Trade Towers. They were not about to admit to their further errors at Guantanamo Bay. Better to claim that everyone there was a hardcore terrorist, was of enduring intelligence value, and would return to jihad if released. I am very sorry to say that I believe there were uniformed military who aided and abetted these falsehoods, even at the highest levels of our armed forces. [my emphasis]

The crimes involved in the torture policy need to be prosecuted. From the administration officials and government attorneys that designed and tried to provide legal alibis for it, to the people who carried out the torture with their own hands and feet, and everyone in between.

A "truth commission" just isn't enough. Without actual prosecutions and serious prison time for the perps, it's virtually guaranteed that Jeb Bush or some other Republicans will repeat the same crimes and worse when they next take control of the Presidency.

Tags: bush administration, bush gulag, torture, war crimes

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