War Crimes

The US Army general who investigated the torture at Abu Ghraib, and who was forced into retirement after publishing his damning report, has accused the Bush administration of war crimes.

In a Physicians for Human Rights report published yesterday, entitled "Broken Laws, Broken Lives," two-star former General Anthony Taguba, wrote, "After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account."

(You can read the entire report here.)

It is a good question. The Kucinich articles of impeachment have been sent to their grave in committee. No one expects the issue to be taken seriously before Bush and Cheney leave office. Few expect any justice after they leave office. Nancy Pelosi insists that impeachment is off the table and nearly all the Democrats in the house seem to agree. It seems clear that the only reason the Democrats consistently refuse to bring the White House to justice is that they are guilty. Pelosi and others had to have been briefed. The Rove machine was too careful to risk Cheney's hide (though Bush probably isn't bright enough to know the dangers). The best insurance would have been to dirty any potential prosecutors. Bush can probably be found guilty by using his own statements as evidence. Vincent Bugliosi, who prosecuted Charles Mansion, has published a plan to prosecute Bush for murder primarily using Bush's own words. (See The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder.) So why are war crimes not important to Pelosi and the other Dems? What business could be more important?

Ray McGovern, an 27-year CIA analyst, has just published an argument on why impeachment needs to happen sooner rather than later. In his article in the Detroit Free Press, McGovern claims that the neocons know that if they are to invade Iran, it will have to be before the next election. McGovern also writes that Rep Conyers, chair of House Judiciary, holds all the power to move the impeachment forward and that Conyers claims that the votes are not there. (He has sat on the articles to impeach Cheney for over a year.)

Again, how can the votes not be there when the evidence is overwhelming and beyond reasonable doubt? Could it be that by indicting the administration, the congressional leaders risk revealing their own complicity and guilt? These are not secrets, after all. Most Americans have long known the Bush misled the country into war and I believe most care. But, as history has shown over and over, most Americans will forget. And very soon. And something great will be lost, the grand dream of possibility that Crevecoeur described even before the American Revolution. "Here there are no princes for whom we toil," Crevecoeur said about the young American nation.

Soon, it seems, there will be little else. The grand princes of Exxon and Haliburton and Dubai for whom we toil. If Pelosi is right and justice is off the table, what exactly is left?