Corporate Liability Blog
Bush Administration Officials Should Be Prosecuted
- 02/05/09
- |
- Posted by:
- admin
High officials in the Bush administration should be prosecuted for crimes that involved the torture of captives at Guantanamo, physical and sexual abuse of prisoners, illegal wiretapping, lying to Congress and extra-terratorial kidnappings. Based on Pentagon investigations, publicly released documents, and admissions of other officials in the Bush Administration, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo and other high officials in the Bush administration conspired to violate the Federal Civil Rights Act, 18, U.S.C. Section 242, the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act, and treaties adopted by the United States, including the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture. They should be prosecuted because holding these officials accountable will serve as a warning present and future officials, it will help to redeem the image of the United States overseas by demonstrating our commitment to the rule of law, and it will demonstrate that the powerful can be held accountable when they commit enormous crimes just as the weak are held accountable for petty crimes. Our new Attorney General,Eric H. Holder Jr., recently testified that “Waterboarding is torture” and he acknowledged that “We prosecuted our own soldiers for using it in Vietnam.” He noted that waterboarding had been used to torment prisoners during the Inquisition, by the Japanese in World War II and in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. If these high officials are permitted to violate the law with impunity, order the torture people held in secret prisons, illegally spy on American citizens and lie about their actions to Congress, our democracy and our freedom will be further eroded.
One Response to “Bush Administration Officials Should Be Prosecuted”
-
UUbuntu
2009-02-05 4:19:04From a moral point of view, I certainly agree. The fact that senior Bush Administration officials could authorize the behaviors that our military engaged in in Guantanamo Bay (and in the numerous “black sites” around the world) shows them to be true believers in the “ends justify the means” philosophy of governance and behavior.
From a legal point of view, I hope there is a possibility of a case. Certainly after watching Standard Operating Procedure and Taxi to the Dark Side, I have little doubt as to the sense that the people who authorized torture and rendition were senior administration officials.
But from a political point of view, this will be a difficult case to make. The facts will need to come to light slowly, over time, to the point where we the activist-general public (and I don’t mean we the left-leaning public) start demanding official investigations on the behaviors of these people, and then seeing where the political winds blow from there. Perhaps it’s my pessimistic nature as to the demands of the people, but I believe that as long as a majority (or a substantial minority) of the American people believe that ends justify means, and that the torture of “a few bad men” is a small and effective price to pay for our safety, then the political will to demand a legal investigation and prosecution of former government officials will not be there. And the pursuit of such a tactic will get painted as a political witch hunt.
In short, prosecuting the Bush Administration under U.S. law will be something that we should do very carefully. I think that strengthening an international criminal court and potentially bringing them in front of that court may be a better approach to this issue.
Thanks for bringing this up though.