Should Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld & CIA Officials Be Tried for Torture? War Crimes Case Filed in Germany
TMR Editor’s Note
The George W. Bush Administration decision to commit torture was in gross violation of the U.S. Constitution. Their unlawful torture policy profoundly contravened the sacrosanct Geneva Conventions. Likewise, a number of international treaties were breached as various international laws were transgressed.
The U.S. Federal Government cannot legally arrogate power unto itself which in any way legalizes torture. In other words because a U.S. Government attorney says or writes that criminal conduct is legal does not make it legal or lawful or legitimate.
John Yoo, a primary author of the notorious torture memos, was simply used by his superiors to present the appearance of legitimacy in their approval process for government-sponsored torture. In so doing, has also implicated himself in the conspiracy to commit torture against foreign nationals and American citizens. A quite serious war crime indeed.
An established state policy of torture is as indefensible as it is unjustifiable. Torture is an odiously inhumane practice which has been repudiated by every civilized nation and society throughout history. Such a repugnant form of barbaric behavior infringes upon natural law, common law, scriptural law and divine law. Torture also constitutes a serious infraction against every moral and ethical code, as well as the generally accepted norms of human conduct.
George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, John Yoo, and others must each be held individually responsible according to the roles that each played in this shameful miscarriage of government policy. That the citizens of the United States were even exposed to such a disgraceful affair marks a very sad chapter in American history.
Hopefully, the children of the world will learn from this terrible mistake. Hopefully, those who were brutally tortured will receive full remedy – legal and financial, physical and psychological. Perhaps the community of nations will come to a place of forgiveness … after the international tribunals complete the criminal trials necessary for closure and reconciliation.
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A human rights group in Berlin, Germany, has filed a criminal complaint against the architects of the George W. Bush administration’s torture program. The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights has accused former Bush administration officials, including CIA Director George Tenet and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, of war crimes, and called for an immediate investigation by a German prosecutor. The move follows the release of a Senate report on CIA torture which includes the case of a German citizen, Khalid El-Masri, who was captured byCIA agents in 2004 due to mistaken identity and tortured at a secret prison in Afghanistan. So far, no one involved in the CIA torture program has been charged with a crime — except the whistleblower John Kiriakou, who exposed it. We speak to Michael Ratner, president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights and chairman of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, and longtime defense attorney Martin Garbus.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: A human rights group in Berlin, Germany, has filed a criminal complaint against the architects of the George W. Bush administration’s torture program. The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights has accused former Bush administration officials, including CIA Director George Tenet and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, of war crimes, and called for an immediate investigation by a German prosecutor. The move follows the release of a Senate report on CIA torture, which includes the case of a German citizen, Khalid El-Masri, who was captured byCIA agents in 2004 due to mistaken identity and tortured at a secret prison in Afghanistan. So far, no one involved in the CIA torture program has been charged with a crime—except the whistleblower John Kiriakou, who exposed it.
AMY GOODMAN: In a statement earlier this week, Wolfgang Kaleck, general secretary of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, said, “By investigating members of the Bush administration, Germany can help to ensure that those responsible for abduction, abuse and illegal detention do not go unpunished,” unquote.
Meanwhile, President Obama is standing by his long-standing refusal to investigate or prosecute Bush administration officials for the torture program. In a statement, he called on the nation not to, quote, “refight old arguments.” As Obama continues to reject a criminal probe of Bush-era torture, former Vice President Dick Cheney has said he would do it all again. Cheney spoke to NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday.
DICK CHENEY: With respect to trying to define that as torture, I come back to the proposition torture was what the al-Qaeda terrorists did to 3,000 Americans on 9/11. There is no comparison between that and what we did with respect to enhanced interrogation. … It worked. It worked now. For 13 years we’ve avoided another mass casualty attack against the United States. We did capture bin Laden. We did capture an awful lot of the senior guys of al-Qaeda who were responsible for that attack on 9/11. I’d do it again in a minute.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Cheney’s claim that he would approve torture again highlights a key question: Are top officials above the law, and will the impunity of today lead to more abuses in the future? The question spans a wide chain of command from Cheney, President Bush and other White House officials, who kickstarted the torture program after 9/11; to the lawyers in the Justice Department, who drafted the memos providing legal cover; to the CIA officials, who implemented the abuses and misled Congress and the public; and to the military psychologists, who helped devise the techniques inflicted on prisoners at U.S. military prisons and secret black sites across the globe.