The New York Times has never been that liberal monolith conservatives like to decry, but this morning, the editorial staff got it right--or mostly right--by calling for the investigation and prosecution of torturers in the Bush administration. This follows the American Civil Liberties Union’s call for a special prosecutor to investigate “a vast criminal conspiracy, under color of law, to commit torture and other serious crimes.” The problem is, after calling out Obama for not prosecuting torturers himself, the Times stops short of pointing a finger at the man on whose watch all this happened: President George W. Bush: “as hard as it is to imagine Mr. Obama having the political courage to order a new investigation, it is harder to imagine a criminal probe of the actions of a former president.” Many of us would disagree. Without mentioning President Bush, the Times says, “Any credible investigation should include former Vice President Dick Cheney; Mr. Cheney’s chief of staff, Daid Addington; the former C.I.A. director George Tenet; and John Yoo and Jay Bybee, the Office of Legal Counsel lawyers who drafted what became known as the torture memos. “There are many more names that could be considered, including Jose Rodriguez Jr., the CIA official who ordered the destruction of the videotapes; the psychologists who devised the torture regimen; and the CIA employees who carried out that regimen.” Unfortunately, any investigation which left out President George W. Bush would lack all credibility. It is true that President Obama declined to order an investigation when he took office (though we all knew that torture had taken place), saying “we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.” Many of us were dismayed. We understood what he was saying, but as the New York Times editorial points out, the two are not incompatible. President Obama has at least consistently condemned torture during his six years in office, and said again with the release of the Senate report that, “I will continue to use my authority as President to make sure we never resort to those methods again.” The problem is, it will not always be Obama’s watch. Some other, less scrupulous politician--and yes, that would include pretty much any Republican you would care to mention--would eagerly embrace torture. The leaders of the Religious Right have made clear they love the idea of inflicting suffering in Jesus’ name, with Brian Fischer even going so far as to say last week that Jesus himself would support the use of torture. Do any of us really believe that this could never happen again? The ACLU correctly states that, “A thorough and credible criminal investigation is a legal and moral imperative. And it is the best way to make sure that the United States never tortures again.” The Times also fails to point to a certain, unrelenting logic to prosecution. After all, we executed Japanese solders after the Second World War for waterboarding American prisoners of war. This being so, how can we not at least investigate our own torturers? Dick Cheney, of course, says the report is “full of crap” but one would expect somebody to say that who has just had war crimes criminal complaint filed against him in Germany--a complaint which also includes CIA Director George Tenet and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. And we are all aware by now that Fox News says the report is a conspiracy, that the real culprit we ought to be investigating is Obamacare, when, in fact, the report is about a conspiracy. And Lindsey Graham has said the report is “politically motivated” when, in fact, the torture itself was politically motivated. As in, let’s torture people who don’t believe what we believe. President Obama has repeatedly said that this is his watch. He has repeatedly taken responsibility for what takes place on his watch. Yet here we have a president, George W. Bush, who has completely evaded responsibility for what has taken place on his watch. His vice president, and others, have evaded responsibility as well, and it seems a miscarriage of justice to investigate the torturer without investigating those who devised the regimen and those who gave the orders. The person ultimately responsible for those orders is George W. Bush.
Posted on: Mon, 22 Dec 2014 19:01:18 +0000