Scott Horton has two pieces online this morning ["Travel Advisory" and "Torture from the Top Down"] that address the subject of war crimes, of whether or not our leaders will be held accountable for condoning and even actively promoting torture of prisoners in pursuit of information after the attacks of 9/11. Not only did our leaders discuss and direct particular torture techniques, but they also attempted to ensure that those directives would not be traced to them but would seem to appear to be instituted because of requests from Guantanamo.
In his article for The New Republic, Horton refers to a recently-released report by Physicians for Human Rights which details the abuse. That report is led by a quote from Major General Antonio M. Taguba, who was assigned to investigate the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and who authored the consequent report on that investigation, known as the Taguba Report: "
After years of disclosures by government investigators, 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 is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held into account.
Horton writes that only in very unusual circumstances will a country prosecute its own leaders for war crimes; to do so requires a political will that Americans just don't have. [We're distracted now by high gas prices, the increasing costs of food, flooding in the Midwest, and drought in the Southeast. Will the presidential campaign just add to the distraction or focus our attention on the previous administration's disastrous leadership?] But foreign countries have no such restrictions. Investigating magistrates for at least two European countries ("pro-Iraq war NATO allies," according to Horton) are assembling a case for war crimes, focusing on American policymakers. Horton suggests that certain of these policymakers should be mighty careful about traveling outside the United States.
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