and Obama had less than zero interest in looking for them. Gotta "look forward" and not to the past, you know.

The Geithner and Clinton appointments told me we had been royally had before he was even sworn. in.

supposedly legal, that said what they were doing was not torture. As a matter of practicality, the political situation is most nations makes such prosecutions extremely difficult. That is why the ICC was created. The US has refused to sign.

I don't know of any country that prosecuted torturers so soon after they left power. In Argentina the military was granted amnesty as a way for them to keep from again seizing power. There were some prosecutions three decades later. In Chile, at least two decades passed. I don't believe there have been any prosecutions of torturers in Brazil. In the case of the US, the only conceivable way such prosecutions could realistically occur is if we joined the Hague. Yet even then it seems highly unlikely we would do so with retroactive jurisdiction.

Actually there were some prosecutions. Some of the soldiers at Abu Ghraib were convicted. No one responsible for implementing the policy has been.

Additionally, no American has ever been prosecuted for torture in past conflicts, and there have been many. US CIA officials and military advisors engaged in torture in Central America. The School of the Americans taught "interrogation" techniques to members of the military of RW authoritarian regimes. Nearly ever single administration, including the ones you all herald as "real Democrats," has had involvement in illegal torture, regime change and assassinations and assassination plots. None of them have ever been prosecuted. The key distinction is that the Bush administration sought to sanction it legally rather than running it as clandestine activity. And there is also currently torture taking place in jails and prisons across this nation.

You want to prosecute Cheney, you better prosecute any surviving members of the Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Carter administrations as well. That is the problem and why its governments are loathe to start such inquiries. Truth and Reconciliation commissions and prosecutions have only happened with changes in the nature of government, something there is virtually no possibility of in this country. Electing a different president is not a change in the nature government. It's the same government and same system with a different figure at the top.

like Alberto Gonzales, John You, David Addington, Donald Henry Rumsfeld, George Tenet, et.al.

Plus, there is some history of federal cooperation with the ICC-but that's really not the point.

In which we learn how to say 'war crimes' in Malaysian.

BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
Esquire, June 1, 2015

Last week, Richard Clarke, the man to whom nobody in the administration of C-Plus Augustus listened because what did he know, anyway?, had a chat with Amy Goodman in which he minced no words regarding his former employers.

"I think things that they authorized probably fall within the area of war crimes. Whether that would be productive or not, I think, is a discussion we could all have. But we have established procedures now with the International Criminal Court in The Hague, where people who take actions as serving presidents or prime ministers of countries have been indicted and have been tried. So the precedent is there to do that sort of thing. And I think we need to ask ourselves whether or not it would be useful to do that in the case of members of the Bush administration. It's clear that things that the Bush administration did — in my mind, at least, it's clear that some of the things they did were war crimes."

And, something that most of us missed, there was a court on the other side of the world that agreed.

In what is the first ever conviction of its kind anywhere in the world, the former US President and seven key members of his administration were... found guilty of war crimes. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and their legal advisers Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, William Haynes, Jay Bybee and John Yoo were tried in absentia in Malaysia...At the end of the week-long hearing, the five-panel tribunal unanimously delivered guilty verdicts against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and their key legal advisors who were all convicted as war criminals for torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment. Full transcripts of the charges, witness statements and other relevant material will now be sent to the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, as well as the United Nations and the Security Council.

At the very least, this court parceled out the blame for the torture program in a fair manner and all the way up the chain of command. The testimony of the victims was as horrible as you might expect:

The court heard how Abbas Abid, a 48-year-old engineer from Fallujah in Iraq had his fingernails removed by pliers; Ali Shalal was attached with bare electrical wires and electrocuted and hung from a wall; Moazzam Begg was beaten, hooded and put in solitary confinement, Jameelah was stripped and humiliated, and was used as a human shield whilst being transported by helicopter. The witnesses also detailed how they have residual injuries till today.

SOURCE:

Great question, bobthedrummer! Where is JUSTICE?

The GOP base knows there's something rotten in the House of Bushmark.



We'll be seeing War Inc breaking down to two factions: Lawbreakers and Less Lawbreakers.

"Before President George W. Bush left office, a group of conservatives lobbied the White House to grant pardons to the officials who had planned and authorized the United States torture program."

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/09/opinion/pardon-bush-and-those-who-tortured.html?_r=0

That is UNACCEPTABLE to this American citizen, TORTURE policy pardons-what do you think???

Which is just another way of saying corruption.

we, the people.

They need to be held accountable for TORTURE as policy-WE KNOW WHO THEY ARE.

They speak a good game, talk about hard choices, all the while trying to look grave and serious....but nothing is done.

That's what passes for integrity now.

And plus we have apologists for the BFEE that will lie and pretend Bush etc did nothing legally wrong.

For example, this report from the incomparable Kevin Gosztola, about the only reporter still on the Guantanamo beat:

http://shadowproof.com/2015/08/25/obama-administration-would-rather-subject-gravely-ill-guantanamo-prisoner-to-more-torture-than-release-him/

This is about a prisoner at Guantanamo who was cleared for release six years ago.

in the current administration that were influenced by Rumsfeld/Cheney, gratuitous?