In August, 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder -- under continuous, aggressive prodding by the Obama White House -- announced that three categories of individuals responsible for Bush-era torture crimes would be fully immunized from any form of criminal investigation and prosecution: (1) Bush officials who ordered the torture (Bush, Cheney, Rice, Powell, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld); (2) Bush lawyers who legally approved it (Yoo, Bybee, Levin), and (3) those in the CIA and the military who tortured within the confines of the permission slips they were given by those officials and lawyers (i.e., "good-faith" torturers). The one exception to this sweeping immunity was that low-level CIA agents and service members who went so far beyond the torture permission slips as to basically commit brutal, unauthorized murder would be subject to a "preliminary review" to determine if a full investigation was warranted -- in other words, the Abu Ghraib model of justice was being applied, where only low-ranking scapegoats would be subject to possible punishment while high-level officials would be protected.
And now that the US Department of “justice” has done a preliminary review, they have determined that virtually ALL the cases of homicide (there are two exceptions) by torture done by US agents are okay-dokey. This is what I expected, but it is still very depressing. The Obama administration is going to “look forward” and ignore all evidence of wrong doing – except for the whistle blowers. They will be prosecuted.
Taguba, who wrote up and conducted the investigation into detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib said this: "there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account."
And while torture and kidnapping have stopped under the Obama administration, it has been stopped for something worse – outright assassination.
What a sad time in America.
As Leon Panetta said: "We are now finally about to close this chapter of our agency's history" but we have not closed our nation’s shame. Far from it.
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