General Accuses Bush Administration of War Crimes

expatbrian

Well George, remember what you said about "listening to your commanders in the field"?

A retired Army general who spent 10 months in Iraq and led an investigation into the atrocities at the Abu Ghraib prison there accused the Bush administration Wednesday of committing war crimes and called for those responsible to be held accountable. Full article here.

"After years of disclosures by government investigations, 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 that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account,"wrote Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba.

Bush, as the Commander in Chief, and as a "war president" as he likes to call himself, is ultimately responsible for the actions of his military underlings.

"The detainees suffer permanent hearing loss, persistent and debilitating pain in limbs and joints, major depressive disorder, severe post-traumatic stress disorder, and anxiety disorders, such as panic attacks." The men were later released and were never charged with any crimes.

We may be Democrats or we may be Republicans, but we are all Americans. Is this what our founding fathers envisioned and is this what is acceptable now in the United States of America? If we are patriots, is not our first patriotic duty to uphold our own Constitution and abide by our own laws? Or are we ready and willing to uphold that Constitution only when the going is easy but when the going gets a little tough, when we feel a little insecure, we forget all that and start behaving like the very barbarians we are supposed to detest?

"With this evidentiary record, this report provides the most detailed account available thus far of the experience of detainees in US custody who suffered torture — a war crime — at the hands of US personnel. Additionally, this report provides further evidence of the role health professionals played in facilitating detainee abuse by being present during torture and ill-treatment, denying medical care to detainees, providing confidential medical information to interrogators, and failing to stop or document detainee abuse.

Just what justification is there, once we are smacked in the face with evidence of actual war crimes, to not take some kind of action against those who are responsible? Just what excuse for our actions do we expect to be acceptable by the international community? Or are we so arrogant, that we no longer care what anyone else thinks?

The report was released Tuesday, the same day documents made public by the Senate Armed Services Committee presented during a hearing on the administration’s interrogation policies showed a pattern of humiliation, abuse and even torture inflicted on detainees was a deliberate policy of the Bush administration.

Jonathan Fredman, chief counsel to the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, discussed with U.S. military officials how interrogators could use the "wet towel"technique against detainees to extract information.

Fredman added that the "wet towel"technique would only be defined as torture "if the detainee dies."

Just what kind of a fucking country are we, anyway?