Originally posted at Care2.com — by, Aaron D. Pendell
We may have to wait a while for it to happen, but George W. Bush will likely face charges of war crimes. Stubborn, dejected Senate Republicans are postponing prospective Attorney General Eric Holder’s confirmation vote, presumably to seek assurances that the Department of Justice won’t go on a war crimes “witch hunt” while under Holder’s direction.
Of course, no such assurances will be made. The whole situation is dripping with irony: Republicans are concerned about DOJ scrutiny after using the department as a partisan political blunt object for beating Democrats over the head with during last decade. (Don Siegelman is spinning in his grave, and he isn’t even dead yet.)
What do they expect Holder to say? They can’t expect him to ignore the complaints of Susan Crawford, a lifelong Republican and the Bush official in charge of bringing “enemy combatants” to trial at Guantanamo Bay. Crawford refused to bring charges against suspected terrorist, Mohammed al-Qahtani, upon her discovery that he had been tortured. Discussing the matter with Bob Woodward, Crawford described her feelings:
I was upset by it. I was embarrassed by it. If we tolerate this and allow it, then how can we object when our servicemen and women, or others in foreign service, are captured and subjected to the same techniques? How can we complain? Where is our moral authority to complain? Well, we may have lost it.
Further, Obama and Holder are already facing external pressure from the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture. As a signatory nation at the UN convention on torture:
“Judicially speaking, the United States has a clear obligation” to bring proceedings against Bush and Rumsfeld…
Constitutional Law Professor Jonathan Turley is of the opinion that if the Obama administration fails to heed the statements of Crawford and others, the new president runs the risk of appearing culpable in the mistreatment of detainees. Here’s Turley discussing the matter with Keith Olbermann last week:
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See Also – Olbermann: Bush Guilty of Torture, 19 January 2009.
