Two Relatively New or Novel Ideas: Starting Today with the Question of Prosecuting Guilty American Leaders for Torture – National Affairs

Well, so be it for ordinary people in this celebrity driven world. Nevertheless, in this commentary and the next one this ordinary person shall again discuss new ideas in the hope that once again they may be picked up by others, by those who are celebrified, those who are read and listened to. The idea in the next commentary, an idea which may be completely novel, deals with the question of when courts should strike down a law of Congress. The idea in this commentary has begun to be bruited, especially because of ABC’s story (Jan Greenburg’s story, really) that people like Cheney, Powell, Rice, Ashcroft, Tenet, and Rumsfeld sat in the White House deciding what tortures should be applied to whom – sort of like Lyndon Johnson sitting in the White House picking bombing targets. But though the idea has begun to be bruited, one fears it nonetheless will largely be ignored, with the consequence that in future we will face more disasters like Viet Nam and Iraq and like the entire situations – the horrid, wide-ranging debacles – surrounding those wars.

The same is the real story behind the 2006 bill taking away jurisdiction from American courts to hear cases involving these crimes. The Administration and its Congressional lackeys pretend this was done so that lower level people wouldn’t be punished for supposedly doing their duty (notwithstanding the Nuremberg principles). This claim, too, is 99 percent bullshit. Of course, lower level people wanted protection. But the real concern, the one you have never heard expressed, was to protect the Bushes, Cheneys, Addingtons, Rices, et. al. against possible prosecution.