Did anyone see Joe Klein’s article this week, “The Bush Administration’s Most Despicable Act”? In it he speaks of Bush signing the memorandum in 2002 which said that the Third Geneva Convention, treatment of military prisoners, did not apply to members of al-Qaeda or the Taliban. This is what led to the torture at Abu Ghraib and the abuses at Guantanamo.
After discussing the situation at length, and the activities of the Bushies which both allowed and trained America’s military in the ways of torture and interrogation, with no proof that such abysmal practises worked, Klein comes up with an interesting solution. Thinking it over, I buy it. It would keep such a thing from happening again without screwing up Obama’s administration… tu wit:
If Barack Obama really wanted to be cagey, he could pardon Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld for the possible commission of war crimes. Then they’d have to live with official acknowledgment of their ignominy in perpetuity. More likely, Obama will simply make sure — through his excellent team of legal appointees — that no such behavior happens again. Still, there should be some official acknowledgment by the U.S. government that the Bush Administration’s policies were reprehensible, and quite possibly illegal, and that the U.S. is no longer in the torture business. If Obama doesn’t want to make that statement, perhaps we could do it in the form of a Bush Memorial in Washington: a statue of the hooded Abu Ghraib prisoner in cruciform stress position — the real Bush legacy.
And I’m ready to donate my ten bucks to said Bush Memorial.