That question apples not only to former President Bush, but also Cheney, Rumsfeld, Yoo, Bybee, Addington, Rice and and all the other knowing participants who plotted to start an illegal, aggressive war and use torture indiscriminately. Perhaps they would do well to avoid traveling outside the country from here on after.
Because you just never know what might happen in the future to people who have admitted committing crimes against humanity. Someday, some nation’s legal authorities just might decide that justice deferred is better than no justice at all. For example …
The widow of former Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, whose assassination triggered the Rwandan genocide, has been arrested in France.
Agathe Habyarimana is accused by the current Rwandan government of helping to plan the 1994 genocide, and has long been sought by prosecutors there.
But what am I saying? I forget, no American prosecutor or court is ever likely to issue a warrant for the arrest of BushCo’s ringleaders for authorizing an illegal war and the use of torture. France, after all, was merely (and belatedly) following through on an international arrest warrant that was originally issued by the Rwandan government.
As we all know, in America, anything a Republican does, from war crimes to advocating terrorist attacks against certain American cities to having sex with farm animals is just AOK with our justice system.
The recent debacle of the Obama Justice Department’s whitewash of its internal investigation regarding Mr. Yoo’s demented legal advice justifying the use of torture by President Bush even against US citizens, proved, if nothing else, that IOKIYAR* still lives. I mean, when Democrats control both houses of Congress and the Presidency, and are unwilling to even promote the meekest punishment, disbarment (i.e., revocation of the right to practice law) against the attorneys who gave Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld the legal cover to brutalize and abuse anyone they deemed to be a possible terrorist, even US citizens, well, what more is there to say?
The 290-page torture memo report produced by the Office of Professional Responsibility, which is tasked with investigating misconduct by DOJ attorneys, found that Bush-era attorneys John Yoo and Jay Bybee had committed professional misconduct in writing the legal opinions that authorized torture.
But released with the OPR report Friday was a scathing memo from Associate Deputy AG David Margolis, the top career attorney at the department, that explicitly overruled OPR’s finding of misconduct. Margolis barred OPR from referring the matter to state bar disciplinary authorities where Yoo and Bybee are licensed.
I guess the best we can hope for is that Bush, etc. really do meet their maker and are judged accordingly, because justice in this world for their sins seems highly unlikely.
* For the uninitiated “IOKIYAR” is an acronym for the saying “It’s Okay if You’re a Republican.”
