George Bush, Torturer -- and War Criminal

The latest evidence, from a long and excellent post by Scott Horton:

...this week, a CIA agent, John Kiriakou, appeared, first on ABC News and then in an interview with NBC’s Matt Lauer, and explained just how the system works. When we want to torture someone (and it is torture he said, no one involved with these techniques would ever think anything different), we have to write it up. The team leader of the torture team proposes what torture techniques will be used and when. He sends it to the Deputy Chief of Operations at the CIA. And there it is reviewed by the hierarchy of the Company. Then the proposal is passed to the Justice Department to be reviewed, blessed, and it is passed to the National Security Council in the White House, to be reviewed and approved. The NSC is chaired, of course, by George W. Bush, whose personal authority is invoked for each and every instance of torture authorized. And, according to Kiriakou as well as others, Bush’s answer is never “no.” He has never found a case where he didn’t find torture was appropriate. [emphasis added]

Oh, and it wasn't just Bush either:

David Addington, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley—these are all name we can now link directly to the torture system. Not just as a matter of theory. As a matter of practical application. They decided who would be tortured and how.

Horton then goes on to talk about how the new attorney general is busy covering up these crimes. Read the whole thing.

And of course the leading Congressional Democrats were complicit in these crimes. Which is probably why they won't impeach Bush -- they knew of, approved and aided his crimes.

Not that impeachment would be enough. We are long past, light-years past, the point where impeachment would suffice for Bush's crimes. He should be tried for war crimes, and should spend the rest of his life rotting in jail.

And no kids should ever go hungry. Which is about as likely.

The question is not how long our country will take to wash this stain off its soul, and to repair the assault on the constitution that this war criminal has perpetrated. The question is whether or not it ever will.