How To Ineptly Prosecute A War On Terror

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June 18, 5:27 PM

by Jay McDonough, Progressive Politics Examiner

 

 

It was largely the work of five White House, Pentagon and Justice Department lawyers who, following the orders of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, reinterpreted or tossed out the U.S. and international laws that govern the treatment of prisoners in wartime, according to former U.S. defense and Bush administration officials.

The quintet of lawyers, who called themselves the “War Council," drafted legal opinions that circumvented the military's code of justice, the federal court system and America's international treaties in order to prevent anyone — from soldiers on the ground to the president — from being held accountable for activities that at other times have been considered war crimes.

McClatchy identifies the five "War Council" participants as David Addington (VP Cheney's Chief of Staff), Alberto Gonzales (ex Attorney General), William Haynes (Pentagon General Counsel), John Yoo (Justice Department lawyer) and Timothy Flanigan (former Gonzales deputy)

The quintet did more than condone harsh treatment, however. It created an environment in which it was nearly impossible to prosecute soldiers or officials for alleged crimes committed in U.S. detention facilities.

The legal architecture, he said, hinged on the notion that "The treaties that were relevant to U.S. criminal law were not relevant. That was the trick."  The administration, in other words, set out to circumvent any law that might have restricted Bush's detainee and interrogation programs.

The military legal community complained, to little avail, that the policies hatched with the consent of Bush, Cheney and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld were replacing decades of U.S. military policy on handling detainees.  When they protested, the War Council shut them out.

Now it appears that reinterpreting the law to lift legal protections for detainees could backfire. On May 13, the Pentagon announced that it was dropping all charges against Mohammed al Qahtani, a Saudi man held in Guantanamo who's accused of planning to take part in the 9-11 attacks as the "20th hijacker."

William Haynes testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday and offered the coward's defense: "I did not make the decision, I only advised".  Senator Jack Reed replied:

You did a disservice to the soldiers of this nation. You empowered them to violate basic conditions which every soldier respects — the Uniformed Code of Military Justice, the Geneva Convention. … Don’t go around with this attitude of you’re protecting the integrity of the military. You degraded the integrity of the United States military.

The real irony here - no, not irony - the real tragedy here is these five men, with the encouragement and authorization of President Bush and Vice President Cheney, have put the U.S. in an untenable position.  The U.S. is a now a nation state that's abandoned its long held principles and condones torture, has lost prestige and influence and now, as a result, is unable to even prosecute the real and serious threats to our nations security.  

And the five have not been held accountable or even acknowledge their offense.

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