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05/29/2008: "FBI files indict Bush, Cheney and Co. as war criminals"

The most stunning revelation in a 370-page Justice US Department Inspector General's report released this week was that agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation had formally opened a "War Crimes" file, documenting torture they had witnessed at the Guantanamo Bay US prison camp, before being ordered by the administration to stop writing their reports.

The World Socialist Web Site, together with human rights groups and other opponents of US militarism and repression, has long insisted that the actions of the Bush administration the launching of wars of aggression, assassinations, the abduction and detention of civilians without trial and, most repugnant of all, torture, constitute war crimes under any legitimate interpretation of longstanding international statutes and treaties.

To have this assessment confirmed, however, by the IG of the Justice Department, the only senior official there not answerable directly to the White House, and by agents of the FBI, an agency not known for its sensitivity to questions of democratic rights, is an indication of the rampant character of these crimes as well as the crisis they have engendered within the US government and America’s ruling elite as a whole.

The report makes it absolutely clear that torture was ordered and planned in detail at the highest levels of the government, including the White House, the National Security Council, the Pentagon and the Justice Department. Attempts to stop it on legal or pragmatic grounds by individuals within the government were systematically suppressed, and evidence of this criminal activity covered up.

[ This torture is not in the public interest - because the government is not run for the national interest. Any legitimate torture should not be covered up like a dirty secret. Anyone who would try to replace the government with one that is genuinely in America's interest could expect war crimes and torture to be committed upon them. ]

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/may2008/fbi-m23.shtml

Replies: 1 Comment

on Thursday, May 29th, Dental Plan said

This reminds me of the double-standard wars that were going on between American neocons and Russian Putinists not too long ago. The Russian "patriots" who were all in favor of blowing up Chechens were criticizing America for blowing up Iraqis, while the American Judeo-Conservatives were busy heaping scorn on the Russian government for having the courtesy to keep its outbursts of barbarism within its own borders. Oh, how tragic and yet how funny.