Point 1: Waterboarding is torture. Torquemada perfected the technique. American soldiers were court-martialed for using the technique in the Philippines over 100 years ago.
Point 2: It should be clear by now that the Administration's stubborn insistence on the matter of waterboarding is not, as they proclaim, grounded in a need to protect intelligence sources or interrogators. It is grounded in a need to cover their asses.
There should be no doubt by now that the approval for the use of waterboarding came from the highest levels. Convicting Bush, Cheney, Addington, Rumsfeld and the rest of them on this would not be a matter of applying the Yamashita Standard of command liability. They would be convicted on direct culpability, of direct knowledge and approval of the use of torture. And if Mukasey were to say that "waterboarding is illegal under US law," then all of those criminals would be subject to prosecution in US courts.
There would be no place for them to hide, in that event. And the importance of this was driven home by Rumsfeld's recent need to flee France in advance of an arrest squad.
I would rather seen them brought to justice in an American court, for by doing so, we would have a shot at regaining some of the tattered shreds of honor that these bastards have so willingly sacrificed on the altar of their imperial ambitions. We won't regain that honor by letting the French or the Germans or the International War Crimes Tribunal do our clean-up work for us.
But if the best we can do is have them tried in those courts, I can live with that.
By the way: You folks on the Bush team and you who support them had better start figuring out what you are going to say to your grandchildren when they ask you why you were such Good Little Germans.
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