Impunity

R. Jeffrey Smith writes in the Washington Post:

Human rights experts have long pressed the administration of former president George W. Bush for details of who bore ultimate responsibility for approving the simulated drownings of CIA detainees, a practice that many international legal experts say was illicit torture.

In a memoir due out Tuesday, Bush makes clear that he personally approved the use of that coercive technique against alleged Sept. 11 plotter Khalid Sheik Mohammed, an admission the human rights experts say could one day have legal consequences for him.

...

Georgetown University law professor David Cole, a long-standing critic of Bush's interrogation and detention policies, called prosecution unlikely. "The fact that he did admit it suggests he believes he is politically immune from being held accountable. . . . But politics can change."

What Mr. Smith does not say, and should have been said, is that the United States declared waterboarding to be torture in WWII and prosecuted enemies for doing it.

That war criminals like George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney can make admissions like this with no apparent fear of consequences speaks volumes about the lawlessness of their regime and of this nation.

--the BB