April 10, 2008: Law Professor Says Bush Officials May Be Guilty of War Crimes

Law professor Jonathan Turley, discussing recent revelations that top White House officials regularly met to discuss and approve torture methods for terror suspects in US custody (see April 2002 and After and April 11, 2008), says: “What you have are a bunch of people talking about what is something that’s a crime. For those of us who look at the criminal code and see torture for what it is, this is like a meeting of the Bada Bing club. These people are sitting around regularly talking about something defined as a crime. Then you have [former Attorney General] John Ashcroft standing up and saying, maybe we shouldn’t be talking about this at the White House. Well, obviously, that’s quite disturbing. It shows that this was a program, not just some incident, not just someone going too far. It was a torture program, implemented by the United States of America and approved as the very highest level. And it goes right to the president’s desk. And it’s notable that this group wanted to get lawyers to sign off on this, and they found those lawyers, people like Jay Bybee and John Yoo (see August 1, 2002). And those people were handsomely rewarded. In Bybee’s case, he became a federal judge after signing off on a rather grotesque memo that said that they could do everything short of causing organ failure or death.” Asked if what the White House officials did could lead to war crimes prosecutions, Turley answers: “It’s always been a war crimes trial ready to happen. But Congress is like a convention of Claude Rains actors. Everyone’s saying, we’re shocked, shocked; there’s torture being discussed in the White House. But no one is doing anything about it. So what we have is the need for someone to get off the theater and move to the actual in going and trying to investigate these crimes.” [MSNBC, 4/10/2008]