Holy Shit

The next Attorney General of the United States just said that the President of the United States committed a war crime by torturing prisoners.

Of course, it was not stated that explicitly, but he said that water boarding is torture, and that torture is a war crime. The President has already said that he authorized water boarding prisoners. Therefore, the President is a war criminal.

That's got so send a shiver down a lot of people's spines..

/update

Greenwald explains why there will be no prosecutions for war crimes. The net of culpability is far too wide, and everyone in both parties, and the media, will insist that we must "look forward, not backward".

I know that trotting out the Nazis is always a trite exercise.. and the body count of dead "terrorists" at the hands of American torturers in no way compares to the scope and scale of the Nazi's crimes.. but you just have to ask yourself..

If Germany had "won" or otherwise settled World War II, and the Nazi's remained in power, do you think the German government would have been tried any of the Nazis for war crimes? I'm guessing, no.

People can make a case that violating the law for some noble purpose is fine. It's all well and good.. but you should probably be honest about it. I suppose that's impossible. It has to be a dirty little secret.. a reality of the world we live in, and you really don't want to tarnish the notion of a higher ideal, even though we all know it can never truly exist.

Sure.. that ideal is fine, when it's somebody else who is prosecuted. Sure, the United States has prosecuted other's for war crimes for doing exactly the same things for exactly the same reasons.. but there's no way that we can do that to ourselves. The idea of what this nation stands for is far too important than to shine a light on it.