In a move with ominous implications for Constitutional rights in the United States, President Barack Obama announced on Thursday that his administration would not prosecute CIA employees or contractors who participated in the torturing of detainees in violation of the War Crimes Act of 1996. Saying now is “a time for reflection, not retribution,” the president declared it would be “unfair” to try and convict those who participated in the extraordinary rendition program created by the Bush administration and those who committed torture, because these actions had been sanctioned by legal memos prepared by President Bush’s Justice Department.
In the same prepared statement, President Obama said, “The United States is a nation of laws. My Administration will always act in accordance with those laws, and with an unshakeable commitment to our ideals.” But that promise flies in the face of the War Crimes Act of 1996, which the GOP-dominated Congress adopted, making it a federal crime to commit a “grave breach” of the Geneva Conventions, meaning the deliberate “killing, torture or inhuman treatment” of detainees. Even John Ashcroft, Bush’s first attorney general, said, “The War Crimes Act of 1996 makes violation of parts of the Geneva Convention a crime in the United States.” The U.S. Supreme Court, in its 2006 decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, affirmed that the War Crimes Act applied to detainees in the War on Terror.
Not only will the Obama administration not prosecute CIA workers, it will provide legal representation at no cost to them if called before international tribunals or congressional investigations. They also will be protected from having to pay any financial judgments.
In case you didn't get the subtle reference in the title, the 'just following orders' defence was used by the Nazis on trial at Nuremburg. Of course, it was found to be illegitimate as an excuse. But, if Obama and the CIA were running the trial, they'd all have been found innocent!
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