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Although not as widely remarked as the elimination of habeas rights
and the consecration of torture, the recently passed Senate torture
legislation includes provisions that would immunize the Bush
administration and other US personnel from prosecution under the War
Crimes Act of 1973, not just looking forward but retroactively as well,
going back to 1996.
Why 1996? Because the War Crimes Act of 1996,
signed into law by Bill Clinton on August 21 of that year, makes
violations of several Geneva Convention protocols by any US national or
member of the US military, here or abroad, a crime.
Bush is a US national, and he has acknowledged violating Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, including but not limited to:
(a) Violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture
(c) Outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment.
Why
is this so important now? Because the administration is facing a
possible Democratic Congressional majority, and because they’ll all be
out of office in two years and more available for criminal prosecution,
and because any conviction under the War Crimes Act leaves them open to
civil suits as well. By effectively repealing the Act — although it
remains on the books, for now — Congress has taken both jail time and
serious hits to the royal pocketbooks off the table.
Further,
the administration narrowly escaped one close call and is facing
another. Earlier this year, an Italian magistrate allied with former
prime minister Silvio Berlusconi closed down an investigation into the CIA kidnapping
of a Muslim cleric from the streets of Milan (the cleric was then flown
to Egypt and tortured). And now, German authorities are looking into
the kidnapping and torture of a German national, Khaled al Masri,
who was snatched, held and interrogated in Macedonia and then flown to
Afghanistan, where he was held and regularly beaten for more than four
months before being released and returned to Germany.
Convictions
of CIA personnel by US allies would lend weight to prosecutions here in
the US. Add to that the president’s publicly acknowledged Geneva
violations, and the prospect of administration officials facing justice
for their crimes becomes very real.
Bush could and still may
preemptively pardon anyone and everyone who violated the War Crimes
Act, but that won’t do much for his precious legacy — the very notion
that he’s done anything requiring a pardon is and will remain
completely alien to him. The torture bill, if it survives
constitutional challenges, obviates the need for pardons, at least on
that score; it isn’t his fault he’s violated the law, but the law’s.
So
the eventual bill not only provides legal shelter for the
administration, but, perhaps equally as important, retroactive moral
justification for their crimes. For a president and an administration
who are allergic to taking responsibility for their behavior, changing
the official nature of that behavior is a perfect fix.
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