Rumsfeld too

A lot of horrendous things happened during the criminal enterprise known as the Bush Administration, but one of the things that has to rank at the very top of the list was the “normalization” of torture.

Thank you Fox News and the rest of the US news media for that one. And the Department of Justice too.

In this debate, two attorneys, one a normal human being, the other a tool of the Federal government, debate the legality of torture. (I guess that’s what makes us different from the Nazis. They didn’t debate it. They just did it. We debate it and do it. Far more civilized.)

The fact that torture is explicitly banned by three different treaties the US is a signatory to (not to mention that quaint old document the US Constitution) doesn’t seem to faze the Federal tool in the least. He’s got an answer for everything.

But there is a punch line.

At the end of the debate – and it’s worth watching the whole thing – the Federal tool, says – and God, I love this – “I would not as an attorney recommend that George Bush or Donald Rumsfeld travel to countries like Germany, France or Spain.”

Why?

Torture is recognized as a crime beyond US borders and there are courts and civil plaintiffs ready, willing and able to put the collar on Messrs. Bush and Rumsfeld should they visit the wrong places.

Henry Kissinger, you may know, quite deliberately keeps himself far from French territory where all kinds of sharp legal knives are ready to separate him from his homicidal hide.

None of this is theory.

Remember Pinochet? That butcher’s “Golden Years” were cut short when Spain handed him back to the people of Chile.

There’s no statute of limitations on the crimes Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice et. al. committed.

Life is long enough for all kinds of unexpected things to happen. Note that the “1,000 Year Reich” the Bush and Prescott families were so intimately involved with didn’t exactly go according to plan either.

The massive ranch the Bush family bought in fascist-friendly Paraguay recently may come in handy some day.

Gotta hand it to them for thinking ahead. I don’t think they bought because they liked the scenery.