McClatchy Washington Bureau | 06/18/2008 | General who probed Abu Ghraib says Bush officials committed war crimes
WASHINGTON — The Army general who led the investigation into prisoner abuse at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison accused the Bush administration Wednesday of committing “war crimes” and called for those responsible to be held to account.

The remarks by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who’s now retired, came in a new report that found that U.S. personnel tortured and abused detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, using beatings, electrical shocks, sexual humiliation and other cruel practices.

“After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes,” Taguba wrote. “The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”

Taguba, whose 2004 investigation documented chilling abuses at Abu Ghraib, is thought to be the most senior official to have accused the administration of war crimes. “The commander in chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture,” he wrote.

The number one thing I will be watching for from the Obama Administration is whether they pull a “Gerry Ford” and decide to put this dark national nightmare behind us and in the “spirit of healing” decide to pardon or not prosecute the war crimes of this Administration.  The pardon of Nixon for raping the Constitution is what put us in this position in the first place, with many of the same traitorous thugs from that administration leading this one down the same “unitary executive” path.

Let the world see our Constitution in action.  Let us all regain the faith that no one, not a former president, not a former vice president, no matter how deeply in the pockets of big oil, is above the law.  Let us restore our reverence for the Constitution and mete out strong punishment for those who would violate it willingly and to act as a deterrent for the future administrations who’d usurp our rights given the chance.