As Penny Lernoux extensively documented in Cry of the People, the vast majority of the death squads in Latin America over the past sixty years acted on behalf of the US and our client rules. After Kermit Roosevelt’s splendid little coup in Iran (we all know how well tha turned out), our spooks and their death squads made Guatemala (1954 – Arbenz), Brasil (1964 – Goulart), Chile (1973) and El Salvador our own little shops of horrors.

A great many of the Latin American dictators and military enforcers trained at our School of the Assassins – er – Americas, where the curriculum once included the fine art of incinerating passenger buses. They went home: the torture teachers stayed here: in our military. CIA operatives flew to black sites, conducted torture, and flew home. Now they’re here. Our troops and spooks and prison guards and torturers and docs and nurses and psychologists all conspired in torture. Now they’re here, and they’re telling the rest of us not to investigate.

We’re already facing the issue many Latin American nations faced: what do we do to prevent the torturers among us from harming anyone else, or giving any more “orders”?

Starting the Special Prosecutor investigation gives a hope of resolution. Official inaction emboldens the torturers and the corporatists who brought them forth.

“If the President be connected, in any suspicious manner, with any person, and there be grounds to believe he will shelter him, the House of Representatives can impeach him; they can remove him if found guilty…”

It would indeed be ironic if impeachment proceedings were brought against President Obama for the crimes committed by the Bush administration, simply because President Obama chose to “shelter” those lawbreakers from prosecution.

The biggest problem I have is these goons will be getting a paycheck next Friday.

Exactly! Not only have these war criminals not been prosecuted, they’ve not been fired, demoted, or even reprimanded for their misdeeds. In fact, Tenet got a Freedom Medal for his participation in these crimes against humanity.

Is “going forward” a good defense? I would say most crimes are in the past. Wonder if this is a trend?

Failure to address these crimes prevents us from going forward, as well it should.

There must be a stand down of the CIA until each and every war criminal who watched, acted or covered up torture is tried and convicted then President Obama can pardon them all.
As of right now President Obama is relying on advice from admitted war criminals.

Only traitors torture- let the treason trials begin .

And we have hundreds of people who think nothing about participating in these atrocities, from so called “interrogators”, docs, nurses, guards, pilots, paper pushers, legal minds, bureaucrats… all who participated, knowingly and effectively conspired to break these laws.

It is very serious that when faced with the facts that this has been going on, in the last 7 yrs… but also when you crack open that investigation we will find the that this has been going on for 5 decades, and is going on in the US prison system every day.

We may not be a nation of sadists, but we surely have found a place and means for them to run free. They, in fact, have their proverbial “boots” on our necks and have intimidated the “normal” people from stopping these psychopaths.

Why?

ps. Perhaps every defendant in courrt should use the “going forward defense”. If it good enough for the POTUS, the CIA, the US government, it’s good enough for me. Sorry, I won’t do it again. Case dismissed.

The current rhetoric that we would lose good people in the CIA if they had to take responsibility for their actions can be compared to the CEOs who drove their corporations under through greed and criminal conduct.

Both groups lack a moral compass…and should be in jail.