In TV Interview, Cheney Confessed to War Crime

clipped from rawstory.com Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley believes that not only did Vice President Dick Cheney "unambiguously" confess to a war crime during an ABC interview on Monday, but the US' future as a nation may depend on taking action. Asked by MSNBC's Keith Olbermann whether Cheney had just confessed to a war crime on national television, Turley at first replied wryly, "It's an interesting question, isn't it? ... If someone commits a crime and everyone's around to see it and does nothing, is it still a crime?" "It most certainly is a crime to participate, to create, to in many ways monitor a torture program," he added. "What [Cheney] is describing is most certainly and unambiguously a war crime." During Monday's interview, Cheney was asked, "Did you authorize the tactics that were used against Khalid Sheikh Mohamed?" and replied, "I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared."

"What occurred in the last eight years was an assault on who we are," Turley said. "I think that President-elect Obama's going to have to decide whether he wants power without principle or whether he wants to start with a true change, to say that no matter where an investigation will take us, if there are crimes to be found they will be prosecuted."

Personally, I vote for the latter. The neocons came up with a lot of creative legal arguments to excuse torture and we ought to make them test those arguments in a criminal court. I think they'd find that their arguments were BS and that they are, quite literally, criminals.

I also think that we ought to make it 100% clear that working in the White House isn't a free pass to commit war crimes. We're a nation of laws, not men, and those who break the law should have to answer to the law -- no matter who they are.

That's what you call "justice."

Video at the link.