In a society that adheres to the rule of law, killing innocent civilians is still considered a war crime. Of course, this isn’t the era of accountability. This is the era of Obama, and the era of Obama is about “looking forward, not backwards.” We don’t look backwards if the former vice-president admits to a war crime [...]

In 1776, our founding fathers made a bold pronouncement: that all men are created equal, that we were endowed with inalienable rights, and, among these were Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. Enshrined in our Constitution were more bold pronouncements: that no man could be deprived of his rights, that no man [is] above the [...]

Re: Liz Cheney, Wm. Kristol, and their pals slandering DOJ attorneys as the “al-Qaida 7″ and the “Department of Jihad”, engaging in the smear tactics that became synonymous with McCarthy: If this seems confusing, here’s a simple principle to keep in mind: Representing someone in an American court does not mean agreeing with that person’s actions [...]

But the problem with Rove’s account is that not only did Bush oversee the twisting of intelligence to justify invading Iraq in March 2003 but he subsequently lied – and lied repeatedly – about how Iraq had responded to United Nations inspection demands. So, while it may be impossible to say for certain what Bush [...]

In essence, the classified memo cited by Cheney stated that the CIA torture of Abu Zubaydah led to the capture of suspected “dirty bomb’ plotter Jose Padilla in 2003. But as Isikoff reports, the newly-released docs point out that Padilla was arrested in 2002 — so torture couldn’t have secured his capture. This also appears [...]

There are times when governments fight to keep documents secret to protect sensitive intelligence or other vital national security interests. And there are times when they are just trying to cover up incompetence, misbehavior or lawbreaking. Last week, when a British court released secret intelligence material relating to the torture allegations of a former Guantánamo [...]

Is there any hope at all that the larger players in the Bush-era criminal activities – Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove, Perle, Feith and Wolfowitz most prominently – will be brought to justice when those two lesser lights (Yoo and Bybee) are allowed to return to a law school classroom and a seat on the federal [...]

Former Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen has a new mission: to convince the American electorate that we are less safe and secure today because Barack Obama won’t use the torture techniques, like waterboarding, that were embraced by his mentor, Dick Cheney. The radicality of Thiessen’s thesis is revealed by noting that under Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald [...]

“I don’t think the administration has helped themselves, or frankly helped the country, by trying so hard to paint their policies as being so radically different from the past,” says Zarate, who was a counterterrorism adviser to President Bush. “They’re not, and for the sake of the country they shouldn’t be.” via Obama Cites Closeness [...]

Dick Cheney seems to have a kind of Tourette’s problem, where he blurts out ugly words about Obama for no reason other than perhaps a medical one. He has Politico on speed dial and just erupts. The latest is his familiar terrorphobe tune, this time about Yemen. True: We and the world have a problem. [...]