war crimes

If you happened to catch The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC last night, you saw TWI Legal Correspondent Daphne Eviatar breaking down the pros and cons of Sen. Patrick Leahy’s (D-Vt.)  proposed “truth commission” to investigate the Bush administration’s alleged crimes. Daphne also talked about the problem that statutes of limitations on torture may pose [...]

During President Obama’s first prime time press conference tonight, he was asked his opinion of Sen. Patrick Leahy’s (D-Vt.) proposal to start a comprehensive “truth and reconciliation commission” to investigate the conduct of the Bush administration over the last eight years.  Obama skillfully waffled on his answer:

The consensus seems to be growing that, despite his oft-repeated desire to “look forward rather than backward” when it comes to the Bush administration’s authorization of the use of torture on detainees in American custody, President-elect Barack Obama is going to have to open some sort of official investigation of Bush-era war crimes once he [...]

As part of its “Transitions” series, The New York Times devoted a full page Sunday to op-eds expressing varying viewpoints on what President-elect Barack Obama should do about “the legal legacy of the war on terrorism.”
It’s an odd way of framing the issue — and an inherent concession to the notion that what legal experts [...]

As I wrote on Wednesday, there are already several lawsuits from torture victims pending against the United States, and some legal scholars predict many more to come. So what if an Obama-sponsored investigative commission set up a means for compensating torture victims? That could save the government a whole lot of money.
A slew of [...]

Earlier this year, the Senate Armed Services Committee held blockbuster hearings with key figures in the creation of the Bush administration’s torture policies. The hearings represented a watershed, tracing the metaphorical chain of custody for torture techniques — starting in 2001 and early 2002 — from the SERE school to Guantanamo Bay to the office [...]

President George W. Bush isn’t likely to pre-emptively pardon himself and his senior cabinet and other officials who authorized the use of torture in interrogation of suspected terrorists, in blatant violation of domestic, constitutional and international law, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.
That’s not because of any newfound respect for the rule of law, [...]

The British government has initiated a criminal inquiry of the potential responsibility of CIA and British intelligence officials for detainee interrogation abuse, says Phillipe Sands in an interview with The American Lawyer posted today.
Sands, a professor of international law at University College London and author of “Torture Team: Rumsfeld’s Memo and the Betrayal of American [...]

We’ve long known that the CIA waterboarded at least three Al Qaeda detainees.
We’ve also long known that the Justice Dept., at the behest of a Central Intelligence Agency deeply fearful about its legal vulnerabilities, endorsed the torture techniques that CIA leadership desired. And we’ve recently learned that George W. Bush’s principal aides, including Condoleezza Rice, [...]

Sen. Joe Biden, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, has an important reason for Americans to vote Democratic this year: Accountability for war crimes.
Speaking in Florida on Wednesday, as the political world focused on his Republican counterpart, vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin, Biden said a Democratic administration would use a “fine-toothed comb” to investigate — [...]