MB Civic

http://select.nytimes.com/2006/09/18/opinion/18herbert.html?pagewanted=print

Herbert notes that Bush seems to be “fighting with everybody,” including “tenacious reporters frustrated by the absence of straight answers…, key Republican senators who think it’s crazy for the U.S. to become a champion of kangaroo courts…even his own former Secretary of State…who worries that the world is coming to ‘doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism.'”

Herbert suggests a reason for this: “The fog of secrecy is lifting, and the Bush administration is frightened to death that it will eventually have to pay a heavy price for the human rights abuses it has ordered or condoned in its so-called war on terror…Bush and Cheney are desperately trying to hold together a house of cards that is ready to collapse because their strategy and tactics for fighting terrorism were slapped together with no real regard for the rule of law.” He suggests that, “What we’ve seen over the past few years has been a nightmare version of the United States. Torture? Secret prisons? Capital trials in which key evidence is kept from the accused? That’s the stuff of Kafka, not Madison and Jefferson.”

Herbert then discusses the question of war crimes charges, and says, “The president and others in the administration are seeking changes in the law to protect soldiers and ordinary interrogators in the field against war crimes accusations.” But Herbert believes that, “The people who should be worried, if war crimes are found to have been committed, would be those at the top of the command structure who crafted policies that were illegal and ordered them carried out – or who turned a blind eye to atrocities.”

Oh, that it should actually come to that!