by Nat Hentoff

As of now, it’s highly unlikely that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney will be punished, at least in U.S. courts, for the war crimes they ordered under our laws and international treaties— except by history. But some of their accomplices are becoming apprehensive. A bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report has disclosed that former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice had authorized waterboarding (known to its victims as “controlled drowning”) of suspected terrorists in 2002. Yet she persistently defended Bush’s “enhanced interrogations” techniques here and around the world.

Rice is back at Stanford University, a professor of political science, assuring students— as she echoes the unrepentant Bush and Cheney—that everything done to prisoners was legal. However, on May 4, 2009, a delegation of Stanford students, faculty and alumni dramatically nailed a petition to the door of the university’s president, demanding that Professor Rice be held accountable and, if facts warrant, be prosecuted.

It has already been revealed here in the States and globally that an extensive investigation by the Justice Department’s ethics police—the Office of Professional Responsibility—had charged the three lawyers responsible for the infamous “torture memos”—John Yoo, Steven Bradbury and Jay Bybee—with such flagrantly unethical conduct that they be referred to bar associations for possible disciplinary action. “That means,” reported Ari Shapiro on National Public Radio, “once-prominent government lawyers could be barred from ever working as attorneys again” and that Bybee (now a federal appellate judge on the Ninth Circuit) could be thrown off the bench.

Meanwhile, Spain—one of the nations whose justice system includes the “universal jurisdiction” to prosecute citizens of other countries for war crimes—has launched a criminal investigation of not only Yoo and Bybee, but also four other high-level Bush-Cheney operators, including former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. The charges are that they “participated actively and decisively in the creation, approval and execution of a judicial framework that allowed for the deprivation of fundamental rights of a large number of prisoners, the implementation… of torture…[and] the protection of the people who participated in illegal tortures.”

In charge of Spain’s inquiry is the John Wayne of international prosecutors, Baltasar Garzon, who relentlessly pursued the monstrous Chilean torturer—and master of making suspects disappear—Augusto Pinochet, ultimately indicted under “universal jurisdiction” in Chile.

Some other countries, angered by the kidnapping of their citizens in CIA “renditions” to be tortured outside their borders, could possibly indict Bush, Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. President Obama would not allow those defendants to be extradited, but labeled as international pariahs, they may then be afraid to ever travel abroad again.

But what about us, the great majority of American citizens who allowed eight years of systematic torture and other war crimes by a Presidential administration that substantively was never legally made accountable by our elected representatives in Congress?

I expect that for years to come, an increasing number of Americans—very much including students—will be confronted with the ever-increasing revelations raised by Jacob Weisberg, editor in chief of the Slate Group (Slate.com). In the May 11-18, 2009, Newsweek he examined “Our Tacit Approval of Torture.” He pointed out that unlike a previous world disgrace—the internment of Japanese- Americans during World War II—”waterboarding was ordered and served up in secret.”

Weisberg added, however, “By 2003, if you didn’t understand that the United States was inflicting other tortures upon those deemed enemy combatants, you weren’t paying much attention…. Well before the nation reselected George W. Bush in 2004, the country’s best investigative reporters had unearthed the salient aspects of his [Bush's] torture policy.”

In April 2004, Seymour Hersh broke the Abu Ghraib story (you could see the photos on 60 Minutes ). Shortly thereafter Newsweek revealed that “Cheney’s lawyers had declared waterboarding a legal and acceptable practice.” Then in September 2006, John McCain and other lawmakers passed the Military Commissions Act, “which shielded U.S. interrogators from potential prosecution for torture.” So Congress thought. But an independent investigation may bring about prosecutions that many CIA interrogators have long feared.

Don’t worry. Those Americans who tacitly and complicitly approved our war crimes—by not raising hell with Bush, Cheney and Congress— won’t be indicted as coconspirators, But, as Jacob Weisberg suggested, “What we need now is a public airing through Congressional hearing and perhaps an independent commission,” an idea President Obama firmly resists.

Most Republicans in Congress are angrily opposed to making their former President and his team accountable. Most of their Democratic counterparts agree with Obama that he not be “distracted” from his urgent domestic and international challenges. So it is up to We the People! How many of the tacit Americans, who by their inaction scandalized this nation even among our allies, are willing to demand, in the streets if necessary, that no future administration will be confident it can get away with the atrocities now thoroughly chronicled in official documents and such searing books as Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side ? Again, this time it’s clearly up to you!

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