OOOPS! FBI War Crimes File Says It All

After reading the NY Times story “Report Details Dissent on Guantánamo Tactics,” about the FBI war crimes file, I couldn’t help but wonder what I would write if I were say, Jonah Goldberg or David Brooks. It would probably go something like this: “Often times you’ll hear the wacky liberal fringe accuse the Bush administration of war crimes and how they should be prosecuted for them. These terrorist appeasers would rather let a U.S. city burn to the ground before they take the threat seriously…”

That was way too easy to write, simplistic, but kind of fun.

Here’s the background story: “In 2002, as evidence of prisoner mistreatment at Guantánamo Bay began to mount, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents at the base created a ‘war crimes file’ to document accusations against American military personnel, but were eventually ordered to close down the file, a Justice Department report revealed. The report says that the F.B.I. agents took their concerns to higher-ups, but that their concerns often fell on deaf ears… the ‘war crimes’ label showed just how seriously F.B.I. agents took the accusations. Sometime in 2003…an F.B.I. official ordered the file closed because ‘investigating detainee allegations of abuse was not the F.B.I.’s mission. F.B.I. officials…believed the physical pressure being used by the C.I.A. was less effective than traditional noncoercive methods, that it would ‘taint’ any future effort at prosecution, and that it ‘was wrong and helped Al Qaeda in spreading negative views of the United States,’ the report says.”

I don't know about you, but when I think back over the entire 8 years, it really takes my breath away. A nation on edge is not a free nation but an affraid one.

And Republicans, the law and order party, just another myth down in flames.