Monday, June 09, 2008

Obama administration to prosecute U.S. troops for war crimes


The embarrassment of the Haditha debacle notwithstanding, Barack Obama will not hesitate to pursue the prosecution of U.S. troops and the Bush administration for war crimes.

Charles Johnson discovered a campaign document that made the promise to "hold accountable any perpetrators of war crimes."

Thomas Lifson adds insights gleaned from an Obama interview with a Philadelphia newspaper.

Obama said that as president he would indeed ask his new Attorney General and his deputies to "immediately review the information that's already there" and determine if an inquiry is warranted -- but he also tread carefully on the issue, in line with his reputation for seeking to bridge the partisan divide...

...He worried that such a probe could be spun as "a partisan witch hunt." However, he said that equation changes if there was willful criminality, because "nobody is above the law."

That can only be interpreted as a threat to U.S. troops, because Obama has never criticized Al Qaeda's well-regarded torture practices.

No comments: