2.20.2005
Time for an Accounting (NYTimes.com)
EDITORIAL
Published: February 19, 2005
Of all the claims of an electoral mandate made by President Bush's supporters, none were as bizarre as the one offered by John Yoo, a former Justice Department lawyer who helped draft the cynical justifications for the illegal detention and torture of "unlawful combatants." "The debate is over," Mr. Yoo told The New Yorker, adding: "The issue is dying out. The public has had its referendum."
It's hard to know what is most outrageous about those comments - that Mr. Yoo actually believes Americans voted for torturing prisoners or that an official at the heart of this appalling mess feels secure enough to say that. Certainly the worst possibility is that the public has, indeed, lost interest.
The White House has done everything it can to bury the issue. Nearly a year after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, the administration still drags its feet on public disclosure, stonewalls Congressional requests for documents and suppresses the results of internal investigations.
But the issue is as urgent as ever. Hundreds of men remain imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay, years after any information they had might have been useful and in defiance of two Supreme Court decisions. American soldiers hold thousands of Afghan and Iraqi prisoners under rules that remain murky, to put it charitably.
(More ... The New York Times > Opinion > Editorial: Time for an Accounting) ¶ 10:34
Published: February 19, 2005
Of all the claims of an electoral mandate made by President Bush's supporters, none were as bizarre as the one offered by John Yoo, a former Justice Department lawyer who helped draft the cynical justifications for the illegal detention and torture of "unlawful combatants." "The debate is over," Mr. Yoo told The New Yorker, adding: "The issue is dying out. The public has had its referendum."
It's hard to know what is most outrageous about those comments - that Mr. Yoo actually believes Americans voted for torturing prisoners or that an official at the heart of this appalling mess feels secure enough to say that. Certainly the worst possibility is that the public has, indeed, lost interest.
The White House has done everything it can to bury the issue. Nearly a year after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, the administration still drags its feet on public disclosure, stonewalls Congressional requests for documents and suppresses the results of internal investigations.
But the issue is as urgent as ever. Hundreds of men remain imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay, years after any information they had might have been useful and in defiance of two Supreme Court decisions. American soldiers hold thousands of Afghan and Iraqi prisoners under rules that remain murky, to put it charitably.
(More ... The New York Times > Opinion > Editorial: Time for an Accounting) ¶ 10:34
