Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Unprecedented punishment for unprecedented crimes

The talking heads that oppose punishing the Bush administration for its war crimes say that such punishment would be unprecedented and therefore unjust. I disagree. There is no precedent for such punishment only because these crimes are unprecedented.

The more the Bush administration and its supporters argue that these crimes were justified by the circumstances or not crimes at all, the more the need to prosecute the criminals to the fullest extent of the law.

If we do not punish the criminals and silence their supporters, a future administration will again violate our Constitution and our treaties and argue that circumstances and executive privelege justified their actions.

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