Now that a Spanish judge is has announceda long-awaited investigation and possible indictment of Bush officials Alberto Gonzales and John Yoo for war crimes, it's time for America to face up to the fact that, despite Bush protests that he was "perteckin America," Jack Bauer had the wrong guys. And he knew it. International war crimes are not bound by national borders under the Geneva Convention. The judge claims jurisdiction for two plaintiffs who were Spanish nationals at Guantanamo.

This is the judge who prosecuted the Latin American dictator Pinochet. It's embarrassing that congress won't even prosecute our own war criminals and they leave it up to the Euros to do our dirty laundry. They're too busy bailing out millionaires who made stupid investments, instead of spending that bail-out money on worker re-training vouchers, green jobs programs which hire people and move the economy forward, and extended unemployment bennies.

The other thing coming out on the torture is the unreported level of brutalities. Forget waterboarding, that was mild. Congress must appoint a special prosecutor. It's the only way America can get its good name back.

McClatchy news services reports:

Akhtiar was among the more than 770 terrorism suspects imprisoned at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. They are the men the Bush administration described as "the worst of the worst."...The Islamic radicals in Guantanamo's Camp Four who hissed "infidel" and spat at Akhtiar, however, knew something his captors didn't: The U.S. government had the wrong guy.

"He was not an enemy of the government, he was a friend of the
government," a senior Afghan intelligence officer told McClatchy.
Akhtiar was imprisoned at Guantanamo on the basis of false information
that local anti-government insurgents fed to U.S. troops, he said.
It's important to remember that isn't about individual
sadistic soldiers. You will always have those, and isolated incidents.
This is about widespread, systematic abuse, and who gave the license
to allow it to happen: the Bush administration. The orders were, torture first, worry about innocence later.

This New York Times report about the taxi driver who did the dumb thing of driving past Baghram air base with two paying fares a few days after a rocket attack:

The prisoner, a slight, 22-year-old taxi driver known only as
Dilawar, was hauled from his cell at the detention center in Bagram,
Afghanistan, at around 2 a.m. to answer questions about a rocket attack
on an American base. When he arrived in the interrogation room, an
interpreter who was present said, his legs were bouncing uncontrollably
in the plastic chair and his hands were numb. He had been chained by
the wrists to the top of his cell for much of the previous four days.

Mr. Dilawar asked for a drink of water, and one of the two
interrogators, Specialist Joshua R. Claus, 21, picked up a large
plastic bottle. But first he punched a hole in the bottom, the
interpreter said, so as the prisoner fumbled weakly with the cap, the
water poured out over his orange prison scrubs. The soldier then
grabbed the bottle back and began squirting the water forcefully into
Mr. Dilawar's face.

"Come on, drink!" the interpreter said Specialist Claus had shouted, as the prisoner gagged on the spray. "Drink!"
The National Journal has done an excellent report which lays bare the kind of evidential standards which would land you in Gitmo, Baghram, or Abu Grahib. Mohammed al-Tumani, a prisoner at Gitmo, had an American officer who began looking into his case:

"Tumani's enterprising representative looked at the classified
evidence against the [Tumani] and found that just one man -- the
aforementioned accuser -- had placed Tumani at the terrorist training
camp. And he had placed Tumani there three months before the teenager
had even entered Afghanistan. The curious U.S. officer pulled the
classified file of the accuser, saw that he had accused 60 men, and,
suddenly skeptical, pulled the files of every detainee the accuser had
placed at the one training camp. None of the men had been in
Afghanistan at the time the accuser said he saw them at the camp.

The tribunal declared Tumani an enemy combatant anyway."

The McClatchy report affirms what most people already knew by 2002:

"The majority of the detainees taken to Guantanamo came into U.S.
custody indirectly, from Afghan troops, warlords, mercenaries and
Pakistani police who often were paid cash by the number and alleged
importance of the men they handed over.
The Justice Jackson Center, headed by Dean Lawrence Velvel of the Massachusetts School of Law, is preparing a criminal complaint against Bush officials.
YOU CATCH UP TO SPEED FAST ON THE ISSUE BY LISTENING TO THIS AUDIO OF A RADIO INTERVIEW WITH DEAN VELVEL, WMPG FM, PORTLAND, MAINE The Justice Jackson Center introduces evidence of the following tortures as commonplace:


· Savage Beatings. Prisoners were severely and regularly beaten with
clubs, rifles and fists. They were beaten to the point that bones were
broken, ribs were fractured, and prisoners sometimes were killed.

· Peroneal Strikes. Peroneal strikes are a specific form of savage
beating, consisting of blows to the soft tissue and nerves just above
the knee. The falsely accused prisoner beaten to death at Bagram had
been given so many peroneal strikes that a coroner testified that his
leg tissue had ‘"basically been pulpified.’"

· Hanging By The Arms. A highly excruciating "stress position"
torture used on many prisoners, sometimes every day for two to three
months, is hanging them by their arms, often or usually on tiptoe.

· Slamming A Prisoner’s Head Into Concrete Walls. In this torture a
towel is wrapped around a prisoner’s neck and is then used to propel
the prisoner head first into a concrete wall. This torture was so
fraught with risk of serious injury to or death of a prisoner that the
CIA kept a doctor on hand at all times to guard against death or
crippling injury.

· Additional "Stress Positions" And Electric Shocks. "Palestinian
hangings," they were hung by the arms with their feet on a drum through
which electric shocks were applied to their feet; the shocks would
cause the feet to "dance."

Bush told us he was protecting, and that "many attacks had been prevented" by interrogation. Of course he's going to say that. Instead, he was making us a lot more enemies. Some of these guys, when they were done with them, couldn't be released, because now they hated us and were avowed terrorists, even it they weren't before. They'll never touch Bush at his Crawford ranch or Dubai or wherever he lives behind all his Secret Service. But the rest of us have to live with it.


AUDIO OF RADIO INTERVIEW WITH LAW SCHOOL DEAN LAWRENCE VELVEL OF BUSH OFFICIALS PROSECUTION PROJECT

Spanish Court Considers Trying Former US Officials.

Congress switchboard: Capitol Switchboard (202) 224-3121
LINK TO CONGRESS EMAILS.
LINK TO EMAIL WHITE HOUSE.

Traitors and Torturers: Senator Prescott Bush, (left, grandfather of W) who plotted a coup against the US government in 1933 (BBC report)