Our Government Tortured Hundreds of People to Death and President Obama is Trying to Cover It Up

The most recent revelations about our military, intelligence agencies and private contractors torturing prisoners to death during the Bush administration are coming to light this week. Harpers Magazine published an article Monday by civil rights attorney Scott Horton, titled The Guantanamo "Suicides": A Camp Delta Sergeant Blows the Whistle. Here's Horton on MSNBC's Countdown yesterday evening:

Back in May 2009, Progressive Alaska detailed the homicides of several other detainees by American forces in a three-part series, which was partially a response to coverage of this issue then by progressive blogs. Looking back, we felt that the Obama administration might sensibly prosecute those who murdered. That's what is supposed to happen when somebody murders somebody else and there are witnesses and evidence:

Our Government Tortured Lots of People to Death - Part One

Our Government Tortured Lots of People to Death - Part Two

Our Government Tortured Lots of People to Death - Part Three

The Best Blogs for Information on the Torture Debate

Glenn Greenwald has been writing about his increasing disappointment in the Obama administration's refusal to prosecute or even thoroughly investigate these serious charges:

The single biggest lie in War on Terror revisionist history is that our torture was confined only to a handful of "high-value" prisoners. New credible reports of torture continuously emerge. That's because America implemented and maintained a systematic torture regime spread throughout our worldwide, due-process-free detention system. There have been at least 100 deaths of detainees in American custody who died during or as the result of interrogation. Gen. Barry McCaffrey said: "We tortured people unmercifully. We probably murdered dozens of them during the course of that, both the armed forces and the C.I.A." Gen. Antonio Taguba said after investigating the Abu Ghraib abuses and finding they were part and parcel of official policy sanctioned at the highest levels of the U.S. Government, and not the acts of a few "rogue" agents: "there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account."

Greenwald goes on:

Incidents like this dramatically underscore what can only be called the grotesque immorality of the "Look Forward, Not Backwards" consensus which our political class -- led by the President -- has embraced. During the Bush years, the United States government committed some of the most egregious crimes a government can commit. They plainly violated domestic law, international law, and multiple treaties to which the U.S. has long been a party. Despite that, not only has President Obama insisted that these crimes not be prosecuted, and not only has his Justice Department made clear that -- at most -- they will pursue a handful of low-level scapegoats, but far worse, the Obama administration has used every weapon it possesses to keep these crimes concealed, prevent any accountability for them, and even venerated them as important "state secrets," thus actively preserving the architecture of lawlessness and torture that gave rise to these crimes in the first place.

From what directions can pressure be applied upon the President to do his sworn job in this matter? I'm considering trying to get prominent anti-torture blogs to petition all 50 of the individual states' Democratic Party structures with petitions asking them to include provisions for demanding prosecution for torture and murder for consideration at each individual state's upcoming 2010 convention.

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