When will we ever learn? When will we ever learn?

Thank you Mr. Hentoff for your clarity. This is a very helpful piece of writing.

Not one article about this topic has ever created a stir more than momentarily. There is indeed a conspiracy of silence and denial by the government that transcends party lines. None can afford, in this run-up to the next elections, to take responsibility for the blatant disregard of basic human rights the government has practiced - and is quite prepared legally to practice on U.S. citizens as well - and risk having to admit that holding up the U.S. as a beacon of decency and human rights is nothing but a sham.

What is left? Imperialism and profit at any cost for the political and economic elites who are running things behind the curtain. None of them can imagine that such practices might one day be applied to them, after all.

God help us.

Not forcing the U.S. Gov't to confront and end the torturing and bringing all the guilty to trial makes it more possible for any U.S. citizen to simply "disappear". The issue is what can be done to us if we allow it to be done to others. We cannot be short sighted about where the slope becomes slippery for all people.

Until we American accept the fact that our government has been corrupted through corporate & foreign campaign contributions & special privileged PAC's we can never expect adherence to laws or change.
We must unite all the progressive leaning independent parties into 1 peoples party so we can use their ballot access & conventions to mount a national campaign to replace every incumbent with an independent candidate or a candidate that actually put his John Hancock on the independent platform & candidate pledge.
1) Enact legislation that publically funds all political campaigns with absolutely no private funds allowed. 2) Requires news & current events to be broadcast as public service 3) To ensure all sides are heard reinstate the "Fairness Doctrine" 4) Require all discussion programs to be labelled "opinion, commentary, not based on fact" throughout broadcast & announced at the end of every commercial break.
Once we have free the press & started the task to end government corruption which will take 2 Congressional election we can go after the White House in 2016 the people hopefully will control the White House. We must legislate irrevocable oversight to prevent corruption of not only government but the financial sector as well.
Its time for the people not the privileged to run this country. Stop further thief of public assets

This article is just one more example of our unholy exceptionalism. Same old "do as I say, not as I do".

Growing up in the Netherlands I was taught that torture was the most despicable thing that humans can do to each other. Luckily it seemed more and more relegated to the realm of petty dictators (ala Saddam Hussein) and it seemed only a matter of time before torture would be abandoned all together and civil behavior towards prisoners would reign. Sadly this didn't materialize, and now, due to the horrible example of the largest democracy in the world. the USA, torture has once again reared its ugly head and become common place: live is cheap. Obama has done nothing to set a moral tone, nor used the courts to end the practice -- history will be harsh on him. Condoning torture is a sign of political weakness all around and the victims are not just the ones that get tortured, or in a dialectical way the torturers themselves: The true price to pay for torture is the disintegration of whole societies into a collections of roving bands pillaging and raping --and not feeling that they are doing anything wrong or unusual. Like democracy, chivalry, truthfulness, civility and enlightenment seem to be things of the past. It is hard not to live in mourning for the human race....

Nat Hentoff is on target here and points up the paradox facing Obama, banning war criminals while protecting those named in the article and at the same time perpetrating criminal killings of civilians in Libya and elsewhere. Of course Obama should have instructed the justice department to begin indictments and investigations the first day he was in office. By now the GOP would be up to its neck in denials and defense. But is was such a pussy, they are emboldened. Powell is always in public, the big liar before the UN. The others keep their heads down. Now Obama has his foot in the shit and can't get clean. Half his staff is Bush legacy. And the party has moved so far right it is unrecognizable.
There must be a general strike in 2012 if not before.

Like bush cheney and rummy, obama will likely be arrested for war crimes if he strays too far from our borders.

War crimes prosecutions only occur when the accused war criminals have been militarily defeated, as the Japanese imperialists and Nazi leaders learned after World War II. If the status of "war criminal" is to have any meaning, it must be applicable to those on the "winning" side (or, at least, not the "losing" side) as well. If war criminality is exclusively to be assigned to losers, then there is little incentive for leaders to avoid committing these criminal acts. Redoubling efforts to win military victory would be a more useful strategy, often entailing additional war crimes. Surrender might be the more humane option, but one that would lay a leader open to a charge of war criminality. Mr. Obama has deeply compromised the ethics and legality of the United States by not pursuing war crimes investigations and penalties against Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld, etc.

An evil precedent is being set by this president, whereby unethical and illegal behavior of one administration is automatically pardoned by the next. I'm sure Mr. Obama wishes his successor to pardon him for the drone attack atrocities he has authorized as commander-in-ch ief.

Governments resist indicting their own even when the action were horrific and should have been beneath teh dignity of the people who instigated and carried them out.