| | |  Editorials | Issues | August 2009 
Congressional Leaders Demand: "High-Ranking Officials be Held Legally Accountable"
 IndictBushNow.org
As hundreds of thousands of people at the grassroots are taking action, leading members of Congress are joining in to demand that the coming prosecution for Bush-era crimes include the high officials who authorized the criminal acts.
The disgusting, outrageous and criminal acts were not committed by a few bad apples. It is Cheney and Bush and Rumsfeld and others who are guilty, and they must be held accountable.
Congressman Jerrold Nadler, D-NY, sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder Tuesday reiterating his calls for a special prosecutor that makes these demands crystal clear. Nadler is chairman of the panel’s subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties Committee on the Judiciary.
"There simply is no legal, moral or principled reason to insulate those who authorized the torture of detainees, either through legal reasoning or other policy directive, from investigation," Nadler wrote. "This country has been instrumental in establishing the principle that high-ranking officials and lawyers who use legal reasoning to justify or otherwise authorize war crimes can, and should, be held legally accountable.
"The ban on torture is absolute and we have a legal obligation to investigate torture and all of those who may have been party to its use."
Nadler’s letter is a follow-up to one sent to Eric Holder in April that was signed by other members of the House Judiciary Committee. That letter stated:
"The Geneva Conventions obligate High Contracting Parties such as the United States to investigate and bring before our courts those individuals "alleged to have committed, or to have ordered to be committed grave breaches of those Conventions."
There is not a moment to spare in this historic effort to restore the Constitution and to send a message to future officials that no one is above the law. Election to high office can never be seen again as a blank check to torture, to carry out secret assassinations, establish secret prisons, spy on the people and launch unprovoked wars of aggression all in the name of "protecting" the country.
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