George W. Bush 'knew Guantánamo prisoners were innocent'

[nancylebov]

I don't have a funny subject line for this one, so I'm just using the headline from the Timesonline article.

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld covered up that hundreds of innocent men were sent to the Guantánamo Bay prison camp because they feared that releasing them would harm the push for war in Iraq and the broader War on Terror, according to a new document obtained by The Times.

The accusations were made by Lawrence Wilkerson, a top aide to Colin Powell, the former Republican Secretary of State, in a signed declaration to support a lawsuit filed by a Guantánamo detainee. It is the first time that such allegations have been made by a senior member of the Bush Administration.

Please insert your own outrage-- it's appropriate, but I'm not up for it.

I'll just note that I've never seen anything like the amount of "my party has betrayed me" as there's been from Republicans, nor heard of anything like it in American history or anyone else's. Anyone have some examples?

Link from The Agitator.

Addendum:

If Hilary Clinton had been elected, what do you think she'd be doing about criminal offenses under the Bush administration?

Added Addendum:

dcseain pointed out that there haven't been prosecutions of previous administrations since Ford. This isn't specifically a problem with Obama.

Comments

[lpetrazickis.livejournal.com]

Addendum: If Hilary Clinton had been elected, what do you think she'd be doing about criminal offences under the Bush administration?

Nothing. The grass is no more green behind that fence.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

My point was more that if there were no major candidates who are willing to prosecute crimes committed by past administrations, it says more about the whole culture than about individual candidates.

[osewalrus.livejournal.com]

Sad but true. We do not have leaders, we have followers who have elbowed their way to the front of the line. Biblically, it is like Saul who told Samuel that he disobeyed God's command because he "feared the people."

As a result, we have declined. We are no longer a great people. I wonder if this is how Britons felt after the Boer War.