At least six former members of the Bush administration are facing criminal charges, as a Spanish court proceeds with its investigation into alleged US war crimes.
The same court that successfully brought former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet to justice, has pledged to prosecute six former members of the Bush administration for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Spanish law is not limited by international borders, allowing Spain to prosecute and extradite criminals from other countries, including the US. Some of those abused were Spanish citizens, adding further credibility to the proceedings.
The Bush administration officials facing charges include former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff David Addington, former undersecretary of defense policy, Douglas Feith, John Yoo from the Justice Department, Jay Bybee, and Pentagon lawyer William Haynes.
Although disgraced president George W. Bush has long maintained that detainees were not tortured or abused, an abundance of evidence has surfaced, including the use of banned interrogation procedures, such as water-boarding, sensory depravation, and electrical shocks to the testicles.
Other ranking members of the Bush administration have recently expressed concerns over how the Bush administration handled matters following the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11th, 2001. Bush and others have been described as having “panicked”, detaining scores of individuals they knew were innocent.
"There are still innocent people there,"
declared a former chief of Staff for Colin Powell, Lawrence B. Wilkerson. "Some have been there six or seven years." In all, over 800 prisoners have been held at the US prison facility in Guantanamo, Cuba, where Bush officials believed they could operate outside of established law. Nearly all of the prisoners have since been released, with only a handful proving to have been involved in any terrorist or anti-American activity.
