War Criminals...and Ultrarunning

Now this is kinda ironic...but again, we've been told that we are not looking back....

Via a link from Avedon Carol: Obama Bans War Criminals, but Not Our Own, by Nat Hentoff.

"By executive order on Aug. 4, President Barack Obama refused entry to the United States of war criminals and human-rights violators (Jurist.org, Aug. 4). He ignored, as he often does, the deeply documented factual evidence of war crimes committed by the Bush-Cheney administration - along with grim proof that the Obama administration also violates our anti-torture laws and the U.N. Convention Against Torture we signed. 

The United States also signed the Geneva Conventions, which mandates - and please pay attention to this, President Obama - each contracting party "shall be under the obligation to search for persons alleged to have committed, or to have ordered to be committed, such grave breaches (of the Geneva Conventions), and shall bring such persons, regardless of their nationality, before its own courts."

This means that you, President Obama, are obligated to bring the foregoing list of war criminals [George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, former CIA director George Tenet, Condoleezza Rice, John Ashcroft, David Addington (counsel to Cheney) and John Yoo author of the unsparingly cruel, aptly dubbed "torture memos" from the Ashcroft Justice Department that gave "legal cover" to allow torture] during the Bush presidency into our courts - or, before that, be subject to an independent criminal investigation."

I guess what boggles my mind is why the Very Serious People in Washington cannot see this with the clarity that I and my friends see this.  Wait, they're not stupid, of course they see what I see...and choose to provide "professional courtesy" (read: cover) for their predecessors, hoping to establish precedent in case they themselves will need cover from the subsequent administration for their present actions.

Oh...and the link to Ultrarunning?  For those of us gentle people who quietly run trails, seeking solace and solitude, the concept of torturing another human being fills us with revulsion.  That our elected leaders do it our our name to "keep us safe"...I'd just rather be unsafe.