After the Torture Memos: Can We Stop Paying George W.'s Pension
Matt Littman Posted April 17, 2009 | 08:03 PM (EST) Let's say an executive failed so miserably at their job that they were considered the worst at their job in the history of their company.
They not only brought down their company, they brought down other businesses in their wake. And when they left their position, they then were given a pension of about $200,000 a year for life, plus expenses that include an office, security, staff and a travel fund - perhaps adding up to a million dollars a year.
Shouldn't this person be ashamed? If they had no sense of shame, and say the person was an AIG executive, wouldn't we demand the money back?
In the wake of the not-surprising revelations about the torture committed by the United States, I am left to wonder: can we stop paying President George W. Bush? Can we put his pension, which will total in the millions, to a vote? We are talking about a person who could not have done a worse job leading this country if they tried to do the worst job in history.
Let's take a look:
1- Worst economy since the 1930's.
2- President during the most deadly attack on America soil in our nation's history.
3- President when an entire city, the city of New Orleans, is nearly destroyed by a hurricane, and the person he appointed to head FEMA - in charge of the cleanup - has virtually no experience in emergency management, and is in way over his head, resulting in an utter American failure.
4- President who brings us to war with Iraq in order to counter their weapons of mass destruction from turning into a mushroom cloud. Turns out, Iraq has no WMD's. We also have the wrong battle plan to fight the insurgency. And we are told that Iraq will pay for its own reconstruction. Several years later, we still have more than 120,000 troops in Iraq, at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, more than 4,000 Americans dead, and more than 20,000 wounded.
5- United States now tortures. Previously, we prosecuted other nations for committing the acts which we now conduct. Japan, for example, in World War II. Now, we're Japan. So, I have to ask the question. We're all angry at the bailout money going to AIG executives for their lavish bonuses; we're understandably irate that the very same people who put our economy in this mess are now profiting from it.
Why are we still paying George W. Bush? He was the CEO of America, right? That was his thing - the MBA President.
Shouldn't he be so ashamed by the hurt he caused us that he, like many of the AIG executives, would give us the money back?
And please don't tell me it was really Dick Cheney running the country. We all know that Cheney will go down as one of the poisonous, detested figures in our nation's history. But he wasn't the President.
George W. Bush said he was going to give speeches to fill the old coffers. He's doing that - there are people who will pay him to speak. Let them. He's a wealthy guy anyway. Even if he didn't get paid for his speeches, he'd be fine.
So why in the world should we be on the hook to continue paying a staff and a travel budget for the man who caused such harm to this country? Talk about adding insult to injury.
Spain Opens Inquiry on Guantánamo Torture Allegations
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 10:51 a.m. ET
MADRID (AP) -- Spain's top investigative magistrate opened an investigation into the Bush administration Wednesday over alleged torture of terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay.
Judge Baltasar Garzon said documents declassified by the new U.S. government suggest the practice was systematic.
Garzon said he was acting under Spain's observance of the principle of universal justice, which allows crimes allegedly committed in other countries to be prosecuted in Spain.
Garzon's move is separate from a complaint by human rights lawyers that seeks charges against six specific Bush administration officials they accuse of creating a legal framework to permit torture of suspects at Guantanamo Bay and other U.S. detention facilities.
Spanish prosecutors on April 17 said any such probe should be carried out by the U.S. and recommended against it being launched in Spain. Garzon originally had that case, but ultimately it was transferred to another judge.
Now, Garzon is opening a probe into "possible material authors" of torture, accomplices and those who gave torture orders, although he does not name anyone specifically.
In a 10-page writ, he said documents on Bush-era treatment of prisoners, recently declassified by the Obama administration, "reveal what had been just an intuition: an authorized and systematic plan of torture and mistreatment of person denied freedom without any charge whatsoever and without the rights enjoyed by any detainee."
Garzon cited media accounts of the documents and said he would ask the U.S. to send the documents to him.
He said he is also acting on the basis of accounts by four former Guantanamo inmates who have alleged in Spanish courts that they were tortured at that U.S. prison in eastern Cuba.
All four were once accused of belonging to a Spanish al-Qaida cell but eventually cleared of the accusations. One is a Spanish citizen, another is a Moroccan citizen who has lived in Spain for more than a decade and the other two are residents of Britain.
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