George W. Bush: War Criminal

George Bush writes in his new presidential memoirs Decision Points (which is due out tomorrow, November 9) that he did authorize the CIA to employ "enhanced interrogations," also known as water-boarding, of detained "enemy combatants," a.k.a. war-on-terror suspects (such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed) at the height of his second presidential term. Water-boarding is the practice of torturing a prisoner simply by pouring water over his nostrils and face, forcing him to think that he is drowning when simply he is not. It produces an automatic gag reflex that is accompanied by physical symptoms such as deprivation of oxygen to the brain, pain, dry drowning, catastrophic damage to the lungs, and psychological trauma.

The practice is a crime under American and international law. When will charges of war crimes be brought against him? And what will it take to press those charges? His accomplices such as former Vice President Dick Cheney and former U.S. Attorney John Ashcroft should be slapped with the same charges.

It would behoove President Obama not to be viewed as one simply by ordering U.S. Attorney Eric Holder to prosecute that case.