Olbermann: Bush guilty of torture

And after his comment last week, with straightforwardness that was like water to a lost soul in the Sahara, that water boarding is torture - your nominee at Justice, Mr. Holder, echoed, "We don't want to criminalize policy differences that might exist between the outgoing administration and the administration that is about to take over."

But Mr. President-Elect: You have a confession. Since this statement of a structure of policy, prefacing policy itself, from Mr. Biden, you have Mr. Bush's confession.

More over, since Mr. Biden's statement, you have a legal assessment, from within the bowels of the Bush Administration itself.

"We tortured (Mohammed al-) Qahtani," Judge Susan Crawford told the Washington Post a week ago. "His treatment met the legal definition of torture." And that was why, Judge Crawford added, that as the Bush Administration official in charge of deciding whether or not to bring detainees at Guantanamo Bay to trial, she decided in Qahtani's case, not to.

And this, Mr. President-Elect, was not the obvious water-boarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. This was a more insidious combination of legally-approved procedures that still nearly killed this man Qahtani.

"The techniques they used were all authorized," Judge Crawford continued, "but the manner in which they applied them was overly aggressive and too persistent... This was not any one particular act; this was just a combination of things that had a medical impact on him, that hurt his health."

In fact, Mr. President-Elect, the records at Gitmo show that Qahtani's heartbeat eventually slowed to 35 beats per minute. "It was abusive and uncalled for. And coercive. Clearly coercive, sympathize with the intelligence gatherers in those days after 9/11, not knowing what was coming next and trying to gain information to keep us safe. But there still has to be a line that we should not cross. And unfortunately what this has done, I think, has tainted everything going forward."

If you are worried about the Republicans viewing any torture prosecution in the way you postulated to Will Bunch—"a partisan witch hunt"—you can remind them that the woman who said all that, Susan Crawford is a life-long Republican.

So, Mr. President-Elect, beyond whatever else will come out, as the whistleblowers begin to, just after noon tomorrow, you have your predecessor's unofficial confession and you have this singular evaluation by a principal in your predecessor's administration, this kind of line-level confession.

They're guilty of this, Mr. President-Elect. They're guilty as sin. Since he talked to my friend Bunch in April, Mr. Obama's only lengthy comments about this, were made to George Stephanopoulos on January 11^th of this year. See if a disturbing theme becomes evident.

"Obviously we're going to be looking at past practices and I don't believe that anybody is above the law. On the other hand I also have a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards."

Later, "My instinct is for us to focus on—how do we make sure that moving forward we are doing the right thing."

Later still, "My orientation's going to be, to move forward."

Finally, "What we have to focus on is getting things right in the future, as opposed to looking at what we got wrong in the past."

Sadly, as commendable as the intention here might seem, this country has never succeeded in "moving forward" without first cleansing itself of its mistaken past. In point of fact, every effort to merely ‘draw a line in the sand' and declare the past, dead, has served only to keep the past alive—and often to strengthen it.

We compromised with slavery in the Declaration of Independence—and four score and nine years later we had buried 600-thousand of our sons and brothers in a Civil War.

After that War's ending, we compromised with the social restructuring and protection of the rights of minorities in the South. And a century later, we had not only not resolved anything, but black leaders were still being assassinated in the cities of the South.

We compromised with Germany and the reconstruction of Europe after the First World War—nobody even arrested the German Kaiser, let alone conducted war crimes trials and 19 years later there was an indescribably more evil Germany and a more heart-rending Second World War.

We compromised with the Trusts of the early 1900's, and today we have corporations too big to let fail. We compromised with The Palmer Raids and got McCarthyism, and we compromised with McCarthyism and got Watergate, and we compromised with Watergate and the junior members of the Ford Administration realized how little was ultimately at risk, and they grew up to be Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney.

But Mr. President-Elect, you are entirely correct. As you say, "what we have to focus on is getting things right in the future, as opposed to looking at what we got wrong in the past."

And that means prosecuting all those involved in the Bush Administration's torture of prisoners—and starting at the top. You're also right that you should not "want your first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of Republicans as a partisan witch-hunt."

But your only other option might be to let this sit and fester, indefinitely. Because, Mr. President-Elect, some day there will be another Republican president—or even a Democrat just as blind as Mr. Bush to ethics and this country's Moral  Force—and he will look back to what you did about Mr. Bush—or what you did not do—and he will see precedent.

Or, as Cheney saw, he will see how not to get caught next time. Prosecute, Mr. President-Elect, and even if you get not one conviction, you will still have accomplished good, for generations unborn. Because merely by acting, you will deny Mr. Bush what he most wants.

Right now, without prosecutions, without this nation standing up and saying "this was wrong, we will atone"—Mr. Bush's version of what happened goes into the historical record of this nation: Torture was legal. It worked. George Bush saved the country. The End.

We have tortured people. You and I, Mr. President-Elect.

This is the people's democracy, we are the people, these were our elected officials. That they did not come to us and ask to act thusly in our names is unfortunate, indeed criminal, but it is also almost irrelevant. They worked for us, they tortured people, and so... we have tortured people.

Thus, beginning tomorrow, it is up to you not just to discontinue this but to prevent it.

At the end of his first year in office, Mr. Lincoln tried to contextualize the Civil War for those who still wanted to compromise with the evils of secession and slavery. "The struggle of today," Lincoln wrote, "is not altogether for today - it is for a vast future also."

Mr. President-Elect, you have been handed the beginning of that future. Use it—to protect our children, and our distant descendants, from anything, like this, ever happening again.

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