ocrats, which asks the Secretary of Defense to provide to the House materials relating to Abu Ghraib and the Taguba Report, including information relating to civilian contractors. This is an obvious follow-up to the initiative taken by the six (now eight) senior Democrats on the key House oversight committees.

* A civil RICO suit has been filed against the civilian contractors for conspiring in the torture, rape, and murder of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghrabi.

* Donald Gregg, a retired CIA station chief who was the national security advisor to Vice-President George H.W. Bush during Reagan Administration, published an op-ed in the New York Times, ripping open the administration's coverup of the torture crimes, and laying the responsibility for the horrors in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo squarely on the shoulders of the Bush Administration itself. The memos written by Administration lawyers "cleared the way" for the tortures, Gregg wrote, "and make a mockery of administration assertions that a few misguided enlisted personnel perpetrated the vile abuse of prisoners."

* A second New York Times op-ed by a senior editor of {Foreign Affairs} journal, notes that Bush Administration officials could find themselves on trial for war crimes in The Hague, under the same legal standards that the U.S. has promoted against Nazi leaders, and in war-crimes tribunals for Rwanda and Yugoslavia. "Under the doctrine of command responsibility," the author states, "officials can be held accountable for war crimes committed by their subordinates even if they did not order them so long as they had control over the perpetrators, had reason to know about the crimes, and did not stop them or punish the criminals."

* The same issue of the New York Times published another op-ed exposing the fact that military doctors and nurses treated the victims of torture at Abu Ghraib, and then returned them to their victimizers for more torture. But under international law, and standards of common decency, these medical professionals had a duty to say what they saw. They still should come forward with the evidence they have.

Finally, we have been reviewing the new book, "Worse than Watergate," by former White House Counsel John Dean, which is very focussed on the key role of Dick Cheney in the crimes of this Administration. Dean notes, among other things, that Cheney, when he was the ranking Republican on the House Select Committee on Iran-Contra, protected George Bush, Sr.

Which raises the question, as to whether Dick Cheney was the conduit of the threat to then-Senator John Kerry that caused Kerry to back off his investigation into the Iran-Contra drug-trafficking?

Is John Kerry capitulating now, because of his fear of Dick Cheney?

source: New York Times, op-eds, June 10, 2004]

IN A CAREFULLY DESIGNED FULL PAGE OF OP-EDS, THE NEW YORK TIMES INDICTS THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION ON WAR CRIMES in three articles under the heading ``After Abu Ghraib.''

First, an article by Donald P. Gregg, a 30-year veteran of the CIA, who was the national security advisor to George H.W. Bush when he was Vice President, blasted the top levels of the Bush administration for pushing ``sanctioned abuses.'' He writes that the memos of 2003 by ``Bush administration lawyers'' were ``pushing aside longstanding prohibitions on the use of torture by Americans. These memos clear the way for the horros that have been revealed in Iraq, Afgyhanistan and Guantanamo {and make a mockery of administration assertions that a few misguided enlisted personnel perpetrated the vile abuse of prisoners.''

He says that there is ``nothing that can more devastatingly undercut America's standing in the world or, more important, our view of ourselves, than these decisions. Sanctioned abuse is deeply corrosive -- just ask the French, who are still seeking to eradicate the stain on their honor that resulted from the deliberate use of torture in America.'' Gregg uncharacteristically does a little gut-spilling about Vietnam, where torture was not sanctioned, and about his stint in South Korea, where he defied his now-deceased boss at the CIA, when he reported that South Korean intelligence had killed a university professor under torture. Gregg's boss told him to shut up, but Gregg said for the only time in his CIA carreer, ``I disobeyed orders .... [it] is one of the things I am proudest of in my agency career. I also urge my listeners to do likewise if they find themselves in a similar position.''

Gregg writes that he tells this Korea story whenever he lectures to classes of CIA recruits, and that he received a thank-you letter for saying this just two months ago, at a CIA seminar -- the thank-you was from George Tenet.

Article Two, called ``An American In the Hague,'' is by a senior editor of the CFR's Foreign Affairs Magazine, Jonathan D. Tepperman, who takes apart the fact that ``so far'' the responsibility for the torture has fallen on ``the seven court-martialed soldiers who were directly involved.''

Quoting the Administration's mantra that it was only a ``bad few'' and the top guys are not liable, Tepperman says, oh, yes you are, and you might end up in the Hague.

``Under the doctrine of command responsibility, officials can be held accountable for war crimes committed by their subordinates even if they did not order them -- so long as they had control over the perpetrators, had reason to know about the crimes, and did not stop them or punish the criminals....''

This was the standard of the Allied forces at Nuremburg, against Nazis who often ``did not leave a paper trail;'' this is the standard that the U.S. is insisting on in trials of the Serbian leaders in the International Court; and this is even the standard established by a U.S. Federal court in Miami, Florida in 2002, when two El Salvadoran generals were found guilty of torture, which they did not commit and did not order. These generals were the head of the National Guard and the Defense Minister of the country. He says that this is not a legal decision, it is a political one, whether to prosecute these responsible higher ups, which he suggests would be ``top members of the current administration.''

The third piece, "Physician, Turn Thyself In, by M. Gregg Bloche, who teaches at Georgetown University and Johns Hopkins University, says, "investigate U.S. doctors who treated Abu Ghraib victims;" the author cites press reports about how military doctors and nurses "examined prisoners at Abu Ghraib, treated swollen genitals, prescribed painkillers, stitched wounds, and recorded evidence of the abuses...."

Instead of reporting these abuses, which they are required to do under international law, "too often they returned the victims of torture to the custody of their victimizers...."

The article tells Congress to act "quickly" to obtain the medical records of these prisoners, and put the doctors and nurses on the spot -- they know a great deal about what happened

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