VHeadline.com guest commentarist Kenneth T. Tellis writes: The crimes of extraordinary rendition and unlawful prosecutions of suspected terrorists should not be followed through. The US administration of George W. Bush believed itself to be not just above international law, but also in violation of treaties that the US signed.

Let's consider first the actions of former-president William Jefferson Clinton who decided that he could use NATO forces to bomb Serbia into submission. This he did with gusto... The bombing of apartment buildings, railway stations, hospitals, trains, and trolley-buses continued. But he did not stop there: he ordered the bombing of Serbian Orthodox Churches on Sunday while people were attending religious services and laughed it off, with pleasure. But he went even further, he ordered the bombing of the Embassy of the People's Republic of China in Belgrade, and thought that as a US President he could get away with murder.

Of course the man that succeeded him, one George W. Bush went about ordering the CIA and other government agencies to kidnap people all around the globe.

Of course this poor excuse for a human being came up with the term EXTRAORDINARY RENDITION to replace the word KIDNAPPING, and then believed that in doing so he was off the hook.

But one has to wonder why those nations in Eastern Europe were helping George W. Bush by secreting his kidnap victims in concentration camps hidden deep within their own territory, and permitting the CIA to torture people they kidnapped there?

Of course among these partners in crime were the Poles who during World War II themselves suffered and were the victims of torture in Nazi Concentration Camps. I guess that the US government PAY-OFF was too big to refuse.

Now a little closer to home, the CIA has been in the business to training pro-US regimes in Latin America the art of TORTURE for many years. So there's nothing new in what I am now stating, because the US has been in denial of these illegal actions for years. One has only to take a long look at Colombia to realize that nothing has changed at all. Last year's incursion into Ecuador by US Special Forces and their Colombian Army surrogates is proof positive. But even the assassination attempts on Hugo Chavez earlier were hatched in the White House ... but then, of course, US governments had permitted their agents to try and assassinate Fidel Castro Ruz the former Cuban president on hundreds of occasions.

Now, right-wing extremists in the United States are denouncing US President Barack Obama for wanting to investigate and prosecute those US government agencies that used water-boarding, torture and other cruel tortures in violation of the standards of international norms, as was carried at Guantanamo Bay prison, Cuba, by members of the US Armed Forces in collusion with the CIA.

Perhaps all those who carried out torture as permitted by George W. Bush should be held for trial and punished severely for having carried out illegal actions that violated the UN and other Human Rights Charters. But, of course, the investigation should go much further, in that the chief instigators of the tortures, i.e. George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice et.al. should all be held for trial as war criminals, because no one should be above the law.

Perhaps we can make future generations realize that no one can break the law and seek immunity from it, no matter their rank or status in life. But we must not forget the war crimes of William Jefferson Clinton and also hold him for trial ... because of his actions in the Balkans (Serbia) ... but add to this the attempt of the US government to arrest Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and try him for war crimes, of which he was not proven guilty and the mysterious circumstances under which he died in captivity at The Hague, Holland.

Let us begin a new page, by cleaning the slate and bringing to justice all those who erroneously believed that they could not be prosecuted for war crimes because of the offices that they held.

Kenneth T. Tellis

kenneth.tellis@vheadline.com