NYT blasts 'phony investigations & stonewalling'

In one of the strongest editorials of any US paper on the issue of abuse in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guatanamo, The New York Times strongly criticized the Bush administration late last week. Impunity and lack of accountability are the main issues.

The American public needs answers about the prisons, and it is simply not acceptable that a few low-level reservists go to jail while the civilian lawyers who wrote the torture policies get promoted and the general who devised the interrogations escapes even the mildest rebuke. [...]

No amount of concern about terrorism gives [the US government] the power to detain innocent people or brutalize even those who are guilty. That is why this nation has laws, courts and judges. We can never be sure any new laws will be enforced until we know the truth about how the old ones were swept aside.