Brad Friedman: Why aren't Americans outraged by Bush and Cheney's torture policy?

"Noting the war crimes now known and admitted to by George Bush and Dick Cheney, George Washington University's highly-respected constitutional law professor Jonathon Turley asked MSNBC's Keith Olbermann last week: 'If someone commits a crime and everyone's around to see it and does nothing, is it still a crime?'

The discussion came in the wake of a new bipartisan US Senate report (pdf) that found that Bush was responsible for approving torture and abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and Cheney's admission during an ABC interview that he helped to approve torture and abuse in interrogations.

During the interview, Turley mentioned that it'll be up to the citizens whether or not any action is actually taken to prosecute those who committed these crimes. 'It will ultimately depend on citizens, and whether they will remain silent in the face of a crime that's been committed in plain view,' Turley suggested. 'It is equally immoral to stand silent in the face of a war crime and do nothing, and that is what the citizens are doing.'" (Emphasis Mine.)

It is immoral, cowardly and ultimately self-defeating to let crimes of this magnitude "slip away" into the past. Remember, people of the U.S. of part of A., you are judged by your actions--and inactions--much more than by your words. And the words you have trumpeted so proudly for so long are not even hollow, they are gone, product of the rampaging idiocy of your so-called leaders and your very own craven indifference.

There is still time to act. It is still within your power to set justice aright and show the world that though the leading democracy in the world may stumble, it can do what is right--because it has the will and integrity to place moral values above amoral expediency.