The NYTimes has just published a story announcing that "a high-level Spanish court has taken the first steps toward opening a criminal investigation against six former Bush administration officials, including former Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, on whether they violated international law by providing a legalistic framework to justify the use of torture of American prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, an official close to the case said."
The six Bushies, according the account, are Gonzo, Feith, Addington, Haynes, Bybee, and Yoo. A very good place to start. The investigative judge who has referred the case to the prosecutor is the same courageous man who indicted Pinochet.
Of course, the reaction in the US could be to circle the wagons and not let foreigners (especially from "old Europe") dictate US policy or malign our patriotic and self-sacrificing political servants, blah, blah, blah. But to me, this hint of a possibility of some accounting sounds sweet. And perhaps it will shame the Obama administration and our congresscritters into paying more serious attention to the accountability issue.
I've been slowly reading Pearlstein's Nixonland, an era I remember well, and am convinced all over again that it was dangerous and morally reprehensible for us as a nation to have allowed the crimes of his administration, and specifically his crimes, to go unpunished. The problem with healing the nation by looking the other way is that it paves the way for the Cheney-Bush crowd. Some of the political appointees from the last administration might not have survived with reputations intact if Americans had had the moral fiber to clean house then.
So three cheers for the Spanish legal system. May this small begin ignite a spark and the spark a cleansing fire.