When the criminals write the laws

From the WaPo:

The Bush administration has drafted amendments to a war crimes law that would eliminate the risk of prosecution for political appointees, CIA officers and former military personnel for humiliating or degrading war prisoners, according to U.S. officials and a copy of the amendments.

Officials say the amendments would alter a U.S. law passed in the mid-1990s that criminalized violations of the Geneva Conventions, a set of international treaties governing military conduct in wartime. The conventions generally bar the cruel, humiliating and degrading treatment of wartime prisoners without spelling out what all those terms mean.

These crooks don't want to have to rely on presidential pardons, like Daddy Bush did.

PS: Reading that article about Daddy Bush's Christmas Eve 1992 pardons of five accused or already-convicted Iran-Contra crooks reminds me that W inherited his belief that he and his minions are above the law.

Explaining those pardons, Bush said the "common denominator of their motivation--whether their actions were right or wrong--was patriotism." They did not profit or seek to profit from their conduct, Bush said, adding that all five "have already paid a price--in depleted savings, lost careers, anguished families--grossly disproportionate to any misdeeds or errors of judgment they may have committed."

Let's see: They sold weapons to Iran to help them battle the weapons we were selling to Iraq at the time, used the proceeds to fund brutal anti-government terrorism in Nicaragua, causing tens of thousands of deaths in both places, and then lied about it to Congress. I'm not sure any punishment could be disproportionate to this level of crime. And "lost careers?" Elliot Abrams is now aWol's deputy national security adviser. Robert McFarlane went on to be CEO of Global Energy Investors. Duane Clarridge went on to work for General Dynamics and was a booster of Ahmed Chalabi in pushing for the Iraq war. Alan Fiers went on to become Vice President of Sequa Corporation. Most appropriately, Clair George went on to work for Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, spying on journalists.

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Americans are rotting in jail for minor drug violations, having killed no one. Small-time crooks make license plates; big-time crooks make national policy. The American way.