What comes now that the "FDR 2.0" phase of Biden's Presidency is over?

Joe Biden as President is definitely Not As Bad As Donald Trump.

But I'm afraid Joe Manchin's segregationist alliance with the Republicans means that we're back in the position that Obama found himself: The Democrats control the Presidency and both Houses of Congress but can't pass their own legislation.

Obviously, there will be some things like the military budget that will gain Bipartisan support. But for major initiatives, the party that controls the Presidency and both Houses of Congress is restricted to using the "reconciliation" procedure that they used for the COVID Relief bill for infrastructure or longterm green economic programs.

And there are limitations on the reconciliation rule, also buried in genuinely arcane Senate procedures. There is a parliamentarian who works for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer who gives nonbinding advice on what can be included in reconciliation and not. Schumer could fire the parliamentarian and hire a new one. Vice President Kamala Harris as the chair of the Senate could overrule the parliamentarian's recommendations. But they've so far chosen to hide behind the non-elected parliamentarian who given nonbinding recommendations.

That's not on Joe Orbán-Manchin. That's on Harris and Schumer.

And it's also on Joe Biden. The Democrats' constant invoking of bipartisanship muddles their own message in any case, particularly when the Republicans have spent decades showing their complete contempt for any "bipartisanship" that isn't Democrats completely surrendering to Republicans.

But Biden used his own experience in making deals with Republicans like Strom Thurmond a major element of his political pitch, both in the Democratic primaries, as a major selling point for his candidacy.

Promising successful bipartisanship is foolish in this environment. Because the opposition party controls whether you can fulfill that promise. And Mitch McConnell has been mocking Biden for not achieving bipartisanship as he openly declares his partisan objective is to block Biden's agenda.

Reporters and political junkies and partisan activists love immersing themselves in this stuff. But for most voters, even partisan voters, it means the Democrats are sounding a proverbial uncertain trumpet. What voters see, though is:

• The Democrats control the Presidency and both Houses of Congress but can't pass their own legislation.
• The Democrats control the Presidency and both Houses of Congress but can't pass their own legislation.
• The Democrats control the Presidency and both Houses of Congress but can't pass their own legislation.

And, yes, the Republicans will use the Democrats' ineffectiveness in controlling the Presidency and both Houses of Congress but can't pass their own legislation as evidence of their weakness.

What this means is that Biden's aggressive use of Executive power and his administration of the government to achieve important aims so far as that is possible.

But it also means that for at least the next year and a half, it will be a struggle for Democrats and people on the left who would like to see the Democrats' more progressive policies advanced to parse the constructive parts of the Biden-Harris Administration.

Here's an example of the challenge.

Attorney General Merrick Garland's Justice Department is required to uphold the rule of law. This is not an essentially partisan point, because that's its job in the American legal and Constitutional system. But in the era where democracies worldwide are facing authoritarian challenges, i.e., fascist-like challenges, undermining the rule of law is a major goal of the authoritarians. So, in that sense, defending the impartial rule of law becomes itself a partisan issue.

A critical failing of the Obama Justice Department was not prosecuting obvious crimes of the Cheney-Bush Administration, particularly the torture crimes. I haven't seen explicit reporting on this. But Obama even before he took office was using his infamous look-forward-not-backward slogan to justify giving effective impunity from prosecution for the previous President and his administration. So it's a circumstantial judgment. But given the well-publicized corruption (remember Halliburton?) and various abusive conduct in the Cheney-Bush Administration, and given Obama's explicit and repeated invocation of the look-forward-not-backward formula, it's very hard to believe that Obama's Justice Department was not acting on his direction to not enforce the rule of law in those very high-profile cases. (Related: Obama admits CIA 'tortured some folks' but stands by Brennan over spying Guardian 08/01/2014)

Garland's Justice Department is doing better. There have been hundreds of arrests of accused participants in the treasonous attack on the Capitol of January 6. (Although I don't believe anyone has literally been charged with treason yet.) Justice seems to be taking a normal course on those prosecutions.

And I've also seen no indication that the Justice Department is trying to impede the normal investigations of US Attorneys (who are part of the Department) from pursuing legitimate criminal investigations involving Trump's businesses.

Those are all good signs. Another is not directly related to the Justice Department, but is a very good sign: Zoë Richards, Biden Moves To Begin Closing Guantánamo Bay TPM 06/09/2021. Obama had also promised to end this blight on the rule of law by the US, and made a bid in 2009 to do so, but backed away in the face of Republican opposition. To be fair, it really was a bipartisan opposition, to the disgrace of all the Democrats who supported that, when Obama made a bid in 2009. The Senate voted 90-6 against Obama’s proposal. (Spencer Ackerman, ‘No one but himself to blame': how Obama's Guantánamo plans fell through Guardian 02/24/2016)

And just to be clear: the 90-6 vote in the Senate to limit Obama's ability to close out the Guantanamo disgrace is extremely unlikely to have happened if Obama wasn't sending strong signals to the Democrats that he wanted to see a strong vote against it, despite his official public position. Bipartisanship!

On the other hand, The Justice Department does have to make decisions about which cases to prioritize. And if the Department has been pursuing a dubious or even fraudulent case, they are also required to put a stop to it. In this case, Garland's Justice Department is making a disturbing call: Jeff Hauser and Max Moran, Why Is Merrick Garland Defending Donald Trump? New Republic 06/08/2021

Shaunna Thomas of Ultraviolet tweets:

Another important and detailed response for all of you persuaded by the defense of the @DOJPH's decision to protect Trump's right to slander a rape survivor.

The House Judiciary agrees and sent a letter to Merrick Garland urging him to stop acting as Trump's personal attorney. https://t.co/fkbpwjPrfO

— Shaunna Thomas (@SLThomas) June 9, 2021

And there's this: Olafimihan Oshin, DOJ says it can 'vigorously' defend exemption to anti-LGBT discrimination laws for religious schools The Hill 06/09/2021. I'm not familiar enough with the case to evaluation the following. But the Department claims they are doing this to defend LGBTQ rights! "The Justice Department is not only following its general obligation to defend federal laws; it’s also trying to prevent a Christian organization from taking over the defense and mounting extreme arguments that could lead to a devastating subversion of civil rights law." (Mark Joseph Stern, No, the Biden Administration Isn’t Betraying Its Support for LGBTQ Rights Slate 06/09/2021.

I sometimes find Rachel Maddow's chronically perky style annoying. But she addresses some of the relevant issues around the Biden-Garland Justice Department in Trump Corruption of DOJ Lingers Under Garland, Risks Precedent MSNBC 06/09/2021:

The brief "FDR 2.0" phase was nice while it lasted. Now we're into the Democrats-control-the-Presidency-and-both-Houses-of-Congress-but-can't-pass-their-own-legislation phase.

Prosecuting the Capitol insurrectionists

ProPublica has a series of investigative reports on The Insurrection, the January 6 attack on the US Capitol by violent pro-Trump insurgents who roamed the halls of Congress attacking Capitol police and chanting "Hang Mike Pence!" and "Kill the Infidels!"

Criminal investigations are proceeding. Dave Neiwert has been following the process and provides a status report in Oath Keepers, Proud Boys spun a web of conspiracy leading to Jan. 6 insurrection, filings show Daily Kos 03/29/2021:

It was already clear from external evidence that far-right extremist like the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and III% [Three Percenters] militia groups played a central role in the violence that day, particularly in breaking down police barricades and entering the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Now the evidence clearly demonstrates that a conspiracy among the participants had been in the works for several weeks, and that the siege was not merely a protest that got out of hand, but a carefully organized assault on the American election process. [my emphasis]

He makes particular reference to the work of Marcy Wheeler ("emptywheel", who has also been doing detailed research into the cases, e.g., Days After and Oath Keeper Event with Roger Stone, Kelly Meggs Described Having "Organized an Alliance" with the Proud Boys Emptywheel 03/26/2021.

When it comes to the planners and high-level collaborators, it's not unusual that the evidence for their prosecutions are built up through testimony and other evidence from lower-level participants. But it's also important to remember that the violent radical right, like jihadist terrorists, have also been promoting "stochastic" terrorism for years. So tying legal culpability for individual acts of violence to senior Trump Administration officials could be very difficult. Although in a very practical sense, it's clear that Trump's January 6 speech was a direct incitement to the violent attack on the Capitol that immediately followed it. Whether or not it meets the legal hurdle for criminal charges.

At least we aren't hearing high-level statements that the Biden-Harris Administration intends to give the Trump Administration the kind of de facto impunity for criminal conduct that the Bush-Cheney Administration received. Even before Barack Obama took office as President, he was advocating for such impunity for the preceding administration.. David Johnston and Charlie Savage reported on this strong preference of Obama's for what became known as his "look forward, not backward" policy in a piece from January 2009, during the transition period between his and Bush's Presidencies (Obama Reluctant to Look Into Bush Programs New York Times 01/09/2009):

As a candidate, Mr. Obama broadly condemned some counterterrorism tactics of the Bush administration and its claim that the measures were justified under executive powers. But his administration will face competing demands: pressure from liberals who want wide-ranging criminal investigations, and the need to establish trust among the country’s intelligence agencies. At the Central Intelligence Agency, in particular, many officers flatly oppose any further review and may protest the prospect of a broad inquiry into their past conduct.

In the clearest indication so far of his thinking on the issue, Mr. Obama said on the ABC News program “This Week With George Stephanopoulos” that there should be prosecutions if “somebody has blatantly broken the law” but that his legal team was still evaluating interrogation and detention issues and would examine “past practices.”

Mr. Obama added that he also had “a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.” [my emphasis]

Obama was a specialist in constitutional law, so he clearly understood the seriousness of what he was proposing. He is quoted in that same article as recognizing explicitly that waterboarding, a method infamously used by the Bush-Cheney Administration, was torture. And he knew he was thereby saying that it was a criminal act under US and international law.

This was a strong early sign of the conservative streak that Obama demonstrated throughout his Presidency. (Although it would be legitimate to ask whether it can be called "conservative" to not prosecute crimes for which there is strong evidence.)

But it was not only issues related to war and torture that led many Democratic and left-leaning activists to demand legal accountability for the Bush-Cheney Administration. As just one example, they (we) were also expressing major concern about evidence in the public record that the Administration had in fact pushed federal prosecutors to bring purely politically-motivated cases. The prosecution of the former Democratic Governor of Alabama, Don Siegelman, was one of the instances that appeared to be most blatant. (See: Former Gov. Don Siegelman: How to fix the court system that got me AL.com 06/24/2020)

It was reported during the Bush-Cheney Administration that Karl Rove had pushed US Attorneys to bring malicious prosecutions against Democratic officials. Anyone who has followed the case of former Brazilian President Lula da Silva and other left-leaning Latin American political figures as part of the Lava Jato corruption investigation project, which we know now was pursuing malicious, partisan-political prosecutions. (Andrew Fishman et al, Breach of Ethics The Intercept 06/09/2019

John Dean discussed one action that Obama's Attorney General Eric Holder took to remedy a case of malicious prosecution. (The Strong Message Attorney General Eric Holder Sent to All Federal Prosecutors When He Dismissed the Indictment Against Senator Ted Stevens, and the Apparent Basis for the Dismissal FindLaw 04/03/2009) And his hopeful assessment seemed reasonable at the time: "Eric Holder's actions ... have now sent a message to the entire establishment of federal prosecutors. Holder is depoliticizing the Justice Department, to ensure fairness for Republicans and Democrats alike. And he has placed all federal prosecutors on notice that his Justice Department will play by the rules."

It's also worth noting that Ted Stevens had been a Republican Senator. As Dean pointed out emphatically, Holder's action was the right thing to do. But it could also have been a gesture of the bipartisanship that the Obama-Biden Administration pursued with so little positive result. Less generously but also plausible in retrospect was that it could have been intended also as a signal that Holder's Justice Department had no intention of prosecuting the torture crimes or even the type of abusive prosecution that Holder's action remedied in the Stevens case.

But the US justice system is set up to handle independent prosecutions of public officials, including elected officials, who violate the law. In fact, it would be misconduct, even criminal misconduct, for investigators or prosecutors not to proceed against such officials in cases where there is substantial evidence crimes have been committed.

That's one reason Obama's comments such as that above in the month before he was sworn in as President were so concerning. I know of no evidence that Obama as President directed interfered in any such Justice Department process. But by his public statements like the one quoted above, he was sending an unmistakable signal to his future Justice Department that he wouldn't look favorably on such a development.

It would also be interesting to know just how active a role the Obama Administration played in the prosecutorial and judicial misconduct connected with the Lava Jato investigations. What we do know presents an ugly picture, unfortunately in line with the longtime bipartisan US policy toward Latin American nations. (Andrew Fishman et al, "Keep It Confidential" The Intercept 06/09/2019

But it was only weeks later that Holder's Justice Department announced they would not proceed with prosecutions against CIA employees who had engaged in torture crimes. Because, to use a notorious phrase, they were just following orders. A Washington Post editorial at the time praised that more than dubious course of action (President Obama's wise decision on dealing with the legacy of torture 04/17/2009):

The Obama administration acted courageously and wisely yesterday with its dual actions on interrogation policy. The pair of decisions -- one essentially forgiving government agents who may have committed heinous acts they were told were legal, the other signaling that such acts must never again be condoned by the United States -- struck exactly the right balance.

The administration announced that it would not seek to press criminal charges against CIA operatives who participated in enhanced interrogations of terrorism suspects during the Bush administration. "It would be unfair to prosecute dedicated men and women working to protect America for conduct that was sanctioned in advance by the Justice Department," Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said in a statement. [my emphasis]

The Post editorial included this mealy-mouthed CYA comment, "Yet the decision to forgo prosecutions should not prevent -- and perhaps should even encourage -- further investigation about the circumstances that gave rise to torture."

The editorial at the time was titled "Dealing With a Disgrace." (This is part of why I use the somewhat cumbersome practice of citing full article titles in my posts.) I supposed someone realized that a title using the word "disgrace" was a little embarrassing for an editorial that was praising the Administration for not prosecuting known torture crimes.

I wish I could say that Democrats in Congress raised a big stink over this no-prosecution decision and held hearings on whether the Justice Department was deliberately excusing criminal actions. Which it seems pretty obvious that they were. But the Democrats didn't do that.

This neglect to hold the previous Bush-Cheney Administration responsible for crimes committed by government officials had destructive consequences for the rule of law and for politics. The Democrats signaled loud and clear that they were willing to let a Republican administration break the law blatantly and not hold them legally accountable. Obviously, the Democrats didn't demand impeachment hearings against President Bush over the torture program.

Which brings us to the Trump-Pence Administration and the January 6 Republican insurrection in pursuit of a coup attempt. Kim Ghattas writes about this issue of Executive impunity, both legal and otherwise (The Moral Cost of Choosing Stability Over Justice The Atlantic 03/27/2021):

What did the previously unimaginable experience of watching an attempted coup unfold in Washington, D.C., bring to Americans’ understanding of the fragility of democracy anywhere and, crucially, the quest for accountability everywhere? If America cannot go forward until there is justice, can other countries? Bypassing accountability in the name of “moving on” will not succeed—should not succeed—in the United States, in much the same way that making compromises overseas in the name of stability has failed to deliver either justice or stability.

Gattas invokes some parallels between American and Lebanese politics that I won't address here. But there are valid lessons that we can learn about accountability for political crimes, of the sort that are actual crimes committed by politicians and public officials. But what she says here is certainly relevant to the legacy of Trumpism, "Pursuing stability without justice achieves neither."

American values and American interests will never fully align, and the U.S. will always be accused of hypocrisy as it upholds human rights. But after the events of January 6, Americans must, more than ever, understand that unearned forgiveness and a lack of accountability can perpetuate the rot in the system, erode norms, and undermine long-term stability and governance, at home and abroad. ...

Democracy is a lofty goal, and a loaded word in the Middle East, after the Bush administration’s “freedom agenda.” But accountability is a worthy quest that can enable the building of institutions, judicial systems, and functioning governments, and pave the way to better governance and rule of law. ...

Accountability may appear divisive, but in some ways, that is the point. “It is intended to enforce a clear division between those who accept and are committed to democracy and those who are willing to turn to violence when the vote doesn’t turn out the way that they want it to,” Henry Farrell, a politics professor at Johns Hopkins University, wrote after the Capitol insurrection. [my emphasis]

Here are links to some of my posts from December 2008-May 2009 on the need for accountability that the Obama-Biden Administration did not provide:

Cheney, the Dark Lord of torture 12/17/2008

Nixonism and Cheneyism 12/28/2008

Legal accountability 01/10/2009

Accountability and the rule of law 01/10/2009

Lead military commissions judge speaks out on torture 01/14/2009

The looming cloud of accountability 01/24/2009

Legal accountability: Nancy Pelosi supports it 02/27/2009

Cheney-Bush accountability 02/28/2009

Good news on the international law and domestic rule-of-law front 03/13/2009

This isn't going away 03/19/2009

Not going away 04/17/2009

PBS Newshour bungles the torture memos story 04/18/2009

How democracy dies, Chapter 423 04/17/2009

Torture and the rule of law 04/20/2009

The evidence for criminal behavior on the torture program was substantial: Credit where due 04/21/2009.

There were plenty of international precedents, including the Nuremburg Tribunal and many national trials for war crimes after the Second World War. Argentina also provides some recent examples: Raúl Alfonsín of Argentina: he also had to deal with his predecessors' torture crimes 04/22/2009.

The Beltway Villagers were aghast at the idea that criminal acts related to the torture program: A Twitter-plus thought on law and order 04/23/2009

GOP aggression techniques 04/24/2009: "honorary Democrat Joe Lieberman has joined with hardline Bush supporter a legendary Maverick John McCain to write to the Obama administration opposing any prosecution of lawyers criminally involved in the torture policy."

The reality of the anti-torture laws is becoming more clear to even our press corps 04/24/2009

The Altstötter war crimes case 04/26/2009

Going after all the torturers? 04/26/2009

Naomi Wolf on collective guilt 04/28/2009

Thinking about war crimes 05/01/2009

Barack Obama and crimes of the Bush-Cheney Administration

This story is an excellent example of a serious problem, not only for Obama himself as a President but also for the Democratic Party more generally: their acceptance of Presidential impunity for criminal actions and the larger circle of immunity that flows from that. Obama Voices Concerns For Dropping Charges Against Gen. Flynn In Private Call MSNBC 05/09/2020:

Obama's own Administration was remarkably free of corruption based on what has come to light. And that should be a model for other Presidents to follow.

But one of Obama's most consequential Presidential legacies is this: David Johnston and Charlie Savage, Obama Reluctant to Look Into Bush Programs New York Times 01/11/2020, Bush's criminal torture programs in particular are referred to here:

In the clearest indication so far of his thinking on the issue, Mr. Obama said on the ABC News program “This Week With George Stephanopoulos” that there should be prosecutions if “somebody has blatantly broken the law” but that his legal team was still evaluating interrogation and detention issues and would examine “past practices.”

Mr. Obama added that he also had “a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.”

“And part of my job,” he continued, “is to make sure that, for example, at the C.I.A., you’ve got extraordinarily talented people who are working very hard to keep Americans safe. I don’t want them to suddenly feel like they’ve got spend their all their time looking over their shoulders.”

The Bush administration has authorized interrogation tactics like waterboarding that critics say skirted federal laws and international treaties, and domestic wiretapping without warrants. But the details of those programs have never been made public, and administration officials have said their actions were legal under a president’s wartime powers. [my italics and bolding]

The only thing Dick Cheney couldn't give his Unitary Executive experiment under the Bush Administration was a subsequent Democratic administration that granted de facto immunity from prosecution for serious crimes committed by Bush-Cheney officials. Barack Obama and his Attorney General Eric Holder from 2009-2015 gave him that. The same was true of his successor under Obma, Loretta Lynch.

This wouldn't have to have been a "political" investigation and prosecution. There are a variety of laws and organizational structures intended to prevent politicized prosecutions. The case of Michael Flynn which has been prominently in the news the last week was one in which a former Trump Administration official was investigated, prosecuted, and convicted by the Justice Department under the Trump Administration.

Eric Holder could have directed such investigations to be done in the regular Justice Department structure. He could have recused himself from decisions on such prosecutions to minimize the effect of inevitable Republican accusations that the investigations were partisan. He could have established a Special Prosecutor like Robert Mueller's investigation on Russian election interference. Obama could have asked Congress, which had Democratic majorities in both Houses in 2009. to establish and Independent Prosecutor, although the reckless and irresponsible Ken Starr tarnished that idea badly. He really did run a crassly partisan investigation.

But regardless of the particular organizational approach used, the Obama Administration had the most serious kind of responsibility to investigate and prosecute crimes committed in the torture program and the deliberate deceptions the Bush-Cheney government engaged in to persuade Congress to approve the invasion of Iraq based on phony claims made to Congress in knowing bad faith.

Instead, Obama adopted a policy of de facto impunity under the slogan of looking forward not backwards. Which, of course, is not the standard applied to crimes not committed by CEOs or senior government officials.

That was a real failure. Trump as President would have been corrupt and otherwise criminal. Because that's who he is and what the Republican Party is now. But it would not have been so easy if crimes during the Cheney-Bush Administration had been professional investigated and prosecuted.

See also:

• Mark Thompson, Obama's Growing Dilemma on Torture Prosecution Time 04/22/2009
• David Cole, Obama’s Torture Problem New York Review of Books 11/18/2010
• Glenn Greenwald, Obama's justice department grants final immunity to Bush's CIA torturers
• The Guardian 08/31/2012 Adam Serwer, Obama's Legacy of Impunity for Torture The Atlantic 03/14/2018

Trump is now suggesting that his Administration will concoct some kind of completely bogus charges on which to prosecute Obama himself. So his generosity to officials of the preceding Republican Administration is apparently not reciprocated by the subsequent one. The result: Republicans think they are free to break the law in their official positions, including ginning up phony charges against Democrats.

But that particular tradition of granting immunity for criminal acts of torture was continued under Bush-Pence, and expanded to include what seems to be the entire government: Michael McGough,Like Obama, CIA nominee [Gina] Haspel wants to ‘look forward’ on torture questions Los Angeles Times 05/09/2018.

Revisionist history and memory formation on the Cheney-Bush Administration

His failure in his duty to see that the crimes of the Cheney-Bush regime - especially the torture program - were fully investigated and prosecuted according to the law is the most significant contribution of his Administration to creating the condition that would up with Donald Trump in the White House.

And now Bush gets to play the kindly elder stateman, to the sycophantic praise of not only NeverTrumper Republicans but also by Democrats who are afraid or unwilling to fight for their own side.

A Message from President George W. Bush@TheCalltoUnite pic.twitter.com/FIn9wuOPTF

— George W. Bush Presidential Center (@TheBushCenter) May 2, 2020

George W. Bush kept the Republican Party on its path to authoritarianism and accelerated it.

Rodayah Chamseddine's Rehabilitating a Monster: George W. Bush and the Bankruptcy of Civility Politics In These Times 09/6/2018 maintains its relevance.

... a former president, who oversaw an apocalyptic shock and awe campaign, was rehabilitated as a homely and wholesome painter. George W. Bush, whose administration wantonly poisoned Iraq with nearly 10,000 rounds of depleted uranium, and gave license to torture and indefinite incarceration without due process in offshore detention sites like the notorious Guantánamo Bay, was invited last year to sit across from Ellen DeGeneres and share self-deprecating barbs with Jimmy Kimmel to the benefit of his promotional book tour. Missing were the images of children suffering the aftermath of U.S.-made radioactive weaponry and the haunting photographs of Iraqi men languishing in Abu Ghraib. There was no meaningful discussion of the global surveillance apparatus that targeted and racialized Muslims. The body politic has not even come to terms with the full extent of this bloodbath. One would think that history would have long destroyed any semblance of nostalgia for George W. Bush, but the political fanfiction abounds—in spite of it. [my emphasis]

Another former President, Jimmy Carter, is someone whose post-Presidential contributions to American public life and to the cause of international peace I regard as more constructive and important than those of his Presidency. Carter talked about the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld torture program in his book Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis (2005):

Physicians for Human Rights reported in April 2005 that "at least since 2 002, the United States has been engaged in systematic psychological torture" of Guantanamo detainees that has "led to devastating health consequences for the individuals subjected to" it. The prisoners' outlook on life was not improved when the Secretary of Defense declared that most of them would not be released even if they were someday tried and found to be innocent. ...

The terrible pictures from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq have brought discredit on our country. This is especially disturbing, since U.S. intelligence officers estimated to the Red Cross that 70 to 90 percent of the detainees at this prison were held by mistake. Military officials reported that at least 108 prisoners have died in American custody in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other secret locations just since 2002, with homicide acknowledged as the cause of death in at least 28 cases. The fact that only one of these was in Abu Ghraib prison indicates the widespread pattern of prisoner abuse, certainly not limited to the actions or decisions of just a few rogue enlisted persons.

Iraqi major general Abed Hamed Mowhoush reported voluntarily to American officials in Baghdad in an attempt to locate his sons, and was detained, tortured, and stuffed inside a green sleeping bag, where he died from trauma and suffocation on November 26, 2003.

The superficial investigations under the auspices of the Department of Defense have made it obvious that no high-level military officers or government officials will be held accountable, but there is no doubt that their public statements and private directives cast doubt and sometimes ridicule on the applicability of international standards of human rights and the treatment of prisoners. [my emphasis]

That was 2005. After two full Bush-Cheney Administrations, two full Obama-Biden Administration, and over three years of the Trump Administration, the disgrace that is the prison in Guantanamo is still in operation. And the legal cases against the prisoners that have been there since the Bush Administration are still not all resolved.