Newsweek reports that, as a way to prevent a repeat of the events of Sept. 11, 2001, “Bush, along with Defense Secretary [Donald] Rumsfeld and Attorney General John Ashcroft, signed off on a secret system of detention and interrogation that opened the door to such methods.”

“It was an approach that they adopted to sidestep the historical safeguards of the Geneva Conventions, which protect the rights of detainees and prisoners of war," Newsweek reports. “In doing so, they overrode the objections of Secretary of State Colin Powell and America's top military lawyers —and they left underlings to sweat the details of what actually happened to prisoners in these lawless places.”

And the Newsweek story reports that U.S. soldiers and CIA operatives “could be accused of war crimes. Among the possible charges: homicide involving deaths during interrogations.”

And they left the underlings to sweat the details. Sad. The same underlings who could be accused of war crimes.

Arf