A Modest Proposal

In the past few weeks current vice president Dick Cheney admitted that he authorized and supported waterboarding as a method of "enhanced interrogation." Yesterday current president George W. Bush admitted he was presented with a series of interrogation "tools" to use on Khaled Sheikh Muhammed after he was captured and sent to Guantanamo, approving them all, incuding waterboarding. Bush says all those tools remain necessary.

Constitutional law professor and MSNBC legal analyst Jonathan Turley just presented some fairly straightforward logic which goes like this: if waterboarding is torture and torture is illegal, a president who authorizes waterboarding is guilty of a crime.

A succeeding president who states that waterbaording is torture and no one is above the law, at approximately 12:30 PM on Tuesday January 20, 2009, having already taken the oath to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States," and just about the time he will be concluding his inauguration speech, should then immediately spin around, point at the most recent former president and vice president standing behind him and instruct the two burleyest members of his secret service security detail, stating in loud, clear, ringing tones, "arrest these two men for war crimes and crimes against humanity," whereupon they would then quickly be cuffed, have hoods thrown over their heads, and flown straight to a cell in Guantanamo next to the aforementioned Khaled Sheikh Muhammed for a trial of some form or another to take place at some future undetermined time.

Part of looking forward invloves in making sure lingering past issues are appropriately addressed.