Can A Government Convict Itself Of War Crimes?

It may be clinically impossible. But if we don't do it, other countries will try us and convict us. As the Obama Administration, averse to dissension, tiptoes backwards into tomorrow, already the blogosphere has become a Truth Commission. Facts will be known.

Already I read that two army psychologists were contracted to set up and monitor the CIA's torture methods after the CIA scientific community refused to do so. So, who asked for torture? Who asked the CIA scientific community to set up a torture program so bad that they went on strike? Tomorrow the world will know.

ForeignPolicy.com observes that Mr. John Kiriakou, the CIA operative who "spilled the beans" on CIA waterboarding back in 2007 without any censure or punishment from his bosses, is suffering embarrassment.

"In 2007, Kiriakou famously went on television to describe waterboarding, and discussed the single incidence in which Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded. After just 30 or 35 seconds, Kiriakou said, Zubaydah started singing and never needed to be tortured again.

But Kiriakou wasn't there for the waterboarding -- he was half a world away, in Langley -- and Zubaydah was waterboarded more than 80 times. The New York Times first noted the difference in the two stories."

Mr. Kiriakou now says that he got his information second-hand.

From whom? Within a week the world will know.

As facts become known in ever greater detail, can this government do other than indict? Can a jury do other than convict?

In the shaming presence of the internet, can a country do other than set things right?