In the 230-plus-year history of the US, it was bound to happen.
One as cynical as us might have figured it would happen before now, before communications opened up governmental processes to a more public scrutiny, yet no real real-ugly hi-jinks until this current administration jackbooted into power.
Dick Nixon was a Boy Scout compared to Decider George and his corrupted crowd of crooks.

• “After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”
  — Army Major General Antonio M. Taguba, (Ret.), brokenlives.info, (6/18/08)

Taguba’s remarks come from a preface for a report released this week which revealed the US had used torture in violation of international laws, the US Constitution and just plain human decency:

• The first extensive medical examinations of former detainees in U.S. military jails offer corroboration for prisoners’ claims of physical and psychological abuse at the hands of their American captors, a Boston-based human rights group said in a report released yesterday.
  The assessments of 11 men formerly held in U.S. detention camps overseas revealed scars and other injuries consistent with their accounts of beatings, electric shocks, shackling and, in at least one case, sodomy, according to the report by Physicians for Human Rights.
  Most also had symptoms of long-term psychological damage, including post-traumatic stress disorder, the group said.
  — Joby Warrick, washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article, (6/19/08)

Taguba, as we all know, led the Pentagon’s investigation into the abuses at Abu Ghraib — which is like the Mafia investigating itself.
However, Taguba turned the tables, he reported the truth of what he saw in a report of his inquiry, which was started in January 2004 and submitted the following March.
And it cost him his career.
The Pentagon tried to suppress Taguba’s report, but it was eventually leaked to the press, along with the now-infamous photos.

In June 2007, Taguba was interviewed by Seymour Hersh for The New Yorker.
The general described the first meeting in Damn-dumb Don Rumsfeld’s office:

• “Here . . . comes . . . that famous General Taguba—of the Taguba report!” Rumsfeld declared, in a mocking voice.
  The meeting was attended by Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld’s deputy; Stephen Cambone, the Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence; General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (J.C.S.); and General Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, along with Craddock and other officials.
  Taguba, describing the moment nearly three years later, said, sadly, “I thought they wanted to know. I assumed they wanted to know. I was ignorant of the setting.”
  In the meeting, the officials professed ignorance about Abu Ghraib.
  “Could you tell us what happened?” Wolfowitz asked.
  Someone else asked, “Is it abuse or torture?”
  At that point, Taguba recalled, “I described a naked detainee lying on the wet floor, handcuffed, with an interrogator shoving things up his rectum, and said, ‘That’s not abuse. That’s torture.’
  There was quiet.
  …
  “The whole idea that Rumsfeld projects—‘We’re here to protect the nation from terrorism’—is an oxymoron,” Taguba said.
  “He and his aides have abused their offices and have no idea of the values and high standards that are expected of them. And they’ve dragged a lot of officers with them.”
  — Seymour Hersh, newyorker.com/reporting/2007/06/25

And the horror keeps on a-coming:

• Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, now under investigation for allegedly politicizing the Justice Department, ousted a top lawyer for failing to adopt the administration’s position on torture and then promised him a position as a U.S. attorney to placate him, highly placed sources tell ABC News.
  Gonzales, who was just taking over as attorney general, asked Justice Department lawyer Daniel Levin to leave in early 2005, shortly after Levin wrote a legal opinion that declared “torture is abhorrent” and limited the administration’s use of harsh interrogation techniques.
  — Jan Crawford Greenburg & Ariane De Vogue, abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/story, (6/19/08)

If one wanted to return to the good-old Nuremberg Trials episode after WWII, then Decider George, Rumsfeld, Dufus Dick Chaney and the whole host of parasitic, lying worms employed by this administration would be charged, tried and then executed if need be.
The legacy of Decider George is of criminals.

Maybe we should send all of them to Abu Ghraib — get a taste of what Dufus Dick means when they “take off the gloves.”