their safety and immunity after January 2009

* SteveA in the comments:

"This came up:

"...what arrangements are they making for their safety and immunity after January 2009? Immunity from prosecution in the US? Abroad? We should pay close attention to the details of legislation the White House puts forward over the next eighteen months. You may not be thinking about this issue. But they are."

I thought they have already been working on these issues. They have passed legislation making soldiers and others immune to prosecution for commiting crimes against international legislation including geneva convention crimes.

See discussion here:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/8/3/12413/49075

Where we hear back in 2006:

"The recent US Supreme Court decision in Hamdan removed a potential defense from war crimes prosecution that the Bush team had been relying upon. So now the Decider is quietly changing this US law to exempt himself and other officials from criminal prosecutions that may not occur until the next administration."

And here:

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0919-31.htm

Where we hear the same...

"...The Bush Administration’s real agenda likely has at least three goals: first, to allow CIA interrogators to continue to engage in “soft torture,” so long as it doesn’t “shock the conscience”; second, to provide immunity for all those interrogators, civilian and military, who committed outrages upon detainees’ personal dignity and engaged in humiliating and degrading treatment in the past few years; and third, to give congressionally-granted immunity to senior Bush Administration officials for their having encouraged field operatives to inflict degrading treatment and outright torture in the past."

The same here:

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0923-22.htm

and here:

http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=146171

...where we are told that the Bush people have not just recently been preparing for their post-Bush admin retirement immunity, but they started out making such arrangements...

(by Karen Greenburg on Tomdispatch)

"...the administration confessional was open for business within weeks of the attacks of September 11th, 2001. It could be found wrapped in persistent assertions of immunity, assertions that none of their acts to come could ever be brought before the bar of justice or the oversight of anyone. The first of these documents was issued on September 25th, 2001. Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo, writing for the Office of Legal Counsel, laid out the reasons for the President of the United States to assume broad executive powers in the war on terror. The last footnote of the memo declared, "In the exercise of his plenary power to use military force, the President's decisions are for him alone and are unreviewable."

This notion of unreviewable behavior, then still buried in the land of footnotes, has characterized the administration's general stance on its war on terror policies. On January 9th, 2002, just as Guantanamo opened for business as a detention facility supposedly beyond the review of American courts, John Yoo and fellow Office of Legal Counsel member Robert Delahunty explained why a breach with international law would not constitute a crime for the Bush administration. In their secret memo, the United States, through the Justice Department, was to exempt itself ahead of time from the laws it was about to break. In essence, it was to give itself the equivalent of a hall pass for future illegal activities in the new policies and practices of detention.""

great post SteveA, thnx.