Britain announced Tuesday that it will pay as many as 16 former Guantanamo detainees millions of dollars to settle claims that its government was complicit in their abuse at the hands of U.S. officials. Details of the settlements have not been publicly disclosed.
The settlements triggered calls from the American Civil Liberties Union for the Obama administration to stop invoking the state secrets privilege to keep details of what happened to detainees from being aired in American courts.
...Jameel Jaffer, the ACLU's deputy legal director, said Tuesday that it was "deeply troubling" in the face of the British settlements that "here in the United States the Obama administration continues to shield the architects of the torture program from civil liability while Bush-era officials, including former President Bush and former Vice President Cheney, boast of their crimes on national television."
"If other democracies can compensate survivors and hold officials accountable for their endorsement of torture, surely we can do the same," he said. ...McClatchy
It's interesting that some experts are associating the general absence of government accountability with fiscal mismanagement and economic decline. In other words, when we elected Bush/Cheney we bought the package.
