Finally, a long-overdue discussion has entered the mainstream: the Bush Administration must be tried for war crimes for the intentional policies of torture implemented in the past few years.

This self-evident truth has finally made its way to the news cycle courtesy of Major General Antonio Taguba, who first investigated the Abu Ghraib abuse. In the preface of a Physicians for Human Rights report on the medical conditions of detainees, Taguba writes:

“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.”

Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post gives a refresher on Taguba’s 2004 Abu Ghraib report:

In his 2004 report on Abu Ghraib, then-Major General Anthony Taguba concluded that “numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees.” He called the abuse “systemic and illegal.” And, as Seymour M. Hersh reported in the New Yorker, he was rewarded for his honesty by being forced into retirement.

Taguba’s sentiment jives with this weeks’ Senate investigation that stated the Pentagon demanded harsh interrogation tactics and that Abu Ghraib was the result of a systemic policy of torture demanded by the highest levels of the Administration. (Noted filmmaker Errol Morris makes this exact point in his recent documentary, Standard Operating Procedure, which examines many of the individuals who were involved in the Abu Ghraib scandal, whose actions were dismissed by the Administartion as aberrations.)

The Geneva Conventions are international law, not merely suggestions.Yet the Administration, as it has done with habeas corpus, has treated them as guidelines, as if they were an idealistic, academic exercise the nation is not bound to observe.

If this debate takes the same circuitous route that these things have in the past, Gen. Taguba will be once again dismissed by Bush and the neocon spin-doctors, like many generals who’ve had their decorous service to the country tarnished by Bush and his fellow draft-dodgers. Which would be a travesty, but far from the first.

It must be noted, thankfully, that the Administration does not define the discussion as much as it once did. Could the tide be turning? The LA Times notes that Lawrence Velvel, dean of the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover, has announced a conference to plan a war crimes trial targeting Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld et al.

Will we ever see Bush be tried? Doubtful of course, if historical examples of the fallout of Presidential malfeasance, such as Iran-Contra, are any indication. All the same, it’s become too easy to be cynical about whether justice will be served for the crimes of the Administration. This country has been run by wanton crooks for the past eight years. McCain and Obama will never call them to account, so the people must. Before only historians remember what they have done, let’s make our voices be heard, and at demand that Bush, Cheney and their Constitution-spurning cronies spend the rest of their days in jail. It may be a fool’s errand, but it’s a righteous one.