Obama Orders Review of Alleged War Crimes

President Obama has "ordered national security officials to look into allegations that the Bush administration resisted efforts to investigate a CIA-backed Afghan warlord over the killings of hundreds of Taliban prisoners in 2001," who had surrendered to Northern Alliance troops led by Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, "a prominent Afghan warlord who has served as chief of staff of the country's post-Taliban army."

After Physicians for Human Rights reported finding a mass grave in Dasht-e Leili, and a 2002 article in Newsweek reported the allegation against Dostum, Afghanistan theater leader General Tommy Franks supported an investigation, but, according to the New York Times, the Bush administration "repeatedly discouraged efforts to investigate the episode."

"The indications that this had not been properly investigated just recently was brought to my attention," Obama told CNN's Anderson Cooper in an exclusive interview during the president's visit to Ghana. The full interview will air 10 p.m. Monday.

"So what I've asked my national security team to do is to collect the facts for me that are known, and we'll probably make a decision in terms of how to approach it once we have all of the facts gathered up," Obama said.

...When asked by CNN about whether Obama would support an investigation, the president replied, "I think that, you know, there are responsibilities that all nations have, even in war. And if it appears that our conduct in some way supported violations of laws of war, then I think that, you know, we have to know about that."

Never used in this article: The phrase "war crimes."

But that's what we're talking about. Euphemisms be damned. We're talking about war crimes committed during a war we started by a general we supported, and covered up by a former administration.

I would like to hear Obama be a little more fucking angry about that, but given his lackadaisical attitude about investigating Bush administration torture, I guess we ought to be grateful he's even considering an investigation.