Lies to Congress, Domestic Spying, Torture: Why the Bush White House Must Be Prosecuted

AlterNet / BySteven Rosenfeld
Lies to Congress, Domestic Spying, Torture: Why the Bush White House Must Be Prosecuted

February 24, 2012 |

Elizabeth Holtzman is a former Democratic congresswomen, lawyer, prosecutor and author. Her new book, co-written with Cynthia Cooper, is Cheating Justice: How Bush and Cheney Attacked the Rule of Law and Plotted to Avoid Prosecution—and What We Can Do About It. She talked to AlterNet about the book and about holding the Bush administration accountable. (Listen to the audio version.)

~snip~
Elizabeth Holtzman: My co-author Cynthia Cooper and I took a very long and hard look at what possible federal criminal statutes could be involved in President Bush and Vice-President Cheney’s misconduct during their administration. Their misconduct fell into three main areas: One, deceptions of Congress in connection with taking the country into the Iraq war, which now the figures suggest cost us $3 trillion aside from lives and injuries to American service people.

The second area of possible illegality is the possible violation of the wiretapping laws, which is a federal crime and a felony.

And the third area is the mistreatment of detainees, which can also be a federal crime under the anti-torture statute and it could be under the War Crimes Act, certainly as it was first written.

More:
http://www.alternet.org/story/154289/lies_to_congress_domestic_spying_torture_why_the_bush_white_house_must_be_prosecuted