Lying's just the tip of the iceberg : Andrew Greeley

http://www.suntimes.com/output/greeley/cst-edt-greel04.html

Andrew Greeley
Lying's just the tip of the iceberg

November 4, 2005


Did the president know what was going on? It is hard to believe that he did not -- any more than President Ronald Reagan was unaware of the Iran-contra deal. Libby's clumsy lies -- attributing the ''leak'' about a CIA agent to journalists -- were probably an attempt to protect the vice president, who is far too clever to be caught in any legal trap. Yet we know enough now to understand that the Iraq war is his war. He and the crowd of neo-conservatives around him and the secretary of defense planned the war even before the president defeated Sen. Al Gore (if he really did). They even tried to blame the World Trade Center attack on Iraq. A democratic Iraq, they argued, would transform the balance of power in the Middle East. The way to Jerusalem, they claimed, was through Baghdad.

Cheney proclaimed to the bitter end that weapons of mass destruction would eventually be found in Iraq and has never retracted or apologized for this claim, which was decisive in winning support for the war from the American people. More recently, he has claimed that the Iraqi insurrection (better called, perhaps, the Iraqi resistance) was in its ''last throes,'' despite overwhelming evidence that it grows ever stronger. Is he lying, or is he the kind of true believer who sees the world differently than everyone else?


The vice president is also supporting legislation that would provide the basis for the CIA to do what it is already doing -- torture people who are held outside this country. Granted Cheney's serious fear that jihadism has created another cold war situation, such legislation would still reduce the United States to a country that willingly supports savagery -- an ineffective strategy at that. The war is Cheney's war, and the 2,000 American dead and the 32,000 Iraqi dead are Cheney's victims. The torture is Cheney's torture.



There is nothing in the American legal system that permits the indictment of public officials for war crimes. Thus, perjury and obstruction of justice must suffice as a substitute. Yet it seems evident that both Cheney and Libby are war criminals. They fed the country false information to seduce it into a war that was both unnecessary and incompetent. And there is very little the American people can do to end the war for several more years.

First, Fitz could well still nail people for outing a CIA agent, revealing classified information, and crimes like that. Not exactly war crimes, but a step up from perjury (cover-up of the original crime).

Second, we can stay as long as we like in Iraq. The longer we stay, the worse it will get. There is no reason not to pull out starting as soon as logistically possible. Bush has not only lost the war already, he has turned the situation into a permanent disaster which will take generations to recover from. No reason to stay "several more years" because it would be counter-productive.

The US has signed treaties on both war crimes and torture. The Constitution provides that signed treaties are also US law.
There is also the matter of the war profiteering.

They are very prosecutable.

Greeley says: "There is nothing in the American legal system that permits the indictment of public officials for war crimes."

What about the International War Crimes Tribunal? Or getting them in front of the Hague? Isn't there anything within the UN Charter than they can be charged with? Or NATO? Or GATT? Anything? Greeley, if I remember correctly, is a Catholic priest (maybe he's something higher by now). Greeley, believing in God, may be content with knowing they'll be tried in a "higher court", but that's not enough (imho).

the United States. That's what sorta galls me about McCain's anti-torture bill: we already have a law which forbids any official, soldier, etc. from being involved with torture in any way, including remanding people to other countries for the purposes of torture. The Bush admin knows this; it was discussed in the infamous "torture memo." They clearly understood that they could be prosecuted at some later date under existing U.S. law.

anyone who supports these lying bastards is a war criminal