WAR CRIMES

two articles out today on the bushgang's war crimes

first article:

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GL08Ak02.html

War crimes made easy

How has the Bush administration gotten away with such apparently illegal acts as hiding intelligence reports from Congress, creating secret prisons, establishing death squads, kidnapping people and spiriting them across national borders, and planning unprovoked wars? Part of the answer lies in the administration's deliberate effort, initiated even before September 11, 2001, to tear down any existing legal and institutional means for preventing, exposing or punishing violations of national and international law by American officials.

In 2002, Adriel Bettleheim wrote in the Congressional Quarterly that Vice President Dick Cheney "considers it the responsibility of the current administration to reclaim those lost powers for the institution of the presidency". Indeed, the Bush administration has tried to remove all conceivable restrictions on the "imperial presidency", setting its sights in particular on dismantling the Freedom of Information Act, the Intelligence Oversight Act and the War Powers Resolution.

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The same goes for evidence that such criminal actions were encouraged by high government officials - witness the Federal Bureau of Investigation e-mails from Guantanamo, released only by order of the courts, indicating that abusive interrogation techniques had been authorized by "an executive order signed by President Bush"

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The Bush administration seems to assert that its powers are sufficient for it to initiate an illegal war of aggression without authorization from either the United Nations or Congress.
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second article:

http://www.counterpunch.com/brecher12062005.html


The Posse Gathers
Bush War Crimes


Diverse forces are assembling to bring Bush administration officials to account for war crimes. Cindy Sheehan, Gold Star Mother for Peace, insists: "We cannot have these people pardoned. They need to be tried on war crimes and go to jail." 1 Paul Craig Roberts, Hoover Institution senior fellow and assistant secretary of the treasury under Ronald Reagan, charges Bush with "lies and an illegal war of aggression, with outing CIA agents, with war crimes against Iraqi civilians, with the horrors of the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo torture centers" and calls for the president's impeachment. 2 Anne-Marie Slaughter, dean of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton and former president of the American Society of International Law, declares: "These policies make a mockery of our claim to stand for the rule of law. should be marching on Washington to reject inhumane techniques carried out in our name." 3

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The charge that the U.S. attack on Iraq was a war crime was raised even before the war began. More than 1,000 law professors and U.S. legal institutions organized in opposition to the U.S. war crime of launching an "aggressive war in violation of the UN Charter" against Iraq. Violation of international law was also a central theme in worldwide demonstrations against the war. The attack on the illegality of the war has been revived by the leak of the Downing Street memo; 130 members of Congress joined Rep. John Conyers in demanding that the Bush administration come clean about the invasion-supported by a half million citizen signatures gathered in barely a week. "Scootergate" is fundamentally about the cover-up of White House lies justifying the war.

Illegal detention and torture are also war crimes. Starting with the exposure of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, cascading revelations have established that these cases exemplify a pattern of abuse authorized at the highest levels of government. Human rights groups like the Center for Constitutional Rights, the American Civil Liberties Union, and Human Rights First sued in U.S. and foreign courts against Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and others for breaching the U.S. Constitution and the Geneva Conventions. The Senate's 90-9 vote to restore the military's traditional prohibition against torture and inhumane treatment of prisoners-prompting the Bush administration to threaten a veto-sets the stage for a major confrontation over adherence to both the Geneva Conventions and the U.S. Constitution.

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As Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman put it, the claim that the president is above the law "strikes at the very heart of our democracy. It was the centerpiece of President Richard Nixon's defense in Watergate-a defense that was rejected by the courts and lay at the foundation of the articles of impeachment voted against him by the House Judiciary Committee."
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both articles are detailed and long

will justice be done and the bushgang arrested and tried?

the term 'people' for lack of a better one) cannot affort to let go of power over this country.

They have no intention of going quietly. They'll do, as the prez used to like to say, whatever it takes.