Leaked Red Cross report sets up Bush team for international war-crimes trial

Jane Mayer's indispensable story on the CIA black sites and the unlawful torture...

The Banality Of Dick Cheney's Evil

Edited to add: Donald Rumsfeld: The War Crimes Case

I would prefer the ones who do the paying are the ones at the top.

I don't believe in the death penalty either. Not for genocide, torture or anything.

I want the bastards in jail for the rest of their goddamn lives. And I hope they live long miserable lives too.

Don

The US will never return to respectability unless/until the upper echelon who ordered the Black Sites and the administration of torture are brought to justice. Otherwise, a few underlings will be the fall guys for the power brokers who designed this war and the torture that went along with it.

they are not going to forget, there are 131 million people in the M.E. that are Islamic.

its one of those things that's just not going to happen

complicit. As in Abu Grahib, GITMO & Renditon, Congress shelved the actual Investigations of the real Torture being commited by the US & their counterparts. This is also the reason why any Impeachment of Bush &/or Cheney will never happen. Congress has lost it's moral compass.

will eventually see their own careers and reputations ruined. Its somewhat curious that they don't get it.

We can call it what we want, and so can the rest of the world.

If that government refuses to give them up, refuses to extradite the suspects, then there will be no war crimes trial, so there will be no justice done. There's a fair number of "middle of the road" politicians in the US Congress who would rather not extradite citing the excuse that "it's now in the past; time to move on."

In the past, you had to argue from a position of strength against the rogue government. Back then, the position of strength was usually achieved by smashing the offending government's armies and reducing its structure by which is rules to rubble. I hope it wouldn't come to that, but I hardly doubt, for instance, the EU or any other power in the world has the stomach to prosecute US government officials without fear of ruffling trans-Atlantic economic and political ties, ties that matter to a great number of powerful bankers and industrialists. The only way the EU would go that far against the US government is if the US waged war on the EU itself; then it becomes personal for them, but even Bush isn't that stupid to attack a world power.

The United States is not a member nation of the International Criminal Court so the court has no authority over it. It cannot investigate nor can it prosecute citizens or representatives of the United States including military personnel and public officials.

Three guesses who made sure the United States did not become a member.

A question for the Democratic presidential candidates is whether the United States will become a member if they become president and whether they will allow investigation and prosecution of this administration. Watch them all stammer and stutter if the question is asked.

do the same. Maybe issue another Declaration of Independence and list our grievances vs. King Gorge W, and then hold an election to elect a new president NOW, not a year from now. Meanwhile, it would have to be a worldwide effort to get BushCheney & Co. to a war crimes court and hold trials.

Where are today's Thomas Jeffersons and Ben Franklins?

After hearing Obama speak today in NH, I think he's a leader but he needs to get in front of this issue.

Might makes right, especially in world events.

YES!

torture is despicable and not effective.

apparently we can't help ourselves

I hoped that the people would listen back in 91, when the Village Voice printed that article about the use of Depleted Uranium Weapons in the Gulf War.

normally, he'd find a way to blame dems for the whole thing...

Because BushCo. would be subject to International Law and punishment, when all the facts came out. That would put the the highest officials in our government at the mercy of being tried for war crimes.

No Congress, Democrat or Republican, is ever going to set that precedent to subject our highest officials, regardless of how bad they are, to face prosecution from foreign governments and groups. Just not going to happen, and just maybe that is why there is no strong push in Congress to impeach, because of where it would eventually lead if the truth were known.

merely "allowed" to operate. This whole administration deserves to be in prison yet congress treats them as legitimate. Two members who would have blocked the Patriot Act were the only two in congress to receive anthrax at their offices. Please understand that under the surface there is president acting like a dictator daring anyone to stop him. He is getting away with everything because congress has not demanded exposure of his illegal acts.

Not a care in the world for all the death he is responsible for. We all have to endure this shame because our representatives have allowed it and are allowing it to continue. This stain on America is visible to the rest of the world but still our nation will not even recognize it.

Remember how surprising it was to learn that a Sunni minority controlled and ruled a Shiite majority for 30yrs in a reign of terror. They far outnumbered the Sunnis, so how could this be? So too America has allowed a 30% minority to rob us of our personal freedoms and wage an unjust war. To kidnap and torture abroad, while stealing elections at home. Refusing to allow the American public any oversight of this administration and turn our Justice dept into an arm of the WH. To "force" our soldiers to fight and die policing and refereeing a civil war in order to steal the resources of another country, and drain American treasure paying off the war profiteers like Blackwater and KBR and Exxon/Mobile(who boast a $36.9Billion profit for last year alone). The corporations didn't own Nurnberg after WWII and it seems hopeless to expect this administration will ever appear at the Hague but they can be stopped here. It's been six years and the rest of the world is very aware of what we have allowed our country to become. This 30% torturing, war supporting, lying covert WH is still in power.
Question is...how long will we allow it to rule?

we could not be deemed "good Germans" or "complicit". We've done our best, trying to elect representatives who will hold this criminal administration accountable, but not enough of our representatives have the spine to do what they were elected to do, so nothing gets done. We e-mail them, we telephone them, we organize protests here and there, but in the end it's all been futile. None of it has made any difference.

If there's any hope at all left, it's going to be years, perhaps many years, picking off one representative at a time for defeat by a progressive with a conscience before things just stop getting worse every day.

The rest of the planet, meanwhile, remains aghast at what Amerika has become, yet also remains powerless to help us 70 percenters.

No matter how bad things got in the past, I never dreamed I'd ever witness such a massive, all-pervasive national nightmare in my lifetime. And I'm 62.

I sometimes think that if I were young again I'd expatriate.