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Blunderov
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Worries About War Crimes Heat up in the White House
« on: 2008-07-15 03:44:27 » |
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[Blunderov] Watching the bastards squirm just a little may be, realistically, as good as it is ever going to get. Consequently I'm all for enjoying, and if possible prolonging, the contortions to the max. Oh those two little words that mean so much -"universal jurisdiction". Mmm. Boots do get onto other feet sometimes. Just ask Saddam Hussein for instance.
"Methought I heard a voice cry 'Sleep no more;/ Macbeth does murder sleep"
http://www.alternet.org/rights/91340/
Worries About War Crimes Heat up in the White House
By Frank Rich, The New York Times. Posted July 14, 2008.
Top Bush hands are starting to get sweaty about where they left their fingerprints on U.S. torture policies.
We know what a criminal White House looks like from "The Final Days," Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's classic account of Richard Nixon's unraveling. The cauldron of lies, paranoia and illegal surveillance boiled over, until it was finally every man for himself as desperate courtiers scrambled to save their reputations and, in a few patriotic instances, their country.
"The Final Days" was published in 1976, two years after Nixon abdicated in disgrace. With the Bush presidency, no journalist (or turncoat White House memoirist) is waiting for the corpse to be carted away. The latest and perhaps most chilling example arrives this week from Jane Mayer of The New Yorker, long a relentless journalist on the war-on-terror torture beat. Her book "The Dark Side" connects the dots of her own past reporting and that of her top-tier colleagues (including James Risen and Scott Shane of The New York Times) to portray a White House that, like its prototype, savaged its enemies within almost as ferociously as it did the Constitution.
Some of "The Dark Side" seems right out of "The Final Days," minus Nixon's operatic boozing and weeping. We learn, for instance, that in 2004 two conservative Republican Justice Department officials had become "so paranoid" that "they actually thought they might be in physical danger." The fear of being wiretapped by their own peers drove them to speak in code.
The men were John Ashcroft's deputy attorney general, James Comey, and an assistant attorney general, Jack Goldsmith. Their sin was to challenge the White House's don, Dick Cheney, and his consigliere, his chief of staff David Addington, when they circumvented the Geneva Conventions to make torture the covert law of the land. Mr. Comey and Mr. Goldsmith failed to stop the "torture memos" and are long gone from the White House. But Vice President Cheney and Mr. Addington remain enabled by a president, attorney general (Michael Mukasey) and C.I.A. director (Michael Hayden) who won't shut the door firmly on torture even now.
Nixon parallels take us only so far, however. "The Dark Side" is scarier than "The Final Days" because these final days aren't over yet and because the stakes are much higher. Watergate was all about a paranoid president's narcissistic determination to cling to power at any cost. In Ms. Mayer's portrayal of the Bush White House, the president is a secondary, even passive, figure, and the motives invoked by Mr. Cheney to restore Nixon-style executive powers are theoretically selfless. Possessed by the ticking-bomb scenarios of television's "24," all they want to do is protect America from further terrorist strikes.
So what if they cut corners, the administration's last defenders argue. While prissy lawyers insist on habeas corpus and court-issued wiretap warrants, the rest of us are being kept safe by the Cheney posse.
But are we safe? As Al Qaeda and the Taliban surge this summer, that single question is even more urgent than the moral and legal issues attending torture.
On those larger issues, the evidence is in, merely awaiting adjudication. Mr. Bush's 2005 proclamation that "we do not torture" was long ago revealed as a lie. Antonio Taguba, the retired major general who investigated detainee abuse for the Army, concluded that "there is no longer any doubt" that "war crimes were committed." Ms. Mayer uncovered another damning verdict: Red Cross investigators flatly told the C.I.A. last year that America was practicing torture and vulnerable to war-crimes charges.
Top Bush hands are starting to get sweaty about where they left their fingerprints. Scapegoating the rotten apples at the bottom of the military's barrel may not be a slam-dunk escape route from accountability anymore.
No wonder the former Rumsfeld capo, Douglas Feith, is trying to discredit a damaging interview he gave to the British lawyer Philippe Sands for another recent and essential book on what happened, "Torture Team." After Mr. Sands previewed his findings in the May issue of Vanity Fair, Mr. Feith protested he had been misquoted -- apparently forgetting that Mr. Sands had taped the interview. Mr. Feith and Mr. Sands are scheduled to square off in a House hearing this Tuesday.
So hot is the speculation that war-crimes trials will eventually follow in foreign or international courts that Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff, has publicly advised Mr. Feith, Mr. Addington and Alberto Gonzales, among others, to "never travel outside the U.S., except perhaps to Saudi Arabia and Israel." But while we wait for the wheels of justice to grind slowly, there are immediate fears to tend. Ms. Mayer's book helps cement the case that America's use of torture has betrayed not just American values but our national security, right to the present day.
In her telling, a major incentive for Mr. Cheney's descent into the dark side was to cover up for the Bush White House's failure to heed the Qaeda threat in 2001. Jack Cloonan, a special agent for the F.B.I.'s Osama bin Laden unit until 2002, told Ms. Mayer that Sept. 11 was "all preventable." By March 2000, according to the C.I.A.'s inspector general, "50 or 60 individuals" in the agency knew that two Al Qaeda suspects -- soon to be hijackers -- were in America. But there was no urgency at the top. Thomas Pickard, the acting F.B.I. director that summer, told Ms. Mayer that when he expressed his fears about the Qaeda threat to Mr. Ashcroft, the attorney general snapped, "I don't want to hear about that anymore!"
After 9/11, our government emphasized "interrogation over due process," Ms. Mayer writes, "to pre-empt future attacks before they materialized." But in reality torture may well be enabling future attacks. This is not just because Abu Ghraib snapshots have been used as recruitment tools by jihadists. No less destructive are the false confessions* inevitably elicited from tortured detainees. The avalanche of misinformation since 9/11 has compromised prosecutions, allowed other culprits to escape and sent the American military on wild-goose chases. The coerced "confession" to the murder of the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, to take one horrific example, may have been invented to protect the real murderer.
The biggest torture-fueled wild-goose chase, of course, is the war in Iraq. Exhibit A, revisited in "The Dark Side," is Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, an accused Qaeda commander whose torture was outsourced by the C.I.A. to Egypt. His fabricated tales of Saddam's biological and chemical W.M.D. -- and of nonexistent links between Iraq and Al Qaeda -- were cited by President Bush in his fateful Oct. 7, 2002, Cincinnati speech ginning up the war and by Mr. Powell in his subsequent United Nations presentation on Iraqi weaponry. Two F.B.I. officials told Ms. Mayer that Mr. al-Libi later explained his lies by saying: "They were killing me. I had to tell them something."
That "something" was crucial in sending us into the quagmire that, five years later, has empowered Iran and compromised our ability to counter the very terrorists that torture was supposed to thwart. As The Times reported two weeks ago, Iraq has monopolized our military and intelligence resources to the point where we don't have enough predator drones or expert C.I.A. field agents to survey the tribal areas where terrorists are amassing in Pakistan. Meanwhile, the threat to America from Al Qaeda is "comparable to what it faced on Sept. 11, 2001," said Seth Jones, a RAND Corporation terrorism expert and Pentagon consultant. The difference between now and then is simply that the base of operations has moved, "roughly the difference from New York to Philadelphia."
Yet once again terrorism has fallen off America's map, landing at or near the bottom of voters' concerns in recent polls. There were major attacks in rapid succession last week in Pakistan, Afghanistan (the deadliest in Kabul since we "defeated" the Taliban in 2001) and at the American consulate in Turkey. Who listened to this ticking time bomb? It's reminiscent of July 2001, when few noticed that the Algerian convicted of trying to bomb Los Angeles International Airport on the eve of the millennium testified that he had been trained in bin Laden's Afghanistan camps as part of a larger plot against America.
In last Sunday's Washington Post, the national security expert Daniel Benjamin sounded an alarm about the "chronic" indecisiveness and poor execution of Bush national security policy as well as the continuing inadequacies of the Department of Homeland Security. Mr. Benjamin must feel a sinking sense of dj vu. Exactly seven years ago in the same newspaper, just two months before 9/11, he co-wrote an article headlined "Defusing a Time Bomb" imploring the Bush administration in vain to pay attention to Afghanistan because that country's terrorists "continue to pose the most dangerous threat to American lives."
And so we're back where we started in the summer of 2001, with even shark attacks and Chandra Levy's murder (courtesy of a new Washington Post investigation) returning to the news. We are once again distracted and unprepared while the Taliban and bin Laden's minions multiply in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This, no less than the defiling of the Constitution, is the legacy of an administration that not merely rationalized the immorality of torture but shackled our national security to the absurdity that torture could easily fix the terrorist threat.
That's why the Bush White House's corruption in the end surpasses Nixon's. We can no longer take cold comfort in the Watergate maxim that the cover-up was worse than the crime. This time the crime is worse than the cover-up, and the punishment could rain down on us all.
© 2008 The New York Times
AlterNet is making this New York Times material available in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107: This article is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
*[Bl.]One of the brighter lights of my home country Gavin Hood has just made a creditable film entitled "Rendition" in which a character quotes Shakespeare on the subject of false confession made under torture:
I fear you speak upon the rack,
Where men enforced do speak anything.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendition_%28film%29
Rendition (film)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Rendition
Running time 122 min.
Country United States
Language English
For the British 2007 film starring Andy Serkis see Extraordinary Rendition (film)
Rendition is a 2007 drama film directed by Gavin Hood and starring Reese Witherspoon, Meryl Streep, Peter Sarsgaard, Alan Arkin, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Omar Metwally. It centers on the controversial CIA practice of extraordinary rendition, and is based on the true story of Khalid El-Masri who was mistaken for Khalid al-Masri. The movie also has similarities to the Canadian Maher Arar case. Arar (born 1970), a telecommunications engineer, lives in Canada, holding dual Syrian and Canadian citizenship. He was deported to Syria and tortured, in an apparent example of the United States policy of "extraordinary rendition".
Contents
1 Synopsis
2 Cast
3 Reception
4 References
5 External links
Synopsis
In a suicide attack with an explosive belt in a town square in North Africa, a colleague of CIA analyst Douglas Freeman (Jake Gyllenhaal) and 18 other people are killed. The target was interrogator and torturer Abasi, but he is unharmed.
Egyptian-born Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwally) lives in the US with his pregnant wife Isabella (Reese Witherspoon) and their young son. According to phone records the known terrorist Rashid has made a phone call to Anwar. Therefore he is suspected of being a terrorist too, and after returning to the US from a conference in South Africa, he is arrested and sent to a secret detention facility in North Africa (extraordinary rendition), near the location of the suicide attack depicted earlier. He is not allowed to make any phone calls and Isabella is not informed. She travels to Washington and in spite of denials learns that Anwar has been arrested. Much to her anger and despair, she does not find out where he is and what the charges are.
For lack of more experienced staff, Freeman is assigned the task of observing the interrogation of Anwar by Abasi. It is accompanied by torture. After Freeman briefly questions and tortures Anwar himself, he is convinced of Anwar's innocence. However, his boss insists that the detention continues, justifying such treatments as necessary to save thousands from becoming victims of terrorism. Eventually Anwar confesses to have advised on how to make more powerful bombs, and to have been promised $40,000 in return. However, Freeman believes it is a false confession, which is confirmed when he finds out the names are that of the Egyptian soccer team from the year Anwar left Egypt. He quotes Shakespeare to Abasi:
I fear you speak upon the rack,
Where men enforced do speak anything.
Without consent of his superiors, Freeman orders Anwar's release and lets him escape through a clandestine trip by ship to Spain. He returns to the US and is reunited with his family. Meanwhile, the arrest is in the newspapers.
Another story line is shown in parallel, but at the end of the film it turns out that all this happened before the suicide attack: Abasi's daughter Fatima has run away from home with her boyfriend Khalid (Moa Khouas), whose brother died in Abasi's prison. Unknown to Fatima, Khalid is a terrorist. He is the one who carries out the suicide attack with Abasi as the target. But Fatima finds out from the photos that Khalid's brother met his death at the hands of her father, and realizes what Khalid is planning. At the town square Fatima begs him not to do it, arguing that the target is her father. After removing the pin of his detonator he hesitates, and is therefore killed by the organizers of the attack. As a result he releases the handle of the detonator, and the bomb explodes, killing Fatima also.
The record of a phone call supposedly made by Rashid to Anwar is not explained in the film. However, earlier it was mentioned that phones are sometimes passed on from one person to another, yet despite this reasonable doubt the CIA officials refused to release him. It turned out that in South Africa, while Anwar's phone was off, there had been a call to it from an unknown person.
For the scenes of Abasi's private life it is not always clear to which storyline they belong, that before or after the explosion. Abasi learns about Fatima's death only a week later.
Cast
Omar Metwally - Anwar El-Ibrahimi
Reese Witherspoon - Isabella Fields El-Ibrahimi
Aramis Knight - Jeremy El-Ibrahimi
Rosie Malek-Yonan - Nuru El-Ibrahimi
Jake Gyllenhaal - Douglas Freeman
Moa Khouas - Khalid
Zineb Oukach - Fatima Fawal
Yigal Naor - Abasi Fawal
J. K. Simmons - Lee Mayers
Meryl Streep - Corrine Whitman
Bob Gunton - Lars Whitman
Raymonde Amsalem - Layla Fawal
Simon Abkarian - Said Abdel Aziz
Wendy Phillips - Samantha
Peter Sarsgaard - Alan Smith
Christian Martin - Senator Lewis' Aide
Alan Arkin - Senator Hawkins
Reception
Reviews for Rendition were mixed. At Rotten Tomatoes, it achieved a 47% Tomatometer from 140 reviews. And based on 33 reviews, the film averaged a score of 55 at Metacritic.[1] Roger Ebert awarded the film four stars out of four, saying that, "Rendition is valuable and rare. As I wrote from Toronto: 'It is a movie about the theory and practice of two things: torture and personal responsibility. And it is wise about what is right, and what is wrong.'"[2] In contrast, Peter Travers of Rolling Stone applauded the cast, but noted that the film was a "bust as a persuasive drama".[3] Travers declared the film the year's Worst Anti-War Film on his list of the Worst Movies of 2007.[
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Fritz
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Re:Worries About War Crimes Heat up in the White House
« Reply #1 on: 2008-07-16 19:36:52 » |
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[Fritz] Little blast from last fall that is still making the rounds.
Rumsfeld Flees France, Fearing Arrest
Source: Alternet World News.
Date: October 29, 2007.
Anti-torture protesters in France believe that the defense secretary fled over the open border to Germany, where a war crimes case against Rumsfeld was dismissed by a federal court
Former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld fled France today fearing arrest over charges of "ordering and authorizing" torture of detainees at both the American-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the U.S. military's detainment facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, unconfirmed reports coming from Paris suggest.
U.S. embassy officials whisked Rumsfeld away yesterday from a breakfast meeting in Paris organized by the Foreign Policy magazine after human rights groups filed a criminal complaint against the man who spearheaded President George W. Bush's "war on terror" for six years.
Under international law, authorities in France are obliged to open an investigation when a complaint is made while the alleged torturer is on French soil.
According to activists in France, who greeted Rumsfeld, shouting "murderer" and "war criminal" at the breakfast meeting venue, U.S. embassy officials remained tight-lipped about the former defense secretary's whereabouts citing "security reasons".
Anti-torture protesters in France believe that the defense secretary fled over the open border to Germany, where a war crimes case against Rumsfeld was dismissed by a federal court. But activists point out that under the Schengen agreement that ended border checkpoints across a large part of the European Union, French law enforcement agents are allowed to cross the border into Germany in pursuit of a fleeing fugitive.
"Rumsfeld must be feeling how Saddam Hussein felt when U.S. forces were hunting him down," activist Tanguy Richard said. "He may never end up being hanged like his old friend, but he must learn that in the civilized world, war crime doesn't pay."
International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) along with the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), and the French League for Human Rights (LDH) filed the complaint on Thursday after learning that Rumsfeld was scheduled to visit Paris.
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Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains -anon-
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Blunderov
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Re:Worries About War Crimes Heat up in the White House
« Reply #2 on: 2008-07-21 08:24:06 » |
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[Blunderov] A devil's advocate might say that there are good reasons to give a free pass to heads of state and upper echelon executives no matter what they might have done. It might be argued that a head of state ought never to be afraid to act in her countries interest.
I don't see it that way. It seems possible to turn the Conehead cri de guerre against them; in the modern era of weapons of mass destruction it is imperative that diplomacy and the fabric of international law be strengthened and refined. Robber Baron rogue states like the USA are a threat to the survival of the species. Monsters like George Bush MUST be afraid of the consequences. Otherwise we will all die.
Vector =thehollywoodliberal.com
http://www.alternet.org/rights/92104/
Nine Reasons to Investigate War Crimes Now
By Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith, The Nation. Posted July 19, 2008.
Why we can't let the Bush Administration get away with its crimes.
Retired General Antonio Taguba, the officer who led the Army's investigation into Abu Ghraib, recently wrote in the preface to the new report, Broken laws, Broken Lives:
"There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account."
Should those who ordered war crimes be held to account? With the conclusion of the Bush regime approaching, many people are dubious, even those horrified by Administration actions. They fear a long, divisive ordeal that could tear the country apart. They note that such division could make it far harder for the country to address the many other crises it is facing. They see the upcoming elections as a better way to set the country on a new path.
Many Democrats in particular are proposing to let bygones be bygones and move on to confront the problems of the future, rather than dwelling on the past. The Democratic leadership sees rising gas prices, foreclosures, and health care costs, as well as widespread dissatisfaction with the direction of the country, as playing in their favor. Why risk it all by playing the war crimes blame game? Perhaps some Democratic leaders are also concerned that their own role in enabling or even encouraging war crimes might be exposed.
Meanwhile, the evidence confirming not only a deliberate policy of torture, but of conspiring in an illegal war of aggression and conducting a criminal occupation, continues to pile ever higher. Bush's own press secretary Scott McClellan has revealed in his book, What Happened, how deliberately the public was misled to foment the attack on Iraq. Philippe Sands' new book, Torture Team, has shown how the top legal and political leadership fought for a policy of torture -- circumventing and misleading top military officials to do so. Jane Mayer's The Dark Side, reveals that a secret report by the Red Cross -- given to the CIA and shared with President Bush and Condoleezza Rice -- found that U.S. interrogation methods are "categorically" torture and that the "abuse constituted war crimes, placing the highest officials in the U.S. government in jeopardy of being prosecuted."
Despite the reluctance to open what many see as a can of worms, there are fresh moves on many fronts to hold top U.S. officials accountable for war crimes.
Courts: U.S. courts have issued a barrage of decisions against the Administration's claim that they can do anything and still be within the law. The Supreme Court ruled June 12 that the Administration cannot deny habeas corpus rights to Guantánamo detainees. The DC Circuit Court of Appeals on June 30 overturned the Pentagon's enemy combatant designation of a Chinese Muslim held in Guantánamo for the last six years. A Maine jury in April acquitted the Bangor Six of criminal trespass charges stemming from protesters' claim that the "Constitution was being violated by the Bush Administration's involvement in Iraq."
Congressional investigation: Rep. John Conyers has recently brought top policy-makers, including former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo, Vice President Cheney's Chief of Staff David Addington, and this week former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith and former Attorney General John Ashcroft before a House Judiciary subcommittee and grilled them on their role crafting the Administration's torture policy.
Senate hearings in June revealed that treatment of Guantánamo captives was modeled on techniques allegedly used by Communist China to force false confessions from U.S. soldiers.
Impeachment: Despite Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi's instruction to keep impeachment "off the table," Rep. Dennis Kucinich for the first time brought an impeachment resolution to the House floor that incorporated a devastating, thirty-five article indictment spelling out Bush Administration war crimes and crimes against the Constitution. Now Rep. Conyers has announced that the Judiciary Committee will hold hearings on the charges July 25. Even after the Bush Administration leaves office, the judges it appointed who appear complicit in war crimes -- notably torture policy architect Judge Jay S. Bybee -- could still be impeached.
Truth commission: In response to General Taguba's accusations, New York Times Op-Ed columnist Nicholas D. Kristof has just called for the establishment of a truth commission -- like that of post-Apartheid South Africa -- with subpoena power to investigate the abuses in the aftermath of 9/11 and "lead a process of soul searching and national cleansing."
International: In May, Vanity Fair magazine published an article by British human rights attorney Philippe Sands, in which he described the reasons Administration lawyers face a real risk of criminal investigations if they stray beyond U.S. borders. The British parliament is about to launch an investigation of Washington's lying to the British government about its use of its facilities for "extraordinary rendition." Constitutional lawyer Jonathan Turley recently said, "I think it might in fact be time for the United States to be held internationally to a tribunal. I never thought in my lifetime I would say that." Colin Powell's former chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson publicly advised Feith, Addington, And Albert Gonzales "never to travel outside the U.S., except perhaps to Saudi Arabia and Israel."
Prosecution: According to a recent Mellman Group survey commissioned by the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans of all political stripes overwhelmingly support the appointment of an independent prosecutor to investigate both the destruction of the CIA's interrogation tapes and the possible use of torture by the agency. Every segment of the electorate -- including majorities of Democrats (82 percent), independents (62 percent), and Republicans (51 percent) -- want to hold this administration accountable for its role in the destruction of the torture tapes.
Vincent Bugliosi, the former Los Angeles County Prosecutor who has won twenty-one convictions in murder trials, including Charles Manson's, has just published The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, which argues that there is overwhelming evidence President Bush took the nation to war in Iraq under false pretenses and must be prosecuted for the consequent deaths of over 4,000 U.S. soldiers.
Dean Lawrence Velvel of the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover is planning a September conference to map out war crimes prosecutions against President Bush and other administration officials. Velvel says that "plans will be laid and necessary organizational structures set up, to pursue the guilty as long as necessary and, if need be, to the ends of the Earth." Reps. John Conyers, Jerrold Nadler, and Bill Delahunt have called on Attorney General Michael Mukasey to appoint a special counsel to investigate the rendition of Canadian citizen Maher Arar to Syria.
Citizen action: Voters in Brattleboro and Marlboro, Vermont this spring approved a measure that instructs police to arrest President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for "crimes against our Constitution," should they venture into those precincts.
All these developments suggest approaches that might be used to hold Bush Administration war criminals accountable. Establishing accountability for U.S. war crimes in the Iraq war era is the sine qua non for initiating a new era on different principles. Here are nine reasons why we must not let bygones be bygones:
1. World peace cannot be achieved without human rights and accountability.
According to Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, chief American prosecutor at the Nuremberg Tribunals, "The ultimate step in avoiding periodic wars, which are inevitable in a system of international lawlessness, is to make statesmen responsible to law." Moving in that direction will be impossible unless such responsibility applies to the statesmen of the world's most powerful countries, and above all the world's sole superpower. U.S. support for the war crimes charges like those just brought by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir will represent little more than hypocrisy if U.S. Presidents are not held to the same standard.
2. The rule of law is central to our democracy.
Most Americans believe that even the highest officials are bound by law. If we send mentally-disabled juveniles to prison as adults, but let government officials who authorize torture and launch illegal wars go scot-free, we destroy the very basis of the rule of law.
3. We must not allow precedents to be set that promote war crimes.
Executive action unchallenged by Congress changes the way our law is interpreted. According to Robert Borosage, writing for Huffington Post, "If Bush's extreme assertions of power are not challenged by the Congress, they end up not simply creating new law, they could end up rewriting the Constitution itself."
4. We must restore the principles of democracy to our government.
The claim that the President, as commander-in-chief, can exercise the unlimited powers of a king or dictator strikes at the very heart of our democracy. As Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson put it, we, as citizens, would "submit ourselves to rules only if under rules." Countries like Chile can attest that the restoration of democracy and the rule of law requires more than voting a new party into office -- it requires a rejection of impunity for the criminal acts of government officials.
5. We must forestall an imperialist resurgence.
When they are out of office, the advocates of imperial expansion and global domination have proven brilliant at lying in wait to undermine and destroy their opponents.
They did it to destroy the presidencies of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. They'll do it again to an Obama Administration unless their machinations are exposed and discredited first.
6. We must have national consensus on the real reasons for the Bush Administration's failures.
Republicans are preparing to dominate future decades of American politics by blaming the failure of the Iraq war on those who "sent a signal" that the U.S. would not "stay the course" whatever the cost. Establishing the real reasons for the failure of the U.S. in Iraq -- the criminal and anti-democratic character of the war -- is the necessary condition for defeating that effort.
7. We must restore America's damaged reputation abroad.
The world has watched as the United States -- the self-proclaimed steward of democracy -- has systematically broken the letter and spirit of its Constitution, violated international treaties, and ignored basic moral tenets of humanity. As former Navy General Counsel Alberto Mora recently pointed out to the Senate Armed Services Committee, our nation's "policy of cruelty" has violated our "overarching foreign policy interests and our national security." To establish international legitimacy, we must demonstrate that we are capable of holding our leaders to account.
8. We must lay the basis for major change in U.S. foreign policy.
Real security in the era of global warming and nuclear proliferation must be based on international cooperation. But genuine cooperation requires that the U.S. entirely repudiate the course of the past eight years. The American people must understand why international cooperation rather than pursuit of global domination is necessary to their own security. And other countries must be convinced that we really mean it.
9. We must deter future U.S. war crimes.
The specter of more war crimes haunts our future. Rumors continue to circulate about an American or American-backed Israeli attack on Iran. A recently introduced House resolution promoted by AIPAC "demands" that the President initiate what is effectively a blockade against Iran -- an act seen by some as tantamount to a declaration of war. Nothing could provide a greater deterrent to such future war crimes than establishing accountability for those of the past.
Holding war criminals accountable will require placing the long-term well-being of our country and the world ahead of short-term political advantage. As Rep. Wexler put it, "We owe it to the American people and history to pursue the wrongdoing of this Administration whether or not it helps us politically or in the next election. Our actions will properly define the Bush Administration in the eyes of history and that is the true test."
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Blunderov
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Re:Worries About War Crimes Heat up in the White House
« Reply #3 on: 2008-07-22 02:45:58 » |
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[Blunderov] The first intimation of a very chilly dawn begins to prick the horizon and with it the realization by some that for them, contrary to the usual received wisdom, the darkest hour might well turn out to be AFTER that event rather than just before it. More wriggling and twisting than a sack full of eels now ensues.
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/07/21/fineman-bush-is-pushing-for-a-mccain-administration-to-cover-over-the-misdeeds-of-his-presidency/
Fineman: Bush is pushing for a McCain administration to ‘cover over’ the misdeeds of his presidency.»
Yesterday on The Chris Matthews Show on NBC, Newsweek columnist Howard Fineman revealed one of the reasons President Bush is pushing so hard for Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) to win the election in November:
FINEMAN: There’s also fear. If you’re in this White House, you want another Republican administration to follow. You don’t want a Democratic administration coming in there while the evidence is still fresh, so to speak.
MATTHEWS: With the subpoena power.
FINEMAN: With the subpoena power. And looking through all the records and looking through all the decisions that were made. You want cover over your two terms with a third term, the way Ronald Reagan did with George H.W. Bush.
Watch it:
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/07/21/bush-preemptive-pardons/
Conservative Lawyers Urge Bush To Issue ‘Pre-Emptive Pardons’ To Officials Involved In Illegal Programs»
The New York Times reported this weekend that “[f]elons are asking President Bush for pardons and commutations at historic levels as he nears his final months in office, a time when many other presidents have granted a flurry of clemency requests.” However the Times noted that despite commuting Scooter Libby’s prison sentence, applicants “should expect to be disappointed” because Bush “has made little use of his clemency power” compared to past presidents.
Except perhaps if you participated in any illegal activity involving the Bush administration’s controversial counterterrorism programs. According to the Times, “several members of the conservative legal community” in Washington D.C. are urging Bush to issue “pre-emptive pardons” to those involved so as to “not be exposed even to the risk of an investigation and expensive legal bills”:
Such a pardon would reduce the risk that a future administration might undertake a criminal investigation of operatives or policy makers involved in programs that administration lawyers have said were legal but that critics say violated laws regarding torture and surveillance.
Some legal analysts said Mr. Bush might be reluctant to issue such pardons because they could be construed as an implicit admission of guilt. […]
“The president should pre-empt any long-term investigations,” said Victoria Toensing, who was a Justice Department counterterrorism official in the Reagan administration. “If we don’t protect these people who are proceeding in good faith, no one will ever take chances.”
Stuart Taylor, Jr., a constitutional law fellow at Brookings, agrees, saying in a recent Newsweek column that investigations into the Bush administration’s “high level ‘war crimes’” are a “bad idea” and instead called for a “truth commission“:
A criminal investigation would only hinder efforts to determine the truth, and preclude any apologies. It would spur those who know the most to take the Fifth. Any prosecutions would also touch off years of partisan warfare. […]
Absent pardons, pressure to go after GOP “war criminals” would make it very hard to unite Americans of all stripes behind solutions to the many economic and social challenges facing the country.
In fact, the conservative D.C. lawyer circuit may just get its wish. The White House “would not say whether the administration was considering pre-emptive pardons, nor whether it would rule them out.” (HT: Dan Froomkin)
[Bl.]Bandwagons are for jumping on. Looks like Dubya might succumb to writers cramp the way things are going.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5ixCDt5YXknEthwfHw4zu9YaaR9BgD922FU0G0
WASHINGTON (AP) — Disgraced Olympic track star Marion Jones has asked President Bush to commute her six-month prison sentence for lying to federal agents about her use of performance-enhancing drugs and a check-fraud scam.
The Justice Department confirmed Monday that Jones is among hundreds of convicted felons who have applied for presidential pardons or sentence commutations, but would provide no further details. A pardon is an official act of forgiveness that removes civil liabilities stemming from a criminal conviction, while a commutation reduces or eliminates a person's sentence.
Such applications are reviewed by the Justice Department, which makes a recommendation to the president.
It's unclear when Jones, who won three gold and two bronze medals at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, made the request. She entered prison March 7 in Fort Worth, Texas.
After frequently denying that she ever used performance-enhancing drugs, Jones admitted last October she had lied to federal investigators in November 2003. Jones also admitted lying about her knowledge of the involvement of Tim Montgomery, the father of her older son and a former 100-meter world-record holder, in a scheme to cash millions of dollars worth of stolen or forged checks.
Jones was sentenced in January to six months in prison and 400 hours of community service in each of the two years following her release. She was sentenced to six months on the steroids case and two months on the check-fraud case, but was permitted to serve those sentences concurrently.
The judge in Jones' case said the check-fraud scheme was a major crime, and the wide use of steroids "affects the integrity of athletic competition."
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Blunderov
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"We think in generalities, we live in details"
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Re:Worries About War Crimes Heat up in the White House
« Reply #4 on: 2008-07-25 13:41:14 » |
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[Blunderov] Pinochet was pursued into his dotage and died at bay. Likewise the scumbag Luciano Benjamin Menendez has finally got what is coming to him at the ripe old age of 80.
The Coneheads have every reason to be afraid. The civilized world will never forgive or forget what they have done. Time is on the side of the righteous. We will wait our chance.
Nota bene: "Amnesties and pardons introduced after the return to civilian rule meant most of those held responsible for the kidnap, torture and killing of tens of thousands of Argentines during the Dirty War escaped prosecution. Three years ago, these laws were ruled unconstitutional and the trials began again."
http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/20080725_argentine_dirty_war_murderer_gets_life/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/25/argentina.warcrimes
Argentine ex-army chief given life sentence for Dirty War murders
Anil Dawar and agencies guardian.co.uk,
Friday July 25 2008
An Argentine ex-army officer has been sentenced to life in prison for the 1977 kidnapping, torture and murder of four leftwing activists.
Luciano Benjamin Menendez, 80, was found guilty along with seven others of crimes committed during the military dictatorship's "Dirty War" on its opposition.
The victims were dumped in the street to make it look like they died in a shoot-out, the prosecution said.
Friends and family of the dead packed into the court in Cordoba, the city where they died, to listen to the verdict against the former soldier.
Hundreds more watched on a giant screen outside the courthouse as Menendez, one of Argentina's most feared army officers during military rule between 1976 and 1983, sat impassively as he heard his fate.
Menendez, who reached the rank of general, commanded the regional Third Army Corps for five years in the northern city of Cordoba, and is seen as symbolic of the cruel nature of Argentina's military rule in the 1970s and 1980s. He was under house arrest for previous convictions prior to his trial.
The activists - Hilda Palacios, Carlos Laja, Ruben Cardozo and Humberto Brandalisi - were taken to a clandestine torture centre before being executed and dumped in the street.
Amnesties and pardons introduced after the return to civilian rule meant most of those held responsible for the kidnap, torture and killing of tens of thousands of Argentines during the Dirty War escaped prosecution. Three years ago, these laws were ruled unconstitutional and the trials began again.
In a statement read out just before being sentenced, Menendez told the three-judge panel: "Argentine society was involved in a war provoked by international Marxists, the same people that still persist in their obscure aim.
"The difference is a sad one for our homeland as before the terrorists were living illegally and now they do so within the law, pretending to be peaceful citizens, respecting the law and the constitution."
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Blunderov
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Re:Worries About War Crimes Heat up in the White House
« Reply #5 on: 2008-07-26 12:18:19 » |
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[Blunderov] The storm begins to gather. An impressive cast assembles to examine ways and means of prosecuting Bush and his associated cockroaches. A space to watch.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20080725&articleId=9674
CONFERENCE TO DISCUSS, AND LAY PLANS
FOR OBTAINING, PROSECUTIONS OF HIGH LEVEL U.S. WAR CRIMINALS
SET FOR ANDOVER, MASS. , SEPTEMBER 13-14
A two-day conference on obtaining prosecutions of high level American war criminals will open September 13th, in Andover, Mass. The conference will explore the legal grounds for, and plan for, obtaining prosecutions of President Bush and top officials of his Administration for war crimes.
In the tradition of America’s Chief Prosecutor at the Nuremburg War Crimes Trials after World War II, Justice Robert Jackson, the Conference’s purpose is “to hold high U.S. officials accountable in courts of law and, if guilt is found, to obtain appropriate punishments. Otherwise,” said the Conference’s convener, Lawrence Velvel, “the future will be threatened by additional examples of Executive lawlessness by leaders who need fear no personal consequences” for their actions, leading to “the possibility of more Viet Nams, more Iraqs, and more repression.”
Velvel emphasized, “This is intended to be a planning conference, one at which plans will be laid, and necessary organizational structures will be set up, to seek prosecutions to determine guilt and, if guilt is found, appropriate punishments.”
Attendees will hear from prominent authorities on international law, criminal prosecutions, and constitutional rights who are determined to give meaning to Justice Jackson’s words: “The common sense of mankind demands that law shall not stop with the punishment of petty crimes by little people. It must also reach men who possess themselves of great power and make deliberate and concerted use of it to set in motion evils which leave no home in the world untouched.”
Topics to be discussed, Velvel said, include:
# What international and domestic crimes were committed, which facts show crimes under which laws, and what punishments are possible.
# Which high level Executive officials -- and Federal judges and legislators as well, if any -- are chargeable with crimes.
# Which international tribunals, foreign tribunals and domestic tribunals (if any) can be used and how to begin cases and/or obtain prosecutions before them.
# The possibility of establishing a Chief Prosecutor’s Office such as the one at Nuremburg.
# An examination of cases already brought and their outcomes.
# Creating an umbrella Coordinating Committee with representatives from the increasing number of organizations involved in war crimes cases.
# Creating a Center to keep track of and organize compilations of relevant briefs, articles, books, opinions, and facts, etc., on war crimes and prosecutions of war criminals.
Scheduled to address the Conference are:
# Famed former Los Angeles prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi, author of the best-selling “The Prosecution of George W. Bush For Murder”(Vanguard).
# Phillippe Sands, Professor of Law and Director of the Centre of International Courts and Tribunals at University College, London . He is the author of “Torture Team: Rumsfeld’s Memo and the Betrayal of American Values” (Penguin/Palgrave Macmillan), among other works.
# Jordan Paust, Professor of Law at the University of Houston and author of “Beyond The Law.”
# Ann Wright, a former U.S. Army colonel and U.S. Foreign Service official who holds a State Department Award for Heroism and who taught the Geneva Conventions and the Law of Land Warfare at the Special Warfare Center at Ft. Bragg, N.C. She is the coauthor of “Dissent: Voices of Conscience.”
# Peter Weiss, Vice President of the Center For Constitutional Rights, which was recently involved with war crimes complaints filed in Germany and France against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and others.
# Benjamin Davis, Associate Professor at the University of Toledo College of Law and former American Legal Counsel for the Secretariat of the International Court of Arbitration.
# David Lindorff, journalist and co-author with Barbara Olshansky of “The Case for Impeachment: Legal Arguments for Removing President George W. Bush from Office”(St. Martin ’s Press).
# Francis Boyle, Professor of International Law at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, responsible for drafting the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, and the U.S. implementing legislation for the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention.
# Lawrence Velvel, a leader in the field of law school education reform, has written numerous internet articles on issues relevant to the conference.
Legal authorities, media representatives, and the general public are invited to attend the conference. Attendees will receive a special hotel rate of $99 per night.
Andover is nearly equidistant from both Boston’s Logan Airport , served by all major airlines, and the Manchester , N.H. , Airport, served by Southwest Airlines and USAir.
Further Information: Jeff Demers (see above) or Sherwood Ross, Ross Associates, Suite 403, 102 S.W. 6th Ave., Miami, FL 33130 or sherwoodr1@yahoo.com
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