Should We Prosecute George W Bush?

Despite hundreds of accounts of the illegality of the war on Iraq initiated by the previous resident at the White House there have not been many books or articles documenting a case against Mr. Bush for complicity in this crime.

Two notable exceptions are former Los Angeles prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi’s book, “The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder,” which encountered a virtual boycott by the major news media when published in 2008, and “United States v. George W. Bush et al.,” by Elizabeth de la Vega, a former Assistant U.S Attorney who meticulously presents the case for criminal fraud under a little-known federal statute that does not require monetary loss by the victim as a condition for conviction.  Both books rest their case on proof of deliberate deception by the President and members of his war cabinet — not an easy hurdle to overcome in a criminal trial, which requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

Intentional killings based on a mistake are not accidents… if the mistake was predicated on an unreasonable belief about the justification for the killing.

Contrary to common belief, however, an American president can be found guilty of criminal conduct without proof of the corrupt state of mind of the deliberate liar or the malignant motives of Nazis on trial at Nuremberg.  The criminal mind also encompasses the all-too-common consciousness of human beings acting carelessly in deciding to kill other human beings, however justified their conduct may seem in their own eyes.

On the tenth anniversary of the invasion, the only truly serious question about the war is whether President George W. Bush and those who participated in the decision to invade Iraq did anything illegal or unconstitutional or criminal.

To raise such a question about a war initiated by own’s country is always “a vocation of agony,” as Martin Luther King, Jr. said of the war in Vietnam when he finally chose in 1967 to break his silence about the conflict.  Whatever the reasons for avoiding the Iraq question, whether it is President Obama’s understandable fear of further polarizing a sorely divided nation, or out of respect for the 4,422 Americans who gave their lives fighting for what they believed was a just cause, or because the legal issues are too big or too difficult, we must finally say about Iraq what Dr. King said about Vietnam.  “We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak.”

The whole litany of excuses for the catastrophe in Iraq has been recited in the language of mistake and misadventure, as if the war were a tragic accident, like a colossal train wreck caused by an act of God.

Intentional killings based on a mistake are not accidents, however, if the mistake was predicated on an unreasonable belief about the justification for the killing.  This is the case whether the person on trial is a police officer who killed an innocent citizen in the mistaken belief that the suspect had a gun and presented a lethal threat, or a president who ordered the invasion of Iraq in the mistaken belief that Saddam Hussein possessed WMDs that posed a threat to America’s national security.

If a police officer’s belief that his victim posed a deadly threat was not only wrong, but unreasonable, in the sense that a prudent police officer exercising due diligence in similar circumstances would not have fired his weapon, the killing constitutes criminal homicide.  There is considerable disagreement among the courts and legal commentators about whether the homicide is murder or is to be treated more leniently, either as voluntary manslaughter or the lesser offense of negligent homicide, but there is universal agreement that carelessness in the use of deadly force is criminal.

What did the President know and when did he know it?  Wrong question.  The proper question is: What should a reasonably prudent president have known about the legal justification for invading Iraq and why didn’t the President know it?

We are so used to war and the threat of war as a legitimate adjunct of foreign policy that we easily lose sight of the reality that war consists of acts which, if performed by a private citizen or organization, would constitute serious felonies: mass murder, assaults with deadly weapons, maiming, arson, kidnapping, and the malicious destruction of property.  The law immunizes political leaders from criminal liability so long as the war is legally justified.  As a matter of international law, this generally means in compliance with the U.N. Charter.  In terms of domestic law, it means in compliance with the U.S. Constitution, which requires either a declaration of war or a congressional authorization for the use of military force.

SOURCE: Paul Savoy, http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/03/19-10   Paul Savoy is a former prosecuting attorney in the District Attorney’s office in New York County and has also served as Dean of the John F Kennedy School of Law

Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, How Can You Sleep at Night?

Tomas Young enlisted shortly after the attacks of 9/11. He joined to fight for his country and to defend its people and its freedoms but found himself in a war without purpose in Iraq. Disabled by a bullet in that war, Tomas has suffered ongoing pain and continuing medical treatment but has not regained his ability to walk. On the anniversary of the beginning of the Bush War on Iraq, Tomas decided to write Bush and Cheney. The letter reproduced here was originally published at TruthDig.com

To: George W. Bush and Dick Cheney
From: Tomas Young

I write this letter on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War on behalf of my fellow Iraq War veterans. I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines who died in Iraq. I write this letter on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of veterans who have been wounded and on behalf of those whose wounds, physical and psychological, have destroyed their lives. I am one of those gravely wounded. I was paralyzed in an insurgent ambush in 2004 in Sadr City. My life is coming to an end. I am living under hospice care.

I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives who have lost spouses, on behalf of children who have lost a parent, on behalf of the fathers and mothers who have lost sons and daughters and on behalf of those who care for the many thousands of my fellow veterans who have brain injuries. I write this letter on behalf of those veterans whose trauma and self-revulsion for what they have witnessed, endured and done in Iraq have led to suicide and on behalf of the active-duty soldiers and Marines who commit, on average, a suicide a day. I write this letter on behalf of the some 1 million Iraqi dead and on behalf of the countless Iraqi wounded. I write this letter on behalf of us all—the human detritus your war has left behind, those who will spend their lives in unending pain and grief.

You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole.

I write this letter, my last letter, to you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. I write not because I think you grasp the terrible human and moral consequences of your lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and power. I write this letter because, before my own death, I want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along with millions of my fellow citizens, along with hundreds of millions more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you have done. You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole.

Your positions of authority, your millions of dollars of personal wealth, your public relations consultants, your privilege and your power cannot mask the hollowness of your character. You sent us to fight and die in Iraq after you, Mr. Cheney, dodged the draft in Vietnam, and you, Mr. Bush, went AWOL from your National Guard unit. Your cowardice and selfishness were established decades ago. You were not willing to risk yourselves for our nation but you sent hundreds of thousands of young men and women to be sacrificed in a senseless war with no more thought than it takes to put out the garbage.

I joined the Army two days after the 9/11 attacks. I joined the Army because our country had been attacked. I wanted to strike back at those who had killed some 3,000 of my fellow citizens. I did not join the Army to go to Iraq, a country that had no part in the September 2001 attacks and did not pose a threat to its neighbors, much less to the United States. I did not join the Army to “liberate” Iraqis or to shut down mythical weapons-of-mass-destruction facilities or to implant what you cynically called “democracy” in Baghdad and the Middle East. I did not join the Army to rebuild Iraq, which at the time you told us could be paid for by Iraq’s oil revenues. Instead, this war has cost the United States over $3 trillion. I especially did not join the Army to carry out pre-emptive war. Pre-emptive war is illegal under international law. And as a soldier in Iraq I was, I now know, abetting your idiocy and your crimes. The Iraq War is the largest strategic blunder in U.S. history. It obliterated the balance of power in the Middle East. It installed a corrupt and brutal pro-Iranian government in Baghdad, one cemented in power through the use of torture, death squads and terror. And it has left Iran as the dominant force in the region. On every level—moral, strategic, military and economic—Iraq was a failure. And it was you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, who started this war. It is you who should pay the consequences.

I would not be writing this letter if I had been wounded fighting in Afghanistan against those forces that carried out the attacks of 9/11. Had I been wounded there I would still be miserable because of my physical deterioration and imminent death, but I would at least have the comfort of knowing that my injuries were a consequence of my own decision to defend the country I love. I would not have to lie in my bed, my body filled with painkillers, my life ebbing away, and deal with the fact that hundreds of thousands of human beings, including children, including myself, were sacrificed by you for little more than the greed of oil companies, for your alliance with the oil sheiks in Saudi Arabia, and your insane visions of empire.

I have, like many other disabled veterans, suffered from the inadequate and often inept care provided by the Veterans Administration. I have, like many other disabled veterans, come to realize that our mental and physical wounds are of no interest to you, perhaps of no interest to any politician. We were used. We were betrayed. And we have been abandoned. You, Mr. Bush, make much pretense of being a Christian. But isn’t lying a sin? Isn’t murder a sin? Aren’t theft and selfish ambition sins? I am not a Christian. But I believe in the Christian ideal. I believe that what you do to the least of your brothers you finally do to yourself, to your own soul.

My day of reckoning is upon me. Yours will come. I hope you will be put on trial. But mostly I hope, for your sakes, that you find the moral courage to face what you have done to me and to many, many others who deserved to live. I hope that before your time on earth ends, as mine is now ending, you will find the strength of character to stand before the American public and the world, and in particular the Iraqi people, and beg for forgiveness.

 

Tom Tomorrow’s Professor Droney

CLICK ON TO ENLARGE

Cornel West: “Obama Is a War Criminal”

5 Children Killed by U.S. in Afghanistan This Week

Philosophy professor, social critic and activist CORNEL WEST says that like Richard Nixon and George W. Bush, there is no way to avoid the conclusion that President Obama—due to his execution of foreign wars and direction of clandestine military operations overseas resulting in the direct and foreseeable death of innocent people —should be called out for what he is: a ‘war criminal’.

Appearing on Tavis Smiley’s radio program on Thursday, West said: “We’ve been talking about this for a good while, the immorality of drones, dropping bombs on innocent people. It’s been over TWO HUNDRED CHILDREN SO FAR. These are war crimes.”

“I think we have to be very honest,” he said.

“… dropping bombs on innocent people. It’s been over 200 children so far. These are war crimes.”

A once ardent supporter of the president—campaigning strongly for Obama during his presidential run in 2008—West has been critical of a number of aspects of the president’s policies since taking office, including his refusal to adequately address poverty in the United States even as his administration acted mightily to save large financial institutions and Wall Street banks.

West’s comments on US foreign policy came as Smiley spoke about the ongoing confirmation process of John Brennan, Obama’s nomination to run the CIA and chief architect of the ongoing drone assassination program and what the radio host termed the president’s “license to kill”.

“Let us not be deceived: Nixon, Bush, Obama, they’re war criminals,” West said. “They have killed innocent people in the name of the struggle for freedom, but they’re suspending the law, very much like Wall Street criminals. The law is suspended for them, but the law applies for the rest of us.”

SOURCE: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/02/15-4

 

178 Kids Killed by Drones

Remember, drones are operated by people. Those who do operate them take their orders from Generals, who take their orders from their Commander-in-Chief.  Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel never personally killed anyone but was judged guilty in the Nuremberg Trials because he gave orders resulting in wrongful deaths.

Despite repeated claims from both the Bush and Obama administrations that missile attacks from unmanned drones provide a surgically precise means of eliminating suspected terrorists, U.S. drone policy has led to the deaths of at least 178 children in Pakistan and Yemen (the U.S. is officially at war with neither) as of December 2, 2012. While one hellfire missile is obviously preferable to leveling an entire block with a bombing run, one has to wonder how effective a campaign like this really is in curtailing terrorist activity. I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that the friends and families of those 178 children are probably more sympathetic to anti-U.S. propaganda now rather than before the U.S. started dropping missiles on their loved ones.

—  Mansur Gidfar, http://www.upworthy.com

Kucinich Asks: “Is It Legal for the President to Have a Hit List”?

President Obama has succeeded some extremely bellicose warmongerers who have served as President and yet he is the first President to assert that he had the right to have American citizens killed without due process of law. Even if you trust Obama with all your heart, do you want all Presidents to have this power? Dennis Kucinich asks the question.

Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today urged fellow lawmakers to support, H. Res. 819, a Resolution of Inquiry that would compel the Administration to release to Congress documents which form the legal basis for the targeted assassination of American citizens abroad. Those documents would include memos from the White House’s Office of Legal Counsel.

A Resolution of Inquiry must be considered within 14 legislative days. Unless Congress adjourns before the deadline, Kucinich will be able to call up the bill with privileged status. Kucinich introduced the legislation on November 28, 2012.

The full text of Congressman Kucinich’s remarks follow.

“Before Congress adjourns, this House should vote on my Resolution of Inquiry about the U.S. use of drones.

“The vote will not be about the thousands of deaths of innocent civilians caused by drones, though that is important. It won’t be about whether the drones are creating more terrorism. It won’t be a vote to stop the killing of American citizens without the due process guaranteed by the Constitution.

“It won’t be about whether our ongoing use of drones constitutes violations of the Constitution and violations of international law.

“The vote will, however, be about something fundamental. We will determine whether or not Congress has the power to require the Administration to release their still-secret legal justification to use drones.

“In matters of the Constitution, in matters of war, ‘trust us’ is neither sufficient legally, constitutionally, nor is it morally acceptable. I urge members of the House to reclaim Congress’ constitutional imperative by supporting H. Res. 819, the Resolution of Inquiry demanding the White House produce its legal justification for drone strikes.”

Killing Kids, Is That What It’s About

The history of warfare shows that while it is started under the cover of Noble Lies eventually the Truth surfaces, at first in brazen ugliness and then in amoral matter-of-factness. When American-NATO forces accidentally killed civilians, apologies were issued and heads hung in shame. Then the battlefield was redefined and any male within proximity of the attack was classified as a combatant even 11 year old shepherd boys. Now after the murders-by-drone of three children ages 8, 10 and 12, the U.S. Command in Afghanistan justifies its mayhem BECAUSE the children MAY have had “hostile intent”.

So after fighting the longest war of our history, we are now justifying killing children in the happenstance that they may have hostile intent.

In my mind the list of U.S. Presidents who should be prosecuted for crimes under the Nuremberg standard should be expanded, Ronald Reagan, George H W Bush, Bill Clinton, George W Bush and Barack Obama.

FFI read THE NATION http://www.thenation.com/blog/171582/us-military-approves-bombing-children?rel=emailNation#

NGO War Crimes Tribunal Finds George W Bush Guilty

For some international human rights activists, justice was served on Friday [May 2012] in Kuala Lumpur court, Malaysia as former U.S. President George W. Bush and former top White House officials were convicted of war crimes related to military operations conducted during Bush’s presidency.

Bush and former U.S. vice president Dick Cheney, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, former Deputy Assistant Attorneys General John Choon Yoo and Jay Bybee, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and former counselors David Addington and William Haynes II were all convicted as war criminals.

The international tribunal charged and convicted the men for torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of the complainant war crime victims, according  to Fairfax, NZ News.

The conviction in Kuala Lumpur was the first of its kind anywhere in the world. The five-panel tribunal delivered a unanimous verdict of guilty.

Digital Journal reported that the trial was put together by the Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalize War, a non-governmental organization. The court heard testimony from people who had their fingernails removed by pliers, another who had bare electrical wires attached to him and was electrocuted and hanged on a wall, and a man who was stripped and beaten.

Tribunal president Tan Sri Dato Lamin bin Haji Mohd Yunus Lamin said his group had no power to impose a sentence on those convicted, but said he would recommend that the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission submit this conviction to the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, the United Nations, and the Security Council.

He also wants to see the names of the men found guilty to be included in the Commission’s Register of War Criminals and publicized.

SOURCE: digitaljournal.com

Over a Million Killed, $ 5 Trillion Spent, and for What?

When someone intentionally commits a horrendous crime such as was committed by invading Iraq they should be prosecuted. The Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal established that legal precedent and the United States should bring those responsible to justice — Editor’s Note

DENNIS KUCINICH

Ten years ago today the debate over the Iraq War came to
Congress in the form of a resolution promoted by the Bush
administration. The war in Iraq will cost the United States as
much as $5 trillion. It played a role in spurring the global
financial crisis. Four thousand, four hundred, eighty eight
Americans were killed. More than 33,000 were injured.

As many as 1,000,000 innocent Iraqi civilians were killed. The
monetary cost of the war to Iraq is incalculable. A sectarian
civil war has ravaged Iraq for nearly a decade. Iraq has
become home to al Qaeda.

The war in Iraq was sold to Congress and the American people
with easily disproved lies. We must learn from this dark
period in American history to ensure that we do not repeat the
same mistakes. And we must hold accountable those who misled
the American public.

On October 2, 2002, the day the legislation to authorize war
in Iraq was introduced, I sent and personally distributed a
memo to my colleagues in Congress refuting point-by-point
every reason given by the Bush administration to go to war.

On October 3, 2002, I held a press conference with 25 Members
of Congress and then presented an hour long explanation to
Congress on the House Floor, refuting the lies upon which the
cause of war was predicated.

It was clear from information publicly available at the time
that Iraq did not have Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs),
that Iraq had no connection to 9/11, and that Iraq was not a
threat to the United States. Anyone who wanted to look could
have seen the same information that I did.

Yet some of America’s top political leaders bought into the
Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld drumbeat of war. Two leading Democrats
were among those taken in by the White House hype and the WMD
argument:

“I believe the facts that have brought us to this fateful
vote are not in doubt. Saddam Hussein is a tyrant who has
tortured and killed his own people … [I]ntelligence
reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his
chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile
delivery capability and his nuclear program. He has also
given aid, comfort and sanctuary to terrorists including
Al Qaeda members.” — Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY),
October 10, 2002.

“September 11 was the ultimate wake-up call. We must now
do everything in our power to prevent further terrorist
attacks and ensure that an attack with a weapon of mass
destruction cannot happen. … the first candidate we must
worry about is Iraq… [Saddam Hussein] continues to
develop weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear
devices.” — Leader of the Democratic Caucus in the House,
Richard Gephardt (D-MO), October 10, 2002.

Even the most trusted newspapers around the country blindly
repeated as fact grossly incorrect assertions by leaders of
both parties.

“No further debate is needed to establish that Saddam Hussein
is an evil dictator whose continued effort to build
unconventional weapons in defiance of clear United Nations
prohibitions threatens the Middle East and beyond.” The New
York Times, Editorial Board, October 3, 2002.

Notwithstanding the blizzard of disinformation, 133 Members of
Congress voted against the resolution that authorized the use
of military force in Iraq, including nearly two-thirds of the
Democratic Caucus in the House. Seven Republicans, including
Ron Paul (R-TX), also voted against the resolution. In the
Senate, the vote was 77 to 23 in favor of a war of choice.

Ten years ago Congress voted to wage war on a nation that did
not attack us. That decision undermined our fiscal and
national security. To this day we are suffering from the
blowback. While most of the troops are home, the United States
maintains a significant presence in Iraq through the State
Department and its thousands of private security contractors.

The war against Iraq was based on lies. Thousands of Americans
and perhaps a million Iraqis were sacrificed for those lies.
The war in Afghanistan continues. New wars have been
propagated in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia pursuant to the
never-ending “War on Terror.” This mindset puts us at the edge
of war against Iran. Ten years and trillions of dollars later,
the American people by and large still do not know the truth.
It is time to usher in a new period of truth and
reconciliation.

— Representative Kucinich’s comments originally appeared in the HUFFINGTON POST (October 4, 2012)

Report on Afghan Atrocities Suppressed

The attempted suppression of an Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) report on atrocities and war crimes committed by Afghan governments and warlords from 1978 to 2001 is devastating exposure of the US puppet regime in Kabul.

The AIHRC, an organisation set up by the Kabul regime itself, has documented the criminal record of the warlords who run the regime and the powers that backed them, above all the United States.

The 800-page report, entitled “Conflict Mapping in Afghanistan Since 1978,” was prepared over a six-year period from 2005 by a team of 40 researchers working with international legal and forensic experts. It found evidence of 180 mass graves, extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests, rape, and the destruction of towns and villages. Commissioner Ahmad Nader Nadery reported that the report tallied a million killed­not all through war crimes­and another 1.3 million disabled.

The report catalogues the crimes committed by all sides in the wars that raged in Afghanistan, including the 1978–1992 Soviet-backed regime and the CIA-backed traditionalist mujahedin militias that fought it, overthrew it, and then divided Afghanistan between themselves.

It details the brutal civil war that followed the fall of the Soviet-backed regime, as Islamist warlords whom Washington had hailed as “freedom fighters” battled for power and control of resources, including the lucrative Afghan opium trade. Atrocities and human rights abuses continued under the Taliban­who were formed with Pakistani backing and tacit US support­as well as their rival northern warlords.

Unsurprisingly, current Afghan officials named as responsible for atrocities objected to the release of the report, only portions of which were leaked to the media.

Afghan officials named in the report include First Vice President Muhammad Qasim Fahim, a Tajik warlord; Second Vice President Karim Khalili, a Hazara warlord; General Atta Mohammed Noor, another Tajik militia leader who is currently a provincial governor; and General Abdul Rashid Dostum, a notorious Uzbek warlord, who is chief of staff to the supreme commander of the Afghan Armed Forces.

The political prominence of such thugs underlines the venal, corrupt character of the regime of Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai. From the outset, it rested on a network of reactionary local and provincial warlords, militia commanders and tribal leaders.

The suppression of the war crimes report would not be possible without US complicity. According to the New York Times, the US embassy in Kabul objected to its publication; US officials said that its release would “open up old wounds.”

The report exposes not only Afghan warlords, but the US and its allies, including Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. They funded, armed and trained the various reactionary Islamist militias that fought the Soviet-backed regime in the 1980s, tore the country apart in the 1990s, and have ruled it in collaboration with Washington over the last decade.

Stopping as it does in 2001, the document says little about the crimes committed by US and NATO forces who began occupying Afghanistan that year. However, even the limited details of US operations in Afghanistan in the final months of 2001 point to war crimes. The CIA worked closely with its warlord allies, including in the mass murder of alleged Taliban detainees in the Qala-i Janga fortress near Mazar-i Sharif.

Excerpt from World Socialist Web Site, q.v. for complete article

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/aug2012/pers-a01.shtml