Are members of the Bush Administration guilty of war crimes/human rights abuses?

[rollhead]

I would like to see certain members of the Bush administration, including George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfield be indicted and investigated by some kind of international tribunal for their war crimes/human rights abuses.

Does anyone else here agree?

Vice President for Torture
Washington Post

Wednesday, October 26, 2005; Page A18

VICE PRESIDENT Cheney is aggressively pursuing an initiative that may be unprecedented for an elected official of the executive branch: He is proposing that Congress legally authorize human rights abuses by Americans. "Cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment of prisoners is banned by an international treaty negotiated by the Reagan administration and ratified by the United States. The State Department annually issues a report criticizing other governments for violating it. Now Mr. Cheney is asking Congress to approve legal language that would allow the CIA to commit such abuses against foreign prisoners it is holding abroad. In other words, this vice president has become an open advocate of torture.

His position is not just some abstract defense of presidential power. The CIA is holding an unknown number of prisoners in secret detention centers abroad. In violation of the Geneva Conventions, it has refused to register those detainees with the International Red Cross or to allow visits by its inspectors. Its prisoners have "disappeared," like the victims of some dictatorships. The Justice Department and the White House are known to have approved harsh interrogation techniques for some of these people, including "waterboarding," or simulated drowning; mock execution; and the deliberate withholding of pain medication. CIA personnel have been implicated in the deaths during interrogation of at least four Afghan and Iraqi detainees. Official investigations have indicated that some aberrant practices by Army personnel in Iraq originated with the CIA. Yet no CIA personnel have been held accountable for this record, and there has never been a public report on the agency's performance.

It's not surprising that Mr. Cheney would be at the forefront of an attempt to ratify and legalize this shameful record. The vice president has been a prime mover behind the Bush administration's decision to violate the Geneva Conventions and the U.N. Convention Against Torture and to break with decades of past practice by the U.S. military. These decisions at the top have led to hundreds of documented cases of abuse, torture and homicide in Iraq and Afghanistan. Mr. Cheney's counsel, David S. Addington, was reportedly one of the principal authors of a legal memo justifying the torture of suspects. This summer Mr. Cheney told several Republican senators that President Bush would veto the annual defense spending bill if it contained language prohibiting the use of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by any U.S. personnel.

The senators ignored Mr. Cheney's threats, and the amendment, sponsored by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), passed this month by a vote of 90 to 9. So now Mr. Cheney is trying to persuade members of a House-Senate conference committee to adopt language that would not just nullify the McCain amendment but would formally adopt cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment as a legal instrument of U.S. policy. The Senate's earlier vote suggests that it will not allow such a betrayal of American values. As for Mr. Cheney: He will be remembered as the vice president who campaigned for torture.

[rollhead]

The 935 lies of the Bush Administration
http://www.publicintegrity.org/WarCard/

[rollhead]

1. George Bush and Dick Cheney ordered a War of Aggression against Iraq. This constitutes a Crime Against Peace - for which Nazi leaders were prosecuted at the Nuremberg Trials - and violates the UN Charter.

Iraq never attacked the US or threatened an attack, so the US was not acting legally in self-defense, which is permitted under the UN Charter.
Iraq played no role in the September 11, 2001 attack on the US and never provided material support to any terrorist group that attacked the US, so even the non-legal Bush doctrine of pre-emptive attack did not apply.

At the time of the US attack, Iraq was nearing full compliance with UN Resolution 1441 and prior resolutions requiring disarmament, and the majority of the Security Council believed UN inspectors should be given more time, so the US was not enforcing UN resolutions, as it claims.

George Bush and Dick Cheney ordered the invasion of Iraq in order to bring about a regime change, which was never authorized by a UN resolution, and violates the UN Charter.

A Crime Against Peace is defined as "planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing." By invading Iraq, Bush has committed a Crime Against Peace.

2. George Bush and Dick Cheney ordered the bombing of civilian areas like Baghdad (with 5 million innocent civilians) and Basra. This resulted in the deaths of hundreds of non-combatants, in violation of Geneva Convention (IV) Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, August 12, 1949.

Article 3(1): The following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to [non-combatants]: (a) violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture.
The independent Web site IraqBodyCount.org is documenting each Iraqi civilian death, based on reports from at least two mainstream Western media organizations (AP, Reuters, CNN, etc.)

3. George Bush and Dick Cheney are ultimately responsible for the torture and murder of Iraqi prisoners, which resulted from policies that were approved by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, and Vice President Cheney himself. These policies were adopted with full knowledge that they could result in war crimes, which persuaded Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee to urge Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to appoint a special prosecutor.


To punish these crimes - and, of equal importance, to prevent future crimes - we call upon all responsible US and international bodies to indict, convict, and punish George Bush and Dick Cheney for their War Crimes, along with everyone who participated in those crimes.

[patricia]

Considering even the lowest members of the Nazi regime, if they participated in or facilitated the deportation, incarceration, torture and deaths of Jews, gypsies and Catholics, as well as union organizers and even retarded people are to this day subject to international prosecution, why not?
For that matter, Saddam Hussein was convicted and executed for crimes that are starting to look not that much different than the crimes for which the Bush Administration are responsible.
But, all of these thugs will probably walk away, not just scot-free, but with a very nice pension thank you very much.
Justice? It's a word that's lost it's meaning.

[Gentle Giant]

I answered yes, because it made me feel good. I think Tom Coughlin and Eli Manning should be investigated, too.

[jesus marion joseph]

Originally Posted by Gentle Giant

I answered yes, because it made me feel good. I think Tom Coughlin and Eli Manning should be investigated, too.

Yeah, for cimes against New England.

[Scott Dolan]

I think Patriots fans should have their heads examined and proper medication administered. That team turns otherwise intelligent and thoughtful people into drooling lunatic crybabies.

[bernard lyons]

Yes and so is Tony Blair and complicit members of his cabinet

[john williams]

Originally Posted by bernard lyons

Yes and so is Tony Blair and complicit members of his cabinet

...and John Howard and members of his.

[bernard lyons]

Yes,unfortunately it is ongoing with those assholes.

When I was a kid in the North of England the Labour Party was a principled party (at least in my neck of the woods). Now its an offshoot of the conservatives..a little like the democrats here dont you think?

[Gentle Giant]

Originally Posted by Scott Dolan

I think Patriots fans should have their heads examined and proper medication administered. That team turns otherwise intelligent and thoughtful people into drooling lunatic crybabies.

The thought of Tom Brady going to bed at night with seven naked fingers leaves me a-trembling.

[jesus marion joseph]

Who's drooling?

[Ron Thorne]

I certainly don't know if any of the persons in the Bush Administration are guilty of war crimes/human rights abuses, but I'd sleep a little better knowing that an independent panel was seriously looking into those possibilities.

Man, talk about a hijacked thread!

[jesus marion joseph]

Please try to stay on point Ron.

[Scott Dolan]

Doggie is probably around 40 lbs. now.

[Gary Sisco]

Ain't any "perhaps" about it to me but I voted for the first one, anyway.

Maybe one day when they least expect it they'll be "recused" and tried in some other country.

[Monte Smith]

I voted "No" because there wasn't a "Hell no" option.

[Gary Sisco]

Well, if recusal to another country can't be done, we can recuse them to my basement...

[Al in NYC]

If there was any real justice in the world...

[Gary Sisco]

My old mom's been chewing Leahy a new asshole for two years over not having brought them up on charges.

If there were any real justice, they'd have let Bushwit miss the carrier deck.

Mission accomplished, fucking poseur.

[Darryl G. Thomas]

Al,

No.

I voted yes.

[Gary Sisco]

I have a friend who always tells me when a candidate's name comes up, Yeah but he won't bring the admin up on criminal charges.

I tell him, you'll be waiting a long fucking time to vote, man. First off, both parties have overwhelmingly supported the admin in the war, the torture, the illegality, and etc ... They'd have to bring themselves up on charges, too.

[Darryl G. Thomas]

You make a good point.

[Gary Sisco]

An amazing thing to me is Female Clintstone claiming so much "experience" over Obama. Her record in the Senate is pedestrian except for the war and associated fascoidisms, about which she was entirely wrong. Where's the evidence of this great experience, worldliness, and judgment? Nowhere anyone else can see. As Sullivan notes today, her legislative experience is one term longer than Obama's *if* you don't count his time in the state legislature.

Not that legislative experience necessarily makes a good president. It doesn't.

[patricia]

I saw the documentary, "Ghosts of Abu Ghraib" again last evening. Although a lot of the abuses are now known, this film is much more far-reaching than are any of the news stories.
The film begins and ends with archive footage of Stanley Milgram's experiment presented in the film, "The Stanford Experiment."
This film showed that it was inevitable that these abuses would happen if orders were given and those who inflicted the abuse were anonymous.
Milgram's prison experiment was done in 1961, so the Abuses at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib were predictable.
The only thing different was that the techniques used were more sophistocated than in 1961 and the abuse certainly continued long after the 6 days that the experiment took to reach it's conclusions.
[ See also "Obedience To Authority - An Experimental View", Stanley Milgram's book that elaborated on the conclusions reached with his experiment.]
Many of the former guards in this film who were at Abu Ghraib were interviewed for a documentary shown a couple of years ago, "A Few Bad Apples" on CBC here.
Only nine very low-level soldiers were ever prosecuted for the abuses leading to sentences of from 6 months to ten years. One of the commanding officers, Karpinsky, was disciplined by being demoted.
She subsequently retired and began giving interviews on this and other films as well as being interviewed in print and on many news reports.
None of those higher than her in the chain of command were ever held responsible.
The ones who were in the photographs that were published worldwide downplay their involvement by saying that they just "got used to" seeing people naked and humiliated.
A couple of the soldiers brought the abuses to the attention of their commanding officers and were brushed off.
One of them said that if the photographs had not become public, they wouldn't have been convicted at all.
They seemed to blame Darby, the soldier from whom The New Yorker got their photographs and subsequently did one of the original articles.
They seemed to think that the crime was having the abuse made public more than that it had happened.

Some of the former "detainees" were also interviewed, none of whom were ever charged with anything, but kept there and tortured, some daily, for months and even years.
It seems to be a situation in which being Iraqi and being scooped up by the Americans was the crime.

The most chilling were the guards who, although now they express regret, seem to be good with blaming their commanding officers for what they did to the prisoners. I kept thinking of the Nazi concentration camps where everyone was "just following orders."

This of course is not the only documentary out there.
"The Prisoner - Or How I Planned To Kill Tony Blair" [a film produced by Michael Tucker] from the point of view of Yunis Abbas, an Iraqi employed as a journalist for BBC in Iraq, comes to mind, as well as several others, each more chilling than the last.
The title refers to U.S. Army intelligence being under the impression that Abbas was plotting to kill Tony Blair when he made a visit to Iraq.
Abbas was scooped up, jailed in Abu Ghraib and "interrogated" for nine months, then released with no charges ever laid.
I suspect that once the Bush Administration is history, more will appear, alongside dozens more books, chronicling the abuses.

In any case, whoever is President in '09 will have an almost impossible task of attempting to heal the pain to the Afghans and the Iraqis that this administration has created and I wonder if that is even possible.

Will whoever is President just sweep the last eight years under the carpet and hope that bygones will be bygones?

[Gary Sisco]

Yes.

[Darryl G. Thomas]

What Gary said.

There will be sputtering about Congressional investigations but the next president will fart off the last eight years "for the good of the country".

Besides, there'll be so much Bush crap to be cleaned up, why waste the time? Bush has done some serious damage to this country domestically and internationally. It'll take a couple of decades just to get us back to where we were prior to 2001.

[Gary Sisco]

I'm hoping one of the admin honchos eventually forgets and gets arrested while in some other country.

Rumsfeld, not long after he resigned, was -- rightly -- chased out of France by calls of war criminal. They should have cuffed him before he split and hauled him off to the Hague.

[Darryl G. Thomas]

You know, I'd guess that certain members of the Administration would have to think twice about leaving the country, or at least think about what country they are visiting. After all, water boarding is considered torture by international treaties, so theoretically any administration official on record OKing it could get arrested.

This shouldn't bother Bush so much, he didn't travel outside of the US before he became prez anyway.

[patricia]

Originally Posted by Darryl G. Thomas

This shouldn't bother Bush so much, he didn't travel outside of the US before he became prez anyway.

I understand that George W Bush didn't even have a passport. What adult person with any international aspirations doesn't have a passport??
I've had one since I was eighteen and nobody has ever accused me of wanting to be leader of a major country.
Most puzzling that he was sixty years old before he had his first passport, assuming he has one now.