Now It’s Official: The War Criminals Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al
We’re going to have to jam here. So much new information, so little time.
G. Dubya Bush assuring residents of The Big Easy that
nothing bad actually happened in Katrina, and even
if it did, everything would be hunky dory. The square
was lit by emergency generators : virtually the only
electricity IN New Orleans that night…
I wrote this to the Eugene Register-Guard in 2003:
Saddam Hussein was evil, but we had no lawful right to depose him. These are our American values.
Letters in the Editor’s Mailbag
June 19, 2003
After 80 days, it’s time Americans confronted a grave question: If no weapons of mass destruction are found, then members of the Bush administration are guilty of war crimes.
The U.S.-sponsored United Nations Charter, Chapter 1, Article 2, states: “The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its members.” And “All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.”
Saddam Hussein was evil, but we had no lawful right to depose him. These are our American values.
In the 1945 Nuremberg Trials, there were four counts, and one, if not two, are applicable here. Count one: conspiracy to wage aggressive war, and count two: waging aggressive war, or “crimes against peace.” When it was argued that the court had no jurisdiction, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, lead prosecutor, rejoined, “The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant and so devastating that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored because it cannot survive their being repeated.”
Remember that in the near year of spin leading up to this war the term “regime change” was never used until 48 hours before the war began: because such a war would have been unlawful.
If war crimes have been committed (thousands are dead), those who screamed about the “rule of law” in 1999 better step up to the plate, else there is no such “rule.”
HART WILLIAMS
Well, at least one court now backs me up. Interestingly, not much comment in the American press. One short page on Google yesterday and one long page and another short overflow story on the next (and that’s when you turn off the redundancy filter):
Bush Convicted of War Crimes in Absentia
by Yvonne Ridley
The Foreign Policy Journal
May 12, 2012Kuala Lumpur — It’s official; George W Bush is a war criminal.
In what is the first ever conviction of its kind anywhere in the world, the former US President and seven key members of his administration were yesterday (Fri) found guilty of war crimes.
Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and their legal advisers Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, William Haynes, Jay Bybee and John Yoo were tried in absentia in Malaysia.
The trial held in Kuala Lumpur heard harrowing witness accounts from victims of torture who suffered at the hands of US soldiers and contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan.
They included testimony from British man Moazzam Begg, an ex-Guantanamo detainee and Iraqi woman Jameelah Abbas Hameedi who was tortured in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison….
Interestingly enough, the Nuremberg Trials at the end of WWII (“watch the great movie “Judgment at Nuremberg” with Spencer Tracy and Burt Lancaster for a bit of the flavor) were cited by the court. Thus far, it’s Yvonne Ridley’s story, her having done the best job of early reporting, having seemingly read a good portion of the transcripts.
It is a sad day, my friends, when old Lenin Era Pravda now online in the XXIth century with a new direction and mission does a MUCH more credible reporting job than the US press and most of the blogosphere. Here are links to four parts of the transcript — such as it is — of the findings of the court with a suggestion that the story has been hacked at least once in the notes to one of the interior parts:
Part 1:
http://english.pravda.ru/world/americas/09-05-2012/121063-accusations_war_crimes-0/
Part II:
http://english.pravda.ru/world/americas/10-05-2012/121082-united_states_torture-0/
Part III
http://english.pravda.ru/world/americas/12-05-2012/121089-us_torture-0/
Part IV
http://english.pravda.ru/world/americas/13-05-2012/121099-usa_dock_four-0/
Here is the citation of our own hypocrisy in staining the national character before the whole world (who were watching):
The charge against the accused here is very similar to the charge for which the Nazi war criminals were convicted at the Nuremberg trials: “the charge of conscious participation in a nation-wide governmentally organized system of cruelty and injustice, in violation of the laws of war and humanity, and perpetrated in the name of law by … authority”: Alstotter case.
This is because after 9/11, all the pronouncements from the top made a conscious decision to set aside international rules constraining such treatment. A combination of factors account for this: fear, ideology and almost visceral disdain for international rules and norms. There are others who have also committed war crimes but those that have been charged are the key players. Against them there is overwhelming evidence and they bear direct responsibility for war crimes.
That is how it ends. You owe it to yourself to go and read the English translation put up in full by good ol’ Pravda. Time was, citing Pravda was a guarantee that you was at least a pinko, if not an outright commie. Boy times sure change.
George W. Bush, Agent of Al Q.A.E.D.A. is a post you should read
But what I said then was true. It remains true and as this story gains traction, every force in serpentine media and slithery supplication will attempt to convince you that our good nation did NOT commit War Crimes. These are the same bastards who maintained that no US soldier had ever or would ever do anything bad in our invasion and toppling of the regime of that guy who was responsible for Nine-Lebben.
Oh wait.
You see: we Americans are REALLY GOOD at ignoring important problems we find inconvenient. Slavery. Segregation. Child labor. Sweat shops. Women’s rights — promised them during the Civil War by politicians as part of expanding suffrage. Women’s actual rights, and not just the right to vote. Hispanic rights. Minority rights. Disabled access. The right not to be sexually harassed in the workplace. Gays and gay rights and no rights for “illegal aliens” who force sweatshop owners to fire all their American workers and employ the dirt-poor illegals to work for much lower wages, with zero rights.
Kind of like that slave labor in China that builds our computers and our i-Phones® and all the rest of the Wal-Marted, Four Bank and Four Oil Company America.
We are REAL good at it.
The (graven) Image Makers at work
We Americans have never met a problem so big that we couldn’t all agree that it wasn’t actually there, and, therefore, nothing needs be done, nor talkin’ about that bothersome … thing. WHAT thing?
My point.
But the Bushies have PROVEN that you can be lied to with a straight face and will buy ANY crap they want to shove a feeding tube down your throat and ladle into your poor stomach.
Only next time, the country they topple and install their “approved” government after writing its “pillage and loot” constitution won’t be in the Middle East.
It’ll be in the Middle West.
Remember when I said “Saddam Hussein was evil, but we had no lawful right to depose him. These are our American values”? Well, here’s a piece of news for yas: ”American values” are now whatever we SAY they are. So …
What is the blogosphere rambling on about?
Romney v. Obama blah blah blah, and it’s only the Fourteenth of Freaking May. Democracy in America is ill-served by this obfuscatory persiflage masquerading as journalism. It is not journalism: it is sycophantism and infantilism and paroxysm. But it is NOT journalism, which, in its finest flower doesn’t merely report the news (with hefty chunks of gossip and hot air speculation thrown in to pad out the segment), but finds the IMPORTANT news and goes after it like a terrier after a rat.
Sure: One of these days we’re going to have to face up to the crimes of the past thirty years. That is guaranteed.
But not today.
That is guaranteed, as well.
Genuine; not PhotoShopped.
Courage.
====================
Kudos to Thom Hartmann for having the cojones to write about this on TruthOut and mention it on his program today(?).
====================
A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog His Vorpal Sword. This is cross-posted from his blog
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By any reasonable definition, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and others are guilty of war crimes, but we do not live in reasonable times.
I have written over 30 lengthy posts about what I term the Bush Torture Regime since 2006 yet I understand why newly-elected President Obama chose to look the other way when it came to prosecutions.
The investigation is ongoing. Nothing will be available until after the election. And it could be that nothing will be available then if Obama is not reelected. It depends on the AG in 2013.
http://www.saltlaw.org/blog/2012/03/09/cia-torture-john-durham-and-a-leap-of-faith/
Whoever is president, this investigation will continue whether under a current administration or outside it.
Actually, back in March 2009, Spain took the first steps toward opening a criminal investigation into allegations that six former high-level Bush administration officials violated international law by providing the legal framework to justify the torture of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba:
http://themoderatevoice.com/27476/the-worm-has-turned-spains-criminal-inquiry-of-former-bush-officials/
But then Spain decided to prosecute the prosecutor: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dorian-de-wind/judge-garzons-prosecution_b_1234957.html
The_Ohioan:
The link is instructive for what it does not say: That yet again a few low-level operatives are being investigated and possibly prosecuted while the people who gave the orders to use torture will not be.
Do not expect the Justice Department to go after Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al after Obama is re-elected. The nation is even more divided now than four years ago and regrettably the same political decision-making that Obama used in 2009 will be repeated.
I sense that Bush himself has come to understand the awfulness of what he allowed his henchmen to do. Cheney and Rumsfeld are remorse free as megalomaniacs typically are.
Shaun
My optimism about future trials is a) Obama doesn’t have to worry about another election so has nothing to lose and lots to gain for the Democratic party to pursue this and b) when the investigation is completed, the information will be placed in the hands of a grand jury.
Grand juries may pursue information in any direction and as far up as they deem necessary. No one is immune.
In the meantime, world courts like those in Malaysia and Spain and other countries will continue to judge this and our internal civil entities like the ACLU will continue to pursue any unlawful and/or unconstitutional actions.
The magnitude of this egregious miscarriage of justice simply can’t be overcome – there are too many who know too much for it to never be confronted.
I totally agree with HW, that Judgement At Nuremberg was a great movie.
SM said; “yet I understand why newly-elected President Obama chose to look the other way when it came to prosecutions.”
Could it be that it is because he has one upped dubya, with the assassination/murder of OBL and the multiple drone murders of many?
Cover your ass and don’t go after previous administrations.
No, there will be no trials. And thanks for conflating the Nazi regime to dubya’s screwed up eight years.
It is often said that the person that loses their temper in an argument has lost the debate. I think that it is the same with the use of the term Nazi. Once you’ve called the other side a Nazi, or equated them with Nazis, you’ve lost the argument. I always keep that in mind when I read a post like the one above; you lost this argument on June 19, 2003. Time to stop.
You’re only a war criminal if you lose. All law is based on the threat of violence. Those who can bring the most violence to bear, or even enough to make it not worth the effort to carry out justice(N.Korea, China, etc..) are above the law. Its how its always worked, and how it will always work. My only question is that now we have scuttled the rules that prevent those in power from doing whatever they damn well please, how long until we get someone in power that decides to become a true tyrant?
I’m actually ok with Nazi comparisons as long as we can all take a step back and realize the comparison is in methodology not extent. While Bush of course didn’t murder tens of millions we did see some similarities. A threat was proposed to the nation, and it was built up to the point that we LEGALLY removed our own legal protections that made this country the beacon of freedom we all love to claim it is. This has continued under Obama with the Defense Act. While Al-Queda is not a made up threat, their actual threat to our nation was, and is, grossly overblown in this effort.
That is the trick, we build in safeguards against tyranny, and to become a dictatorship we have to be tricked into giving them up because we take them for granted and assume they will always be there. The comparison with Nazi’s is valid because we all know the reference. I’m sure there are other less well known examples of this, but it does no good to cite them since we aren’t familiar. But Nazi Germany was the most well known example of a nation handing itself over to the whims of a few who were sure they were doing the right thing no doubt.
Slam, you don’t have a problem with the comparison. Astounding, even with all the cavets.
Well, if someone could come up with a recognizable comparison that was more in line with the exact extent to which abuse was used I’d use that one. I’m sure there are some in Roman history. But if I reference Sulla taking dictatorial powers to usurp command over the Senate to defend Rome against an imagined enemy how many people are going to be able to say, oh yea, how could we forget that.
Slam, YOU need to come up with a recognizable/reasonable comparison, besides the Nazis.
I do think the ancient Roman stuff is dated.
Lol, exactly the problem. Its also far less documented.
I thought everyone knew the Bushies were war criminals. Or rather engaged in behavior that would (should) lead to war criminal charges.
Stock, and they eat their babies.
Question, if that is so true, then why didn’t/doesn’t Obama, the just, do something?
And, why isn’t assassination and clone murders a war crime?
Slam, But it’s not OK to inflate Bush’s lousy eight with Nazi’s or even Sulla: “It was the sound of 8,000 prisoners who had surrendered the previous day being executed on Sulla’s orders, none were spared. Soon Sulla had himself declared Dictator, he now held supreme power over Rome.”
Would you like it I compared Obama to Elmer Gantry?
Note to debaters: Godwin’s Law was never broken. I spoke in 2003 about the trials WE demanded and WE prosecuted; about the standards WE promulgated and wrote into international law.
And, nine years later, that’s precisely the analogy the Malaysian tribunal used. As predicted. I don’t ever address (and still don’t) the crimes the Nazis committed — and I don’t think anyone here is going to claim that they were innocent — but I DO address the standards that we demanded in that trial.
One of those prosecutors, by the by, was William Miller, who ran as Barry Goldwater’s Vice Presidential nominee in 1964.
Either we walk the walk after talking the talk, else the whole world considers ALL our blather about “human rights” etc. to be just another cynical, self-serving means of grabbing power. It is OUR national reputation and standing that is jeopardized. The Nazis’ reputation remains unchanged.
HW, and your viewpoint on Obama’s actions in “war”.
Folks, never, and I repeat, never forget that the victor is never the war criminal. Only the looser, even if on the correct side of the fence, takes the hit for criminal acts of war. In the case of WWII, the looser happened to be on the wrong side of the fence and were in fact the war criminals. However, in the case of Iraq, where Saddam and his cronies lost, even though they did some bad things to their own citizens, it was not against other sovereign nations citizens, and even though America supported and propped up the Iraqi regime, when it didn’t serve them America went in and broke numerous Geneva Conference protocols they had signed on to, and decided to treat Saddam and his cronies, who were, again, the looser, as war criminals, which in fact they were not according to Geneva Conference rules, because, again, America was the victor.
Did or do I agree with what the Saddam regime represented and did? Absolutely NO! However, being a belligerent should not automatically be deemed a war criminal, which is were King George and his cronies went, even seeing themselves above law and the Constitution (which is subject to treaty law), to their own insidious agendas.
If America and its Bush administration had lost that war, yes, not only would Bush and his administration have been deemed and tried as war criminals, like the loosers of WWII, they would have actually deserved it.
Enough said.
Okay, where to begin? The Bush administration cited the Hussein regime’s lack of cooperation with UN mandates. Since the “end” of the first Iraqi war was a truce, the failure to follow a truce’s requirements leads to… [drum roll please] the prior state.
WAR (or at least active combat)
The crimes committed against prisoners is a second matter (and are criminal in nature, from what I have read and seen). That Bush & Co. ordered them–that is not as proven as I would demand (although maybe the Malaysian court has evidence I have not read about).
Hussein was not prosecuted by U.S. courts. The Iraqis prosecuted and executed him. I have not seen any evidence that we prosecuted any other regime leaders in Iraq. Although U.S. troops did capture Hussein and some others (along with killing two of Hussein’s sons), they were doing so as part of the ongoing operation.
America DOES prosecute war criminals from its own side. Don’t believe me? Have you ever heard of Mai Lai? It was, by and large, the Communists who faced no war crimes (unless we caught them) for the Vietnamese atrocities. In fact, I have contended that a reason to have stayed in Vietnam was so that we could invade N. Vietnam and capture all the brutal so-and-so’s who committed so many heinous acts.
Having said all of this, I happen to agree that there is an egregious lack of accountability for the country’s actions in Iraq (lesser so for Afghanistan as they harbored the people who attacked us, thus leaving them in a position of active beligerency (sp?) and thus invadable). The most important question is: where will it all stop?
C. S. Lewis had a sobering statement for his countrymen after WWII. He told them that Christian values (he was speaking as a Christian) demand that we must forgive our enemies. It was not a popular statement, but it was the right one.
I agree with Rcoutme that there has been an egregious lack of accountability for the decisions made that lead up to the war in Iraq. But I have a different reason than any stated so far, a reason that to me is much more important than divining any criminal intent from George W. Bush and his administration.
The war was launched and at least its initial phases supported by a huge bipartisan majority of the American public. It would almost be better if a small, evil cabal of men plotted to start this war in the face of opposition from the peace loving nature of the American public. But this was not the case. After 9/11 we wanted revenge, we wanted blood. George Bush and his so-called henchmen may have picked the target but they gave us what we wanted.
This is a hard truth that no one seems willing to face. A hard truth that would have to come closer to the surface if Bush and his people were held accountable.
This was the real lesson of Nuremberg, the guilt of the German people who stood by and let these crimes happen. This is the lesson that the school children of Germany are taught even today. This must never happen again. It is everyone’s responsibility to see that it never happens again.
It is a lesson that the American public doesn’t want to face.
Well Merkin and others, where are the protests and rallies against a current assassination/murder and drone murders?
There were plenty during the Bush years, why not any now?
“Accountability” can start with acknowledging that something is wrong/incorrect/etc., when it is happening. It is harder to put the genie back in the bottle after the fact.
As Merkin said: “The war was launched and at least its initial phases supported by a huge bipartisan majority of the American public” Thanks for pointing that forgotten fact out:
“After 9/11 we wanted revenge, we wanted blood.”
Using drones may or may not be war crimes.
http://afghanistan.blogs.cnn.com/2010/04/28/to-drone-or-not-hearing-questions-drone-attacks-legality/
But officially sanctioning torture of prisoners is unambiguously a war crime. This was the decision of the Kuala Lumpur court.
“The trial held in Kuala Lumpur heard harrowing witness accounts from victims of torture who suffered at the hands of US soldiers and contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
As far as protests about drones, see Code Pink’s site for a schedule. Code Pink’s statistics are very different from other studies which state civilian casualties are from 3% to 30%. There were fewer protests about drones under Bush because he used so few – only 29 in 8 years.
http://nodrones.com/actions.htm
Of course, there are no huge demonstration against Obama and his killing of Osama Bin Laden. This too is blood that the American public wanted.
There were more demonstrations against Bush and company because their actions were more obviously stupid and overboard and misdirected. It is hard to argue that Iraq and their tinhorn dictator had more responsibility for 9/11 than Osama did. And Obama didn’t start a 10 year long, 3 trillion dollar, 100′s of thousands of dead including thousands of American service personnel war to do it. He gets a break for better judgement at least.
I disagree with Obama’s actions. I think that a trial in New York would have better reflected the nation’s values and resolve to stand up to these people.
I do believe that the drone attacks against the leadership of the terrorists is a reasonable military tactic. You should know that I was in the military and I do know a current drone pilot. Either might be coloring my opinion.
Merkin, “and his killing”. No, it was an assassination/murder. I am not against that however, I just don’t like the tendency of “my side” as in partisan colored glasses, that some people use, to up the rhetoric noise to a high level, as in mentioning Nazi crimes as if their is any comparison.
The drone attack acceleration is another story, and if it were Bush doing it, would there be many more protests, here and internationally? You, betcha.
dd
Bush had great public support (and worldwide support) by going after al Queda in Afghanistan, unless my memory fails me (that happens more often than I’d like).
The fact that he lost credibility by incompetently pursuing that war, invading Iraq, and officially sanctioning torture would probably carry over into protests about the drone attack acceleration as you say. Once the public’s good opinion is lost, just about anything you do is condemned.
Obama has lost credibility with his supporters by not pursuing the war criminals and all the other things they expected him to do. They are protesting the drones as well. And just about anything else he does is either too much or not enough.
It’s not that Obama is a Democrat and Bush was a Republican, it’s that once people come to distrust a President, everything he does is suspect. People don’t see using drones as being as bad as sending in soldiers. If Obama invades Korea or Iran or re-invades Iraq, you will see protests that make Bush’s fumbles seem like child’s play.
Ohio, I missed you at the last anti-murder/drone demonstration. Shouldn’t we have learned our lesson and started to complain before the cow is out of the barn.
And, I still say it is mostly partisanship, after all he won the Peace Prize.
dd
You didn’t see me there because I’ve never attended a demonstration in my life. I assume you were there, otherwise you wouldn’t have known I wasn’t.
Are you saying you are not against murder/assassination of Osama but are against murder/drone? If you have a complaint, make it clear (and keep going to those protests).
I have no problem with drones considering the alternatives; it’s what I was complaining about all those years of Bush – the incompetency and ineffectiveness of his policies. Let’s fight smart was my mantra, which is what I consider the drone program to be. The torture approval was just the icing on the cake and anyone who blames the seven dwarfs listed above has good reason to be partisan given their actions and the neocons current push to invade Iran.
And what the Nobel Peace Prize awarded by a Norwegian group has to do with partisanship eludes me. That prize has been awarded to some strange birds including jointly to Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, and Yitzhak Rabin – and earlier to Henry Kissinger.
Nope, Ohio, I am not a demo type guy. Of course, since there was no demonstration, we couldn’t be there. That’s my point.
On the OBL thing, I would have snatched him and his stuff and nor said a word. Yes, he was murdered, but that is something I have to balance that against the 3,000 innocents he had killed. I just don’t like it, but I’m not going to call Obama a war criminal and contrast him to Hitler, just because he is a Dem.
The drones disturb me more because first of all there are many incidents, some with related collateral damage, and we will never get the true facts on that. It also might be a criminal act, except of course, the President has his lawyer’s opinion, just as Bush had, that it is all OK. Well, then, so all the terrorist act, including 9/11. WAR, justifies everything, doesn’t it?
I am sorry dduck, I am not trying to gang up on you, but to say that we are condemning Bush while letting Obama off because of partisanship is something of a cop out.
I think that a reasonable person can accept the killing of Osama Ben Laden as being an act of the Afghanistan war, which is being fought to destroy Al Qaeda, the organization that he headed and to a large degree, funded. And that we invaded Iraq for reasons that had nothing to do with Al Qaeda or WMDs, that Bush and his advisers lied so that they could execute a plan that predated 9/11, a plan to give the US bases and airfields in the Middle East fully under our control from which we could intimidate the entire area.
The harder argument to me would be that Bush’s invasion of Iraq was justified and Obama’s assassination of OBL was not. Or that the invasion of Iraq was conducted honorably for honorable reasons while the murder of OBL was dishonorably done for dishonest reasons.
Or possibly you attended both demonstrations, you believe that both the Presidents brought dishonor to the country, that you opposed both actions. This is at least an intellectually defensible position, and I applaud you for that.
But let me ask you this, which action, the assassination of OBL or the intentional mistake of invading Iraq caused the most damage to the US? To our honor, to our reputation, to our treasury. Which one deserves our condemnation more?
You don’t get to pose a “when did you stop beating your wife question, Merkin.
I think Bush & co. made bad mistakes, and I think Obama is also.
Partisanship definitely is a factor in the ct=criticism of both.
I don’t condemn either’s actions, BTW.
I condemn bull****.
That’s what I thought .