Expert Advice On Dealing With A Prior Administration's Use of Torture

By John Dean

From The Archives:

By JOHN W. DEAN

Friday, June 12, 2009

No official announcement has been made that the Obama Administration is not going to prosecute anyone – other than a few low-level soldiers who photographed themselves and already have been prosecuted – for torturing detainees in our so-called war on terror. But it has become clear that President Obama's announced desire to look forward, not backward, embodies such a decision.

Still, we must all hope that the Obama Administration makes more than a non-decision type of decision, and does not merely resolve the matter by silence and inaction. There are, in fact, precedents, and studies, that illuminate the grave problems confronting a democracy in making a choice when faced with the options of prosecuting and punishing versus forgiving and forgetting. I discovered this material some years ago when studying authoritarian governance.

The Insights of Samuel P. Huntington

I provided evidence in my recent book Conservatives Without Conscience that the Bush/Cheney presidency was the most authoritarian in American history. When doing research for that book, I read a work by the late Samuel P. Huntington, the highly- regarded Harvard political scientist and former president of the American Political Science Association. More specifically, I was interested in Professor Huntington's survey of the transition to democracy, during the mid-1970s through the 1980s, of some thirty countries that had previously been under authoritarian rule, which Huntington wrote about in The Third Wave: Democratization In the Late Twentieth Century.

Professor Huntington, who once served as a foreign policy adviser to Democratic presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey, was respected across the political spectrum, as conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg noted on his passing. Huntington called it as he saw it, and few have studied more governments so closely throughout the world.

When writing The Third Wave, Huntington explained that rather than following his normal practice of detached political analysis, he would explain the implications of his findings at five points in the book, where he "abandoned the roles of social scientist, [and] assumed that of [a] political consultant." It was in this context that Huntington addressed how a democratic government should deal with torture that had occurred under the rule of an authoritarian predecessor.

Applying Huntington's Insights to the Obama Administration's Predicament

While the situations are far from directly parallel, Huntington's analysis strikes me as relevant to our current situation. Thus, in the following paragraphs, I have paraphrased or quoted his work, and occasionally transposed it from the context of a purely authoritarian government to that of the authoritarian-leaning democracy favored by many conservatives, and encouraged by Bush/Cheney, and to the situation now faced by the United States and by the Obama Administration.

In turning to Huntington's analysis, I am not, of course, equating the American conservative authoritarianism with the authoritarianism the professor examined under the Central American and Asian dictatorships, or the Greek military, and similar authoritarian regimes. Nor is the situation parallel when American voters rejected the policies of the Republican Party by electing President Obama.

By the same token, no one should be surprised that torture occurred when American conservatives ruled in an authoritarian manner. Nor, given the fact that Obama campaigned by opposing such authoritarian actions, it should not be surprising that many of his supporters, who voted the authoritarians out of power in Washington, now want him to prosecute and punish those involved.

I found Huntington's work both provocative and illuminating in the context of the current situation that Obama faces in dealing with the use of torture by his predecessor. Especially given the fact we have never faced this situation before in the United States, but similar situations have existed in many other nations, the professor's advice is instructive.

The Case for Prosecuting and Punishing the Use of Torture

Based on Huntington's analysis, which is applicable to our country as well as to a newly-established democracy, there are a number of arguments for holding a prior administration accountable for torture through prosecutions and punishments:

(1) "Truth and justice require it." The Obama Administration "has the moral duty to punish vicious crimes against humanity.

(2) "Prosecution is a moral obligation owed to the victims and their families."

(3) "Democracy is based on law, and the point must be made that neither high officials nor [the] military … are above the law." Citing a judge who was critical of a government amnesty proposal, Huntington added: "Democracy isn't just freedom of opinion, the right to hold elections, and so forth. It's the rule of law. Without equal application of the law, democracy is dead. The government is acting like a husband whose wife is cheating on him. He knows it, everybody knows it, but he goes on insisting that everything is fine and praying every day that he isn't going to be forced to confront the truth, because then he'd have to do something about it."

(4) "Prosecution is necessary to deter further violations of human rights by [future] officials."

(5) "Prosecution is essential to establish the viability of the democratic system." If the Republicans and Bush/Cheney apologists can prevent prosecution though political influence, democracy does not really exist.

(6) Even if the worst "crimes are not prosecuted, at a very minimum it is necessary to bring into the open the extent of the crimes and the identity of those responsible and thus establish a full and unchallengeable public record. The principle of accountability is essential to democracy, and accountability requires 'exposing the truth' and insisting 'that people not be scarified for the greater good…'."

The Case for Forgiving and Forgetting the Use of Torture

Huntington's analysis of the case for leaving a past government's torture in the past, and imposing no consequences, which is based on more extreme government authoritarianism, is not nearly as applicable as his arguments calling for prosecution. Thus, I have taken his core arguments against prosecuting and punishing, and restated them in a context that is more closely applicable to our country and the current situation:

(1) A working democracy calls for reconciliation between major factions in society, who set aside divisions of the past.

(2) There must be a tacit understanding in a democracy among those vying for power that there will be no retribution for past policies sincerely held by opponents. Democracies do not criminalize policy differences, and while the Obama Administration does not believe torture is an effective policy, and has rejected it, it understands that the Bush/Cheney Administration believed it necessary to protect Americans.

(3) Because many Democrats were aware of the use of torture by the Bush/Cheney Administration -- specifically, Congressional Democrats who were briefed on its use -- it would be unfair to prosecute Republicans but not Democrats.

(4) Torture was only used because it was sincerely believed it was necessary to deal with terrorism, and, whether wisely or unwisely, it was done to protect the United States.

(5) Many Americans share in the guilt of the use of torture by the Bush/Cheney Administration. Recent polls indicate that only 29 percent of Americans believe torture should never be used, and the rest have varying degrees of toleration for its use. Similarly, not even half of Americans polled want an investigation into this matter.

(6) Prosecuting and punishing those involved in the use of torture would provoke a bitter and divisive public debate, which would detract from the government's ability to deal with more pressing problems like the economy, healthcare, and America's dangerous budget deficits. It is more important to guarantee the human rights of people today and tomorrow, than to seek retroactive justice that could compromise the ability to deal with more immediate and difficult issues.

Professor Huntington's Advice

It is unfortunate that Samuel Huntington is no longer available to share his wisdom for addressing this situation facing the nation, and the Obama Administration. Clearly there are strengths and weaknesses in the arguments on both sides of this issue. Nonetheless, as I noted, Huntington did give his advice to those who were forming new democracies -- advice which he based on how the democracy was formed:

(1) When the transition to democracy occurred through a process of transformation ("when the elites in power took the lead in bringing about democracy"), or through what he called transplacement ("when democratization resulted largely from joint action by government and opposition groups"), then Huntington advised those in power, "do not attempt to prosecute authoritarian officials for human rights violations. The political costs of such an effort will outweigh any moral gains."

(2) If replacement – not transformation or transplacement -- occurred (that is if "opposition groups took the lead in bringing about democracy, and the authoritarian regime collapsed or was overthrown"), and if those in power felt it was "morally and politically desirable," then Huntington advised that they should "prosecute the leaders of the authoritarian regime promptly (within one year of your coming into power) while making clear that you will not prosecute middle- and lower-ranking officials."

(3) Regardless of how the transition occurred, Huntington advised that those in power ought to "[d]evise a means to achieve a full and dispassionate public accounting of how and why the crimes were committed."

(4) Throughout his analysis, Huntington points out, "on the issue of 'prosecute and punish vs. forgive and forget,'" that "each alternative presents grave problems, and that the least unsatisfactory course may well be: do not prosecute, do not punish, do not forgive, and, above all, do not forget."

Huntington's advice, notwithstanding how the transition occurred during our last election, still appears very relevant to our democracy, which is the most advanced in the world. Personally, I find his arguments for prosecution stronger than those against it when those arguments are applied to the Bush/Cheney Administration. But since it appears the Obama Administration is not going to take such action, at a minimum the Administration should follow Huntington's counsel to find "a means to achieve a full and dispassionate public accounting," and should make certain that the means chosen is not understood as forgiving, which would allow the nation to quickly forget.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

If It's A War Crime, It Must Be Partisan

Ensign Calls Senate Armed Services Committee Report A ‘Democrat Partisan’ Document »

Today, Sen. John Ensign (R-AZ) went on MSNBC to attack the Senate Armed Services Committee report on the Bush administration's treatment of detainees. When host Chris Matthews asked Ensign whether he was shocked that our interrogation practices were based on those used by Chinese Communists to elicit false information from U.S. troops, the senator criticized him for being "inflammatory."

When Matthews insisted that he wasn't being inflammatory because he was reading directly from the report, Ensign tried to discredit the entire document by saying it was a "Democrat partisan" report:

ENSIGN: Chris, the reason I said it is because you didn't preface that with saying that was a Democrat report. That was a Democrat partisan report. And you have to understand where the people who were doing that report -- where their ideology comes from.
MATTHEWS: Well, apparently, Sen. John McCain is part of what you call a "Democrat report." It's the full committee report. ... [I]t's the Armed Services Committee report. It went through three months of review by the Defense Department, until its final release just yesterday. It seems to me this was vetted, sir. And you say this was some Democrat report.
ENSIGN: The Democrats are in control of all of the committees. This was a Democrat majority report. This was not with the participation of the minority where the minority signed it, "Yes, we agree with these views."

Ensign is right that there are often committee reports produced and released by only the minority or the majority. This report, however, was not one of them. The first page of the detainee report makes it clear that it is a document from the "Committee on Armed Services, United States Senate." ThinkProgress spoke with a committee spokesman who confirmed that the full, unanimous committee released the report. When talking with Levin today, MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell noted that Republican Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham also endorsed the report.

Additionally, documents clearly show that the Bush administration's interrogation program was based on the U.S. military program known as Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE), which is used to train U.S. troops if they are ever tortured by an enemy that doesn't adhere to the Geneva Conventions. As the report notes, SERE techniques "were based, in part, on Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to elicit false confessions."

Transcript: More »

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Bush war Crimes

By Jason Leopold 

April 16, 2009

In March 2003, after Iraqi troops captured several U.S. soldiers and let them be interviewed on Iraqi TV, senior Bush administration officials expressed outrage over this violation of the Geneva Convention.

"If there is somebody captured," President George W. Bush told reporters on March 23, 2003, "I expect those people to be treated humanely. If not, the people who mistreat the prisoners will be treated as war criminals."

No one in the Bush administration, however, acknowledged the extent of their own violations of rules governing humane treatment of enemy combatants. Nor did the U.S. news media offer any context, ignoring the U.S. handling of Afghan War captives at Guantanamo Bay in 2002 and the fact that the U.S. military also had paraded captured Iraqi soldiers before cameras.

During those heady days of “embedded” war correspondents reporting excitedly about Bush’s “shock and awe” invasion, what Americans got to see and hear was how the Iraqi violation of the Geneva Convention – the videotaped interviews – demonstrated the barbarity of the enemy and justified their punishment as war criminals.

Bush’s fury over the POW interviews echoed across Washington. “It is a blatant violation of the Geneva Convention to humiliate and abuse prisoners of war or to harm them in any way,” declared Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke on March 24.

That same day, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told the BBC, “The Geneva Convention is very clear on the rules for treating prisoners. They're not supposed to be tortured or abused, they're not supposed to be intimidated, they're not supposed to be made public displays of humiliation or insult, and we're going to be in a position to hold those Iraqi officials who are mistreating our prisoners accountable, and they've got to stop.”

On March 25, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld added, “In recent days, the world has witnessed further evidence of their [Iraqi] brutality and their disregard for the laws of war. Their treatment of coalition POWs is a violation of the Geneva Conventions.” [For a contemporaneous story, see Consortiumnews.com’s “International Law a la Carte.”]

Hypocrisy Exposed

It would take months and years – as documents from Bush’s first term were gradually released to the public – to reveal the extent of the Bush administration’s hypocrisy.

For instance, it’s now known that the International Committee of the Red Cross began an investigation of U.S. war crimes in Iraq from the first days of the invasion, interviewing Iraqis captives from March to November 2003.

On Jan. 15, 2004, ICRC president Jakob Kellenberger expressed his concern to Secretary of State Colin Powell about the Bush administration’s attitude regarding international law, specifically an op-ed by then-State Department legal adviser William Taft IV in the Financial Times four days earlier.

In that op-ed, Taft wrote that there was no law that required the U.S. to afford due process to foreigners captured in the “war on terror.”

"American treatment of detainees held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba is fully consistent with international law and with centuries-old norms for treating individuals captured in wartime," Taft wrote. “We are engaged in a war.”

It’s unclear what Kellenberger cited in Taft’s column, because the recently released minutes of the meeting were heavily redacted. But the conversation segued into Powell asking Kellenberger “where in addition to Afghanistan, did ICRC have problems with notification and access to detainees?”

Powell is quoted as saying “we are confident of our legal position, (referring to legal adviser Taft’s op-ed), but we also know the world is watching us.”

The next month, the ICRC gave Bush administration officials a confidential report which found that U.S. occupation forces in Iraq often arrested Iraqis without good reason and subjected them to abuse and humiliation that sometimes was “tantamount to torture” in violation of the Geneva Conventions.

Some excessive violence, including the use of live ammunition against detainees, had led to seven deaths, the ICRC report said.

“According to the allegations collected by the ICRC, ill-treatment during interrogation was not systematic, except with regard to persons arrested in connection with suspected security offences or deemed to have an ‘intelligence’ value,” the report said.

“In these cases, persons deprived of their liberty under supervision of the Military Intelligence were at high risk of being subjected to a variety of harsh treatments ranging from insults, threats and humiliations to both physical and psychological coercion, which in some cases was tantamount to torture, in order to force cooperation with their interrogators.”

Trickle-Down Torture

One of the recipients of the ICRC confidential report was Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the senior U.S. military officer in Iraq, an ICRC official said later. Sanchez had instituted a “dozen interrogation methods beyond” the Army’s standard interrogation techniques that comply with the Geneva Conventions, according to a 2004 report by a panel headed by former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger.

Sanchez said he based his decision on “the President's Memorandum” justifying "additional, tougher measures" against detainees, the Schlesigner report said. The memorandum Sanchez was referring to was an order that Bush signed on Feb. 7, 2002, excluding “war on terror” suspects from Geneva Convention protections.

As the ICRC gathered more information about the Bush administration’s detention policies, it began to make some of its concerns public. On March 1, 2004, for instance, Gabor Rona, the ICRC’s legal adviser, wrote an op-ed also in the Financial Times that took issue with the Bush administration’s posture on the Geneva Conventions.

“The US is proceeding with plans to subject prisoners to military commission trials, citing the Geneva Convention provision that prisoners of war be tried by military courts. How can it do so while maintaining that no detainees are entitled to PoW status?” Rona wrote.

“That aside, the US risks throwing into the military-trial pot people whose alleged crimes have no connection with armed conflict, as understood in international humanitarian law. Such people can and should face trial, but not by military courts.”

Taft responded with an angry letter to Kellenberger on March 16, 2004.

“Your staff states categorically that detainees are entitled to an individualized procedure to challenge the basis of their detention,” Taft wrote. “No citation or support is provided for this assertion. There is, in fact, no such entitlement in the 1949 Geneva Conventions.

“However, the implication in the article is that the Geneva Conventions do provide such entitlement. This again has the unfortunate effect of misleading the public.”

The Abu Ghraib Scandal

The behind-the-scenes dispute over detainee treatment went public in another way in April 2004 when photos were leaked showing U.S. prison guards at Abu Ghraib forcing naked Iraqi detainees into fake sexual positions, intimidating detainees with attacks dogs, committing other abuses, and posing with the corpse of an Iraqi who had died in custody.

After a public scandal erupted, President Bush blamed the Abu Ghraib abuses on low-level prison guards.

“I shared a deep disgust that those prisoners were treated the way they were treated,” Bush said. “Their treatment does not reflect the nature of the American people.”

However, Bush’s finger-pointing at a few “bad apples” was soon contradicted when the contents of the February 2004 ICRC report were leaked to the Wall Street Journal in May 2004. The ICRC findings made clear that the Abu Ghraib abuses were not an isolated case.

Nevertheless, 11 enlisted soldiers, who were guards at Abu Ghraib, were convicted in courts martial. Cpl. Charles Graner Jr. received the harshest sentence – 10 years in prison – while Lynndie England, a 22-year-old single mother who was photographed holding an Iraqi on a leash and pointing at a detainee’s penis, was sentenced to three years in prison.

Superior officers were cleared of wrongdoing or received mild reprimands.

But the February 2004 ICRC report on Iraq took on added meaning with the recent disclosure of another ICRC report, dated Feb. 14, 2007. Based on interviews that the ICRC finally arranged with 14 “high-value” detainees held at secret CIA prisons, the report concluded those prisoners had been subjected to similar humiliating and abusive treatment, including forced nudity and stress positions, as well as the drowning sensation of waterboarding.

The ICRC concluded that the treatment “constituted torture,” a finding that has legal weight because the ICRC is responsible for ensuring compliance with the Geneva Conventions and supervising the treatment of prisoners of war.

Taken together, the two reports suggest that the Bush administration adopted a policy of torture against “high-value” detainees captured in 2002 and that the policy spread to Iraq in 2003 when U.S. forces were grappling with a rising Iraqi insurgency against the American occupation. 

In December 2008, a Senate Armed Services Committee report reached a similar conclusion, tracing the U.S. abuse of detainees at Guantanamo Bay and later Abu Ghraib to President Bush’s Feb. 7, 2002, action memorandum that excluded “war on terror” suspects from Geneva Convention protections.

The report said Bush’s memo opened the door to “considering aggressive techniques,” which were then developed with the complicity of then-Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, Bush’s National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and other senior officials.

The public record – as it now exists – also makes clear that the Bush administration had a selective view of international law. When it worked to American advantage – as when Iraqis videotaped captured U.S. soldiers in March 2003 – Bush and his aides saw the rules as binding, but not when the laws of war constrained their own behavior.

In other words, international law applied to the other guy, but not to George W. Bush. He surely didn’t mean to implicate himself when he declared “the people who mistreat the prisoners will be treated as war criminals."

Jason Leopold has launched his own Web site, The Public Record, at www.pubrecord.org.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Democrats Duck Bush Torture Probe

As we have said on numerous occasions and numerous blogs, if the Goopers are truly unraveling, just hide and watch the Dembulbs save them.

I know. I've seen this film before and I didn't like it the first or second time around.

Nevertheless, this time it seems a little different. Is someone being blackmailed? BuCheney, Inc have been wiretapping for 8 years. Don't you just know that anyone of the opposition, of whom is perceived as is any threat at all has been wiretapped and something either criminal or embarrassing as hell isn't being held over their heads? (Not that that is an excuse for a truly patriotic, courageous public servant.) LOL, LOL, LOL!

By Jason Leopold
March 30, 2009

Despite now overwhelming evidence that ex-President George W. Bush and many top aides engaged in a systematic policy of illegal torture, national Democrats appear to be shying away from their recommendation last year for a special prosecutor to investigate these apparent war crimes.

Last June, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers and 55 other congressional Democrats signed a letter to then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey demanding a special prosecutor to investigate the growing body of evidence that Bush administration officials had sanctioned torture, which had been documented by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Not unexpectedly, Mukasey – a staunch defender of Bush’s theories about expansive presidential powers – ignored the letter. Now, however, despite even more evidence of torture and a Democratic administration in place, the calls for a special prosecutor have grown muted.

Aides to several Democratic lawmakers who signed the June 2008 letter told me that the focus has shifted to the economy and that pressure for a special prosecutor to bring criminal charges over the Bush administration’s past actions could become a distraction to that focus.

They added that the most that now can be expected is either a “blue ribbon” investigative panel such as Conyers proposed earlier this year or a similar “truth and reconciliation commission” as advocated by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy. Not a single signer of last year’s letter has stepped forward to renew the demand for a special prosecutor to the Obama administration and Attorney General Eric Holder.

The loss of Democratic interest in a special prosecutor suggests that the signers made the recommendation last year knowing that Mukasey would ignore it but thinking that the letter would appease the Democratic “base,” which was calling for accountability on Bush’s war crimes.

This readiness of Democrats to put the pursuit of bipartisanship over the pursuit of justice – after a victorious election – parallels their actions 16 years ago when President Bill Clinton and a Democratic-controlled Congress swept under the rug investigations of the Reagan-Bush-41 era, such as the Iran-Contra scandal and Iraqgate support for Saddam Hussein. [See Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege.]

However, this time, Bush-43’s apparent violations of international laws prohibiting torture are forcing global demands for action, if the United States fails to live up to its obligations to enforce its own commitment to anti-torture laws and treaties.

Torture is a war crime that carries universal enforcement, which means that prosecutors of other nations can bring charges if the nation directly implicated doesn’t act. In that regard, Spanish investigative judge Baltasar Garzon took the initial steps last week to investigate whether six high-level Bush officials, including key lawyers John Yoo and Jay Bybee, violated laws against torture.

Torture Results

Also, over the weekend, the Washington Post reported that the waterboarding – or simulated drowning – of “war on terror” suspect Abu Zabaida induced him to provide a host of new leads about al-Qaeda plots, but that his torture-induced claims turned out to be time-consuming dead-ends.

“Not a single significant plot was foiled as a result of Abu Zubaida’s tortured confessions, according to former senior government officials who closely followed the interrogations,” the Post reported.

“Nearly all of the leads attained through the harsh measures quickly evaporated, while most of the useful information from Abu Zubaida – chiefly names of al-Qaeda members and associates – was obtained before waterboarding was introduced, they said.” [Washington Post, March 29, 2009]

Two weeks ago, other evidence about Bush’s torture policy surfaced when journalist Mark Danner published chilling details from a report by the International Committee of the Red Cross that concluded that the abuse of 14 “high-value” detainees at CIA secret prisons “constituted torture.”

“In addition, many other elements of the ill treatment, either singly or in combination, constituted cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment,” according to the ICRC report cited by Danner. Since the ICRC’s responsibilities involve ensuring compliance with the Geneva Conventions and supervising the treatment of prisoners of war, the organization’s findings have legal consequence.

The June 2008 letter from Conyers apparently was prompted by the same or similar ICRC findings, citing “several instances of acts of torture against detainees, including soaking a prisoner’s hand in alcohol and lighting it on fire, subjecting a prisoner to sexual abuse and forcing a prisoner to eat a baseball.”

Conyers and the other Democrats told Mukasey then that the ICRC findings alone warranted action but were buttressed by other information that senior Bush administration officials met in the White House to approve the use of waterboarding and other “enhanced techniques” and that “President Bush was aware of, and approved of the meetings taking place.”

The letter added: "This information indicates that the Bush administration may have systematically implemented, from the top down, detainee interrogation policies that constitute torture or otherwise violate the law.

“We believe that these serious and significant revelations warrant an immediate investigation to determine whether actions taken by the President, his Cabinet, and other Administration officials are in violation of the War Crimes Act, the Anti-Torture Act, and other U.S. and international laws.

"Despite the seriousness of the evidence, the Justice Department has brought prosecution against only one civilian for an interrogation-related crime. Given that record, we believe it is necessary to appoint a special counsel in order to ensure that a thorough and impartial investigation occurs."

Still Waiting

Nearly nine months have passed since Conyers and the other Democratic lawmakers sent the letter to Mukasey. Since then, more evidence has piled up implicating at least a dozen senior Bush administration officials in sanctioning a policy of torture.

For instance, in January, Susan Crawford, the retired judge who heads military commissions at Guantanamo, became the highest ranking U.S. official who said the interrogation of at least one detainee at Guantanamo met the legal definition of torture and as a result she would not allow a war crimes tribunal against him to proceed.

Last week, Vijay Padmanabhan, the State Department’s chief counsel on Guantanamo litigation, told the Associated Press that the Bush administration overreacted after 9/11 and set up a policy of torture at the facility.

“I think Guantanamo was one of the worst overreactions of the Bush administration," Padmanabhan told the AP. He criticized other “overreactions” such as extraordinary renditions, waterboarding at secret CIA prisons and "other enhanced interrogation techniques that would constitute torture.”


Meanwhile, other Bush administration veterans, including Vice President Dick Cheney, have spoken openly about their support for and approval of waterboarding and other brutal interrogation methods, although they continued to insist that the tactics did not constitute torture.

During a speech at the University of Texas at Austin recently, former Attorney General John Ashcroft said, "there are things that you can call waterboarding that I am thoroughly convinced are not torture. There are things that you can call waterboarding that might be torture. …

“The point that ought to be understood is that throwing a term around recklessly for its emotional content doesn't really get you anywhere."

In waterboarding, a person is strapped to a board with his head tilted downward and a cloth covering his face. Water is then poured over the cloth forcing the panicked gag reflex associated with drowning. It has been condemned as torture since the days of the Spanish Inquisition and its use has resulted in past criminal prosecutions under U.S. law.

Before leaving office, Vice President Cheney said he approved waterboarding on at least three “high value” detainees and the “enhanced interrogation” of 33 other prisoners. President Bush made a somewhat vaguer acknowledgement of authorizing these techniques.

Admissions of Crimes

Civil rights groups said Bush and Cheney’s comments amounted to an admission of war crimes. The ACLU called on Attorney General Holder two weeks ago to appoint a special prosecutor to launch a probe into the Bush administration's torture practices.

“The fact that such crimes have been committed can no longer be doubted or debated, nor can the need for an independent prosecutor be ignored by a new Justice Department committed to restoring the rule of law,” ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero said.

“Given the increasing evidence of deliberate and widespread use of torture and abuse, and that such conduct was the predictable result of policy changes made at the highest levels of government, an independent prosecutor is clearly in the public interest,” Romero said.

Holder has not responded to the ACLU’s request. Over the next several weeks, however, the evidence of torture should continue to mount.

The Senate Armed Services Committee is expected to release a voluminous report on the treatment of alleged terrorist detainees held in U.S. custody and the brutal interrogation techniques they were subjected to, according to Defense Department and intelligence sources.

The declassified version of the report is 200 pages, contains 2,000 footnotes, and will reveal a wealth of new information about the genesis of the Bush administration's interrogation policies, according to these sources. The investigation relied upon the testimony of 70 people, generated 38,000 pages of documents, and took 18 months to complete.

The Justice Department also is expected to release a declassified version of a critical report prepared by its Office of Professional Responsibility, which investigated legal work by former attorneys at the Office of Legal Counsel, which advises the White House on the limits of presidential authority.

The report concluded that three key attorneys – John Yoo, Jay Bybee and Steven Bradbury – blurred the lines between an attorney charged with providing independent legal advice to the White House and a policy advocate who was working to advance the administration’s goals, which included a legal justification for torture, said the sources who spoke on condition of anonymity because the contents of the report are still classified.

On April 2, the Justice Department also is expected to release three still-classified legal opinions that Bradbury wrote in May 2005, reaffirming Bush’s claimed authority to subject “war on terror” prisoners to harsh interrogations.

Jason Leopold has launched his own Web site, The Public Record, at www.pubrecord.org.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Will War Crimes Be Outed? They had damn well better be

As the officials of the Bush administration pack up in Washington and move into their posh suburban homes around the country, will they be able to rest easy, or will they be haunted by the fear that they will be held accountable for war crimes?

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  Jeremy Brecher, Tim Costello & Brendan Smith: Labor leaders and environmentalists meet to explore how to make green jobs good jobs for American workers.

There are many reasons to anticipate that the incoming Obama administration and the new Congress will let sleeping dogs lie. Attention to criminal acts by the former administration would probably anger Republicans, whose support Obama is hoping to win for his first priority, his economic program. Democratic Congressional leaders have known a great deal about Bush administration lawlessness, and in some cases have even given it their approval--making an unfettered review seem unlikely.

Some of Obama's own top appointees would undoubtedly receive scrutiny in an unconstrained investigation--Obama's reappointed defense secretary Robert Gates, for example, has had responsibility not only for Guantánamo but also for the incarceration of tens of thousands of Iraqis in prisons in Iraq like Camp Bucca, which the Washington Post described in a headline as "a Prison Full of Innocent Men," without even a procedure for determining their guilt or innocence--unquestionably a violation of the Geneva Conventions in and of itself.

But the repose of the Cheneys, Bushes, Gonzaleses and Rumsfelds may not turn out to be so undisturbed. In his notorious torture memo, Alberto Gonzales warned about "prosecutors and independent counsels" who may in the future decide to pursue "unwarranted charges" based on the US War Crimes Act's prohibition on violations of the Geneva Conventions. While no such charges are likely to be brought anytime soon, neither are they likely to vanish. In the short run, Obama and his team face inescapable questions about the legal culpability of the Bush administration. And in the long run, such charges are likely to grow only more unavoidable once the former officials of that administration have lost the authority to quash them.

In April Obama said that if elected, he would have his attorney general initiate a prompt review of Bush-era action to distinguish between possible "genuine crimes" and "really bad policies."

"If crimes have been committed, they should be investigated," Obama told the Philadelphia Daily News. He added, however, that "I would not want my first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of Republicans as a partisan witch hunt, because I think we've got too many problems we've got to solve."

Obama's nominee for attorney general, Eric Holder, speaking to the American Constitution Society in June, described Bush administration actions in terms that sound a whole lot more like "genuine crimes" than like "really bad policies":

Our government authorized the use of torture, approved of secret electronic surveillance against American citizens, secretly detained American citizens without due process of law, denied the writ of habeas corpus to hundreds of accused enemy combatants and authorized the use of procedures that violate both international law and the United States Constitution.... We owe the American people a reckoning."

A Reckoning?

While attention has focused on whether, once president, Obama will move quickly to close Guantánamo, shut down secret prisons, halt rendition and ban torture, there's a less visible struggle over whether and how to provide a reckoning for war crimes past.

A growing body of legal opinion holds that Obama will have a duty to investigate war crimes allegations and, if they are found to have merit, to prosecute the perpetrators.

In a December 3 Chicago Sun-Times op-ed, law professors Anthony D'Amato (the Leighton Professor at Northwestern University School of Law) and Jordan J. Paust (the Mike & Thersa Baker Professor at the Law Center of the University of Houston) ask whether president-elect Barack Obama will have "the duty to prosecute or extradite persons who are reasonably accused of having committed and abetted war crimes or crimes against humanity during the Bush administration's admitted 'program' of 'coercive interrogation' and secret detention that was part of a 'common, unifying' plan to deny protections under the Geneva Conventions."

They answer, "Yes."

"Under the US Constitution, the president is expressly and unavoidably bound to faithfully execute the laws." The 1949 Geneva Conventions "expressly and unavoidably requires that all parties search for perpetrators of grave breaches of the treaty" and bring them before their own courts for "effective penal sanctions" or, if they prefer, "hand such persons over for trial to another High Contracting Party."

The statement is particularly authoritative--and particularly striking--because Paust is also a former captain in the United States Army JAG Corps and member of the faculty at the Judge Advocate General's School.

Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights says that one of Barack Obama's first acts as president should be to "instruct his attorney general to appoint an independent prosecutor to initiate a criminal investigation of former Bush Administration officials who gave the green light to torture."

Parallel to the legal community, members of Congress and president-elect Obama are trying to chart a strategy that avoids the appearance of seeking to punish Bush administration officials without appearing blatantly oblivious to their apparent war crimes. According to the AP's Lara Jakes Jordan, "Two Obama advisors say there's little--if any--chance that the incoming president's Justice Department will go after anyone involved in authorizing or carrying out interrogations that provoked worldwide outrage." Instead, "Obama is expected to create a panel modeled after the 9/11 Commission to study interrogations, including those using waterboarding and other tactics that critics call torture."

Asked if Bush administration officials would face prosecution for war crimes, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy flatly said, "In the United States, no," but he does intend to continue to investigate Bush administration officials and their interrogation policies. "Personally, I would like to know exactly what happened. Torture is going to be a major issue."

Continue the Cover-Up?

President-elect Obama may well seek to delay taking a stand for or against such accountability actions. But he is likely to be confronted early in his administration by choices about whether to continue or terminate legal cover-up operations the Bush administration currently has under way.

For example, the Bush administration has blocked the civil suit against US officials by Canadian Maher Arar for his "rendition" to Syria and his torture there by invoking the "state secrets" privilege. According to Christopher Anders, senior legislative counsel for the ACLU, they have appointed a prosecutor to investigate the destruction of videotapes of CIA interrogations, but the investigation is limited only to whether crimes were committed in relation to the destruction of the tapes--not whether what was being videotaped is a crime. The administration has refused to cooperate with the trial of twenty-six Americans, mostly CIA agents, who kidnapped a terrorism suspect in Milan and flew him to Egypt where, he says, he was tortured. And they have refused to provide secret documents to the British High Court in the case of Guantánamo detainee Binyam Mohamed that may demonstrate that US officials were complicit in his torture in Morocco.

If the Obama administration continues the Bush administration's efforts to prevent investigators from investigating and courts from hearing such cases, it will rapidly become part of the cover-up. If it begins to, at a minimum, stop obstructing such proceedings, the result could be a rapid crumbling of the wall of silence the Bush administration has tried so assiduously to build around its "war on terror."

A bipartisan report issued by the Senate Armed Services Committee on December 11 will make it far more difficult to evade the responsibility of holding Bush administration officials legally accountable for war crimes. Released by Senators Carl Levin and John McCain after two years of investigation, the report concluded:

The abuse of detainees in US custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of 'a few bad apples' acting on their own.... The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees.... Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's authorization of aggressive interrogation techniques for use at Guantánamo Bay was a direct cause of detainee abuse there.

In an interview published in the Detroit News, Senator Levin said he was not responsible for deciding whether officials should be prosecuted for authorizing torture, but he admitted that there is enough evidence that victims of abuse could file civil lawsuits against their assailants. Levin also suggested that the Obama administration "needs to look for ways in which people can be held accountable for their actions."

An Accountability Movement

Outside the Beltway, a movement to hold Bush administration officials accountable for torture and other war crimes after they leave office is gradually emerging. It received a boost when over a hundred lawyers and activists met in Andover, Massachusetts on September 20 at a conference entitled "Planning for the Prosecution of High Level American War Criminals." The conference created an ongoing committee to coordinate accountability efforts. At the close, conference convener Dean Lawrence Velvel of the Massachusetts School of Law noted more than twenty strategies and specific actions that had been proposed, ranging from the state felony prosecutions proposed by former district attroney Vincent Bugliosi to the international prosecutions pioneered by the Center for Constitutional Rights' Rumsfeld cases; and from impeaching Bush appointees like Federal Judge Jay Bybee to public shaming of torture-tainted former officials like ohn Yew, now a professor at the University of California Law School.

One of proposals discussed at the Andover conference was the creation of a citizens' War Crimes Documentation Center, modeled on the special office set up by the Allied governments before the end of World War II to investigate and document Nazi war crimes. Such a center could be the nexus for research, education and coordination of a wide range of civil society forces in the US and abroad that are demanding accountability. It could bring together the extensive but scattered evidence already available, to compile a narrative of what actually happened in the Bush administration. It could help or pressure Congress to conduct investigations to fill in the blanks. It could pull together high-profile coalitions to campaign around the issue of accountability for specific crimes like torture. If Obama does initiate some kind of investigating commission, such a center could provide it with information and help hold it accountable.

A Moral Education

There are a myriad of reasons for urgently holding the Bush regime to account, ranging from preventing unchallenged executive action from setting new legal precedent to providing a compelling rationale for the immediate cessation of bombing civilians in the escalating Afghan war.

But the issue raised by Bush administration war crimes is even larger than any person's individual crimes. As Thomas Paine wrote in Common Sense, "A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right." The long history of aggressive war, illegal occupation, and torture, from the Philippines to Iraq, have given the American people a moral education that encourages us to countenance war crimes. If we allow those who initiated and justified the illegal conquest and occupation of Iraq and the use of torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo to go unsanctioned, we teach the world--and ourselves--a lesson about what's OK and legal.

As countries like Chile, Turkey and Argentina can attest, restoration of democracy, civic morality and the rule of law is often a slow but necessary process, requiring far more than simply voting a new party into office. It requires a wholesale rejection of impunity for the criminal acts of government officials. As Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL) 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.... Our actions will properly define the Bush Administration in the eyes of history."

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About Jeremy Brecher

Jeremy Brecher is a historian whose books include Strike!, Globalization from Below, and, co-edited with Brendan Smith and Jill Cutler, In the Name of Democracy: American War Crimes in Iraq and Beyond (Metropolitan/Holt). He has received five regional Emmy Awards for his documentary film work. He is a co-founder of WarCrimesWatch.org. more...

About Brendan Smith

Brendan Smith is a legal analyst whose books include Globalization From Below and, with Brendan Smith and Jill Cutler, of In the Name of Democracy: American War Crimes in Iraq and Beyond (Metropolitan). He is current co-director of Global Labor Strategies and UCLA Law School's Globalization and Labor Standards Project, and has worked previously for Congressman Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and a broad range of unions and grassroots groups. His commentary has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, CBS News.com, YahooNews and the Baltimore Sun. Contact him at smithb28@gmail.com. more...

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(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Thank You Congressman Kucinich!

If his remarks are mentioned at all on the TeeVee News or in what passes for a free press in the U.S., it will be a small miracle. If this patriot's words are mentioned, we can all bet there will be some right-wing nut job like Pat Buchanan to inform us that Kucinich is a left-wing loon and must therefore be ignored and, of course, Congress will do just that, and at their own peril I'm afraid.

I would be remiss if I did not point out that this speech was made on March 15, 2007. Not much has changed since then on the Justice front, except we now have Barack Obama close to being in the White House and a larger Democratic majority in the House and a narrower one in the Senate. Still the issue of war crimes committed or ordered to be committed at the highest levels of our government hangs over our collective heads like the sword of Damocles.

If these illegal acts are allowed to stand with no one in this appallingly corrupt, murderous administration held accountable, our laws are absolutely useless, unless they are used in some perverse way to oppress activists' rights to free speech and to subvert the rights of the so-called minority for 6 of the 8 years Bush/Cheney occupied the White House and their enablers held majorities in both the House and the Senate and who refused to do any real oversight. By the election of 2006, the damage was done.

I've heard some say that it would be political suicide for Obama's Justice Department to bring those in the Bush administration who are guilty of International crimes, as well as domestic crimes against the people of America and our Constitution. I certainly understand why Obama would rather not spend his time on holding this bunch accountable. He might well lose in 2012.

I'm thinking of that old phrase from the 60s and 70s; The Whole World Is Watching. I don't know how true that "chant"was back then, but I know damn well that it is true now.

I know quite a few people who believe the U.S. to be invincible. They are like teenagers who feel invulnerable, and don't care what the rest of the world thinks about the crimes of our government. There is not a whit of wisdom among them. They move through life, mechanically, like adults who still believe in fairy tales, trapped in their own concrete, rigidly ideological minds.

It is, no doubt, to late for impeachment now but, after all, impeachment and trial by the senate is only one way to skin a skunk or two or three, four, etc., etc. It is a way to remove a president and VP from office so that they can be tried for their crimes.

I realize that one of Obama's most cherished motives for running for president was to bring a deeply divided nation together. That goal may well be beyond the grasp of any president. The dangerous divide in this nation didn't begin 8 years ago. It started with the assassination of JFK, Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy.

In 1968 America went off the rails and I'm not hopeful that a people so deeply divided that they literally live in two different realities can ever be brought together again.

Nevertheless, accountability and justice can and must be done.

THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING, as well they might after the latest reign of "the effing Crazies."

PLEASE SEND TO LARGEST LISTS AND POST EVERYWHERE ASAP

Thank Kucinich for His Remarks Today on Iran and Impeachment

When a Congress Member steps out into a firestorm of opposition from the corporate media and his own party's leadership, he has to hear support from us to keep him going.

Please call Rep. Dennis Kucinich at 202-225-5871 and Email him at http://kucinich.us/contact and thank him for his remarks today on the floor of the House, in which he stood up for Congress' war powers and stated impeachment may be the only way to prevent President Bush from attacking Iran. If you really want to encourage Dennis to move ahead on impeachment, one idea is to go to http://kucinich.us and donate to his presidential campaign. Try giving $15 because this is March 15th and indicating that impeachment is the reason why.

Remarks on the floor of the U.S. House, March 15, 2007

This House cannot avoid its Constitutionally authorized responsibility to restrain the abuse of Executive power.

The Administration has been preparing for an aggressive war against Iran. There is no solid, direct evidence that Iran has the intention of attacking the United States or its allies.

The US is a signatory to the UN Charter, a constituent treaty among the nations of the world. Article II, Section 4 of the UN Charter states, "all members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state. . . Even the threat of a war of aggression is illegal.

Article VI of the US Constitution makes such treaties the Supreme Law of the Land. This Administration, has openly threatened aggression against Iran in violation of the US Constitution and the UN Charter.

This week the House Appropriations committee removed language from the Iraq war funding bill requiring the Administration, under Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11 of the Constitution, to seek permission before it launched an attack against Iran.

Since war with Iran is an option of this Administration and since such war is patently illegal, then impeachment may well be the only remedy which remains to stop a war of aggression against Iran.

www.kucinich.us

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

A Call For The Arrest of George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney

Now here's a movement we can get behind.

09/23/2008 @ 4:51 pm

Filed by Mike Sheehan and David Edwards

Anti-war protesters hung a banner today at the National Archives calling for the arrest of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.


The 22-foot-long banner in red, white and black reads, "Defend Our Constitution - Arrest Bush / Cheney! - War Criminals!"


The protesters, perched on a ledge at the historic building in Washington, D.C., additionally claim to be on a hunger strike.


According to a press release, the five are military combat veterans from the anti-war group Veterans For Peace who intend to stay on the ledge and fast for a full day "in remembrance of those who have perished and those still suffering from the crimes of the Bush administration."


An Archives spokesperson had no comment when asked if authorities were planning to take action to stop the peaceful protest.



(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Biden and The Bush/Cheney "War On Terror" Myth

Mr. Biden seems to have trouble with our government committing war crimes.

By Andy Worthington, AlterNet
Posted on August 24, 2008, Printed on August 26, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/96178/

In the end, then, it came down to this: Barack Obama needed a vice-presidential candidate with well-established Washington credentials, foreign policy experience and an ability to connect with blue-collar workers.

And while Joe Biden -- a 65-year old working class Irish Catholic, the Senator for Delaware since 1972, and the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — has a far from unblemished foreign policy record (most notoriously in his support for the invasion of Iraq, but also, arguably, in his strenuous support for armed intervention in Kosovo, which, like that of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, paved the way for justifying war on a basis other then that of self-defense), he has since recanted his position on the Iraq war, and has, for many years, also been unafraid to tackle other excesses of the Bush administration's post-9/11 policies; in particular, through his persistent calls for the closure of the "War on Terror" prison at Guantánamo Bay.

Although he initially supported the invasion of Iraq (after trying, and failing, to persuade President Bush to first exhaust all diplomatic efforts), Sen. Biden has since become on of the war's toughest critics in the Senate. He warned of the costs of a long occupation before the war even began, and in 2006 he proposed, with Leslie Gelb, the president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, a five-point plan for the future of Iraq, which called for a federalized system of three regional governments (Kurd, Sunni and Shiite) plus a centralized government for the management of "truly common interests" like oil and border defense.

Sen. Biden also has a more personal connection to Iraq. His son Beau, the attorney general of Delaware, is a captain in the Army National Guard, and is set to be deployed to Iraq in the fall, even though, as Sen. Biden explained last year, "I don't want him going. But I tell you what, I don't want my grandsons or granddaughters going back in 15 years. So how we leave makes a big difference."

Sen. Biden has also repeatedly cast doubt on the very notion of a "War on Terror," declaring, in a speech in April 2008, in which he lambasted the Bush administration for making "fear the main driver of our foreign policy," "Terrorism is a means, not an end, and very different groups and countries are using it toward very different goals. If we can't even identify the enemy or describe the war we're fighting, it's difficult to see how we will win."

Reassuringly, for those who care about the Bush administration's assault on fundamental human rights, holding prisoners neither as Prisoners of War protected by the Geneva Conventions nor as criminal suspects to be tried in US courts, Sen. Biden has been unstinting in his opposition to the prison at Guantánamo Bay. In June 2005, he called for Guantánamo to be closed, telling ABC News that it had "become the greatest propaganda tool that exists for recruiting of terrorists around the world."

Sen. Biden also voted against the much-criticized Military Commissions Act of 2006, which reintroduced military trials at Guantánamo after they were declared illegal by the US Supreme Court, and in May 2007 he co-sponsored the Guantánamo Bay Detention Facility Closure Act, which not only called for the closure of Guantánamo, but also proposed moving prisoners against whom a case could be built to the maximum security military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and releasing all those who had not been charged. In July 2007, he followed this with proposals for a National Security with Justice Act, which sought to "prohibit extraterritorial detention and rendition, except under limited circumstances, to modify the definition of 'unlawful enemy combatant' for purposes of military commissions, [and] to extend statutory habeas corpus to detainees."

During his Presidential campaign (which ended in January), Sen. Biden repeatedly stressed his belief in the strength of the laws that existed prior to the 9/11 attacks. When asked, "Do you agree or disagree with the statement made by former Attorney General Gonzales in January 2007 that nothing in the Constitution confers an affirmative right to habeas corpus, separate from any statutory habeas rights Congress might grant or take away?" he replied, "I disagree categorically with Mr. Gonzales. The Constitution guarantees the right of habeas corpus unless in the case of rebellion or invasion it is suspended. My National Security with Justice Act reinforces this Constitutional right by extending by statute meaningful habeas review for all Guantánamo detainees."

For Barack Obama, who has pledged to restore America's standing both at home and abroad by "re-establishing our credibility as a nation committed to the rule of law," the addition of Sen. Biden should ensure not only that finding a solution to the debacle of Iraq will be a priority, but also that the generally less popular issue of holding foreign prisoners without charge or trial in Guantánamo and other locations will be dealt with. To quote Sen. Biden more fully from his speech in April, "[The Bush administration] has destroyed faith in America's judgment. And it has devalued America's moral leadership in the world. Instead, this administration has focused to the point of obsession on the so-called "war on terrorism" and produced a one-size-fits-all doctrine of military preemption and regime change ill suited to the challenges we face. It has made fear the main driver of our foreign policy. It has turned a deadly serious but manageable threat -- a small number of radical groups that hate America -- into a ten-foot tall existential monster that dictates nearly every move we make. Even if you look at the world through this administration's distorted lens, you see a failed policy."

Seems that the political party, who have set themselves up as the epitome of American morality for the last 40 years don't understand that anything built on deception, fear-mongering and stirring the need for vengeance will never be successful.

AlterNet is a non profit organization and does not make political endorsements. The opinions expressed by our writers are their own.

Andy Worthington is a writer and historian, and author of The Guantánamo Files.

© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/96178/

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Is It Possible?

I, like many of my friends and colleagues, have been frustrated with the Democratic Congress for not doing more to reign in the Bush administration, put them on trial in the House, hold more hearings....whatever.

(I might add that I'm not all that unhappy about the telecoms immunity from civil lawsuit. Better hold off and try the decision makers. It won't do any good, and probably much harm, to sue the telecoms, unless everyones wants their rates to go up. The companies who are sued just pass the cost along to the shareholders and their customers. The CEO ands other officers won't see their exobitant salaries reduced. The real way to go after all of them is criminally.)

Nevertheless, I am beginning to wonder if there isn't a method to the congress-critters seeming madness. Several times I have heard various Congress-critters say that they are gathering information for the record. Several people have helped with various books and some testimony before various committees.

Everyone says that Junior will simply pardon himself and everyone else before he walks out of the White House. A pardon, when no crime has yet even been alleged, officially, by the House Judiciary Committee, would have to be written the same way Nixon's was, naming no specific crime he committed, rather absolving him of all crimes he may have committed. If such a pardon is accepted, it is an admission of guilt for any number of crimes. A president can pardon a person and they are off the hook in the U.S., but a presidential pardon means nothing at the Hague and this bunch has been caught seriously considering and committing international war crimes of a most heinous type.


If pardons do go out and are accepted by Bushites, it is time for a major citizens arrest, if neccessary, extraordinary rendition.


(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Army General Says Bush Guilty Of War Crimes.

I post these kind of articles for purely moral reasons and because some of our number believe that gaveling-into-order impeachment hearings is the only way to stop BushCo to from obliterating Iran.

I'm not sure it would have that effect. It is clear we are not dealing with rational people.

There are several reasons why I don't think Impeachment is our best option now.:

1) The Bushites are NUTZ and would not blink at taking out several hundred thousand American and Iranian lives to stay in power. Remember, Karl Rove was and is fighting for one party rule in America and Cheney is humping for Unitary Executive.


2) Even by the time that election 2006 gave the Democrats a good majority in the House and a very slim-to-no majority in the Senate, it was too late for impeachment and trial by the Senate, as it was clear that the Bushites were going to be fighting for the clearly unconstitutional "Unitary Executive," or imperial presidency, and would fight for or destroy every last smidgen of paper or electronic communications without so much as a twinge of conscious. That battle, I am afraid, would cause BushCo to go on a major offensive against political opposition at home and Neocon targets abroad. After the last 7 years, I would not put anything past the evil creatures in this administrations and their enablers in Congress, as well as their advisers/co-conspirators outside government.


3) Impeachment and trial by the Senate is only meant to remove elected officials from office, at which point they can be tried in a court of law, for crimes against the constitution/and or the people. This bunch has done those crimes and much worse. They have committed international crimes, serious war crimes.


No matter what the Congress does or does not do about BushCo, they will be out of office in less than 7 months and free to be tried, if not here, the Hague. As I see it, The International Court has the dibs on BushCo, as it is the international crimes that have caused the most death, maiming and mayhem.

It may well be up to the people to see that justice is served.

Bush is on a war crime spree, and only impeachment can stop him

Over the last three days, many tens of thousands of impeachment supporters have written and called Congress demanding accountability for Bush's war crimes. In a Physicians for Human Rights report published yesterday, entitled "Broken Laws, Broken Lives," two-star former General Anthony Taguba, wrote, "After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, 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."

Make an urgently needed donation right now to help us publicize the message of impeachment, including the powerful words of General Taguba about war crimes. We are in a full mobilization mode printing leaflets, posters, organizing lobbying teams, and much more. We can't do it without your help.

	What we can all do right now The impeachment movement has hit the streets with a new flyer to let the American public know about the necessity of impeachment. We've been calling our representatives, sending letters, and building up our resources so we can carry this historic movement forward. 1) Click this link to make a donation to the impeachment movement right now, when we need it most. 2) Please click here to send a letter to your Congressional representative. 3) Click this link to download the flyer to distribute.

Gen. Taguba's words could easily have come from of an impeachment activist, or excerpted from the 35 Articles of Impeachment introduced last week. But instead they came the Army general who led the investigation into the detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib. Taguba's comments shed new light on the horror of Bush's crimes, and are a striking confirmation of what the impeachment movement has been saying for years. Taguba's report comes right on the heels of a McClatchy newspaper report that showed gross abuses of human rights occurred under Bush's watch, primarily at prisons in Afghanistan where detainees were held en route to Guantanamo — and that many of the prisoners were wrongly detained.


In the report released yesterday, Taguba said, "This report tells the largely untold human story of what happened to detainees in our custody when the Commander-in-Chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture." After submitting his original report, General Taguba was predictably forced into retirement.


Taguba closed his comments with a direct call to action: "These men deserve justice as required under the tenets of international law and the United States Constitution." There is only one way for the Constitution to be brought into force and restore justice to the Bush administration's many victims: impeachment.


The House Judiciary Committee has the power to initiate impeachment hearings immediately, and act on the 35 Articles of Impeachment for George W. Bush. This is a time fraught with not only great challenges, but great opportunity. The impeachment movement has hit the streets with a new flyer to let the American public know about the necessity of impeachment. We've been calling our representatives, sending letters, and building up our resources so we can carry this historic movement forward. Click this link to make a donation to the impeachment movement right now, when we need it most.


Please click here to send a letter to your Congressional representative urging them to co-sponsor impeachment, to pressure the Judiciary Committee, and to fulfill their Constitutional obligations.


(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Are We Not All Responsible To See That Justice Is Done?

Justice?

By Monica Benderman

02/06/08 "ICH" -- - Earlier this week I was put in contact with the mother of a young Iraq veteran. Michael is twenty years old, with experiences no young person should have to face.

Michael chose to serve in the National Guard. Michael returned from Iraq with more than one medal for his service. But after a year long tour at Abu Ghraib, Michael returned with more than just medals – he brought a storehouse of experiences no person of good conscience could ever erase and this young man was not equipped with the tools he needed to quiet his mind and forget the reality of those memories.

Michael was not lost in the system. He received, and continues to receive counseling from the VA for his combat stress. He has the support of his command who has acknowledged the intense conditions under which Michael served. His family has watched over him, supported him and many in his community have embraced him. In the end, war has taken its toll. Michael faces a trial this week and this decorated young veteran, after choosing to serve his country at war, now stands to add years in prison to the list of obstacles his choices have given him.

Michael could not erase the horrors of what he saw in Iraq. Michael is proud of his service – a soldier committed to supporting the soldiers he has served with because he knows firsthand just how much each has given. Even more, Michael knows just how much understanding they now need. The medications couldn’t hide the memories, and the intoxicating effects of the 70 proof contents of a simple glass bottle couldn’t hide them either, bringing instead even greater heartache and the endless nightmare of a lifetime of regrets.

Michael lost his childhood in Iraq and returned to lose one remaining connection to better times when his attempt at self-medicating failed and his best friend lost his life in an accident Michael’s intoxication caused.

Politicians stand at podiums and talk about the cost of war.

Anti-war advocates preach from microphones and bullhorns on the steps of our nation’s capitol, outside city halls across the country and in parades down main streets in every middle-American community that they can reach.

Ignorant commentators issue harsh criticism of those who have volunteered, lashing out at the naiveté of the men and women who stood for what they believed, who acted in good faith and with trust for the words of commanders who had sworn not to abuse the lives entrusted to their leadership, as if those commentating had some higher enlightenment of right and wrong when more often than not they have never stood for anything more than photo opportunities.

Documentaries have been made showing bullet holes piercing the bodies of children no more than one year old; lives lost before they even knew to be afraid.

Many veterans have returned to offer public witness to their horrors while others have simply walked away in painful silence.

Americans shake their heads at the terrible effects of a natural rage – tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis, fires and floods destroying lives across the world – pity for the masses of people left homeless, sending care packages as a way to alleviate their guilt for not knowing the reality of what so many others have had to face. How many Americans turn a blind eye to the horrible effects of their own insatiable greed and ignorance for the truth of being human?

We blame our faults on the evil in the world – the evil side of a creator who gave us peace hoping we would know what to do with it; now standing watch as we pretend to have no control over the destruction we alone have caused.

Intellectuals congregate and discuss the psychological reasons for our lack of humanity.

Evangelicals shout from the mountaintops – “We MUST be afraid!”

A soldier stands alone as the chaos swirls around him – wondering “what have I done, where have I gone and how will I ever get back home?”

Wars come and go. Men and women die. Children are born. Economies falter, homes are lost, families are destroyed and futures questioned. The world circles and the cycles repeat themselves as a veteran generation remembers, issuing warnings of caution to a generation coming; a multitude believing themselves to be stronger against the tide than those who came before. As another generation grows old learning that life happens in spite of the effort to control it, the repeated cycles of chaos and division are nothing more than giant spinning wheels churning the mud in a mad attempt to veil the simplicity of the answers to questions most don’t even realize they are asking.

We know the prize; we talk about the dream, the vision, the goal. We paint it with psychedelic colors, glorify it in song, with poetic phrases; holding hands and lighting candles in the hope we can call it to the center of our circle, enjoined arms wrapping tightly to keep it from escaping our grasp. But it is not meant to be held, it is meant to be given with no obligation and no expectations. How long before we finally understand?

The war is coming home and still Americans don’t fully comprehend what we are about to receive.

We will reap what we have sown.

Michael gave what he believed was needed as he stood in response to what he felt called to do. Michael has paid a heavy price; more than any young man should have to pay. It is only the beginning, and a long jail sentence will not bring justice for an accident caused by something far more deadly than driving while intoxicated, with a responsibility shared by thousands who will never realize the cost of their complacency.

Michael, and thousands of others who will return from war to face their own storehouse of demons, deserve people to stand boldly in defense of what is right and just. They deserve people to work together to bring the changes we all need to help our world move a little closer to the goal of peace.

Michael stands to go to trial this week, but Michael should not be standing alone. Every citizen who has not yet stood to see that justice is served in the name of peace shall bear responsibility for what we all are about to receive.

Aren’t we all responsible when a veteran returns from a war we allowed to happen, with a storehouse of experiences whose demons he is powerless to silence?

Aren't we all responsible for ensuring that true justice is served?

Monica is a senior care advocate. Her husband, Sgt. Kevin Benderman, a ten-year Army veteran served a combat tour in Iraq and a year in prison for his public protest of war. She continues to work within their community to promote resources for veterans and the elderly.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.