If Only

A conference to plan the prosecution of President Bush and other high administration officials for war crimes will be held September 13-14 at the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover .

"This is not intended to be a mere discussion of violations of law that have occurred," stated [Lawrence Velvel, dean and cofounder of the school] in a press release. "It is, rather, intended to be a planning conference at which plans will be laid and necessary organizational structures set up, to pursue the guilty as long as necessary and, if need be, to the ends of the Earth.

[...]

The conference will take up such issues as the nature of domestic and international crimes committed; which high-level Bush officials, including Federal judges and Members of Congress, are chargeable with war crimes; which foreign and domestic tribunals can be used to prosecute them; and the setting up of an umbrella coordinating committee with representatives of legal groups concerned about the war crimes such as the Center for Constitutional Rights, ACLU, National Lawyers Guild, among others.

[...]

"For Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and John Yoo to spend years in jail or go to the gallows for their crimes would be a powerful lesson to future American leaders," Velvel said.

  Information Clearinghouse

Bush Admin Criminals?

Two Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats are requesting that the Justice Department's internal watchdog investigate whether Bush Administration officials who authorized waterboarding are guilty of any crimes themselves.

  Raw Story

Well, that’s a waste of time and money. We know what the answer will be, regardless of guilt. But, nice try Sens. Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Sheldon Whitehouse's (D-RI).

....and hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

War Crimes

Many Iraqis view the attack Jan. 10 by bombers and F-16 jets on a cluster of villages in the Latifiya district south of Baghdad as overkill.

[...]

"On Jan. 10, huge aircraft started bombing the villages," Ahmad Alwan from a village near Juboor told IPS. "We took our families and fled. We have never seen such bombardment since the 2003 American invasion. They were bombing everything and everybody."

Residents said two B1 bombers and four F-16 fighter jets dropped at least 40,000 pounds of explosives on the villages and plantations within a span of 10 minutes.

[...]

"We have no alternative but to fight this occupation and its allies," a former army officer in Baghdad speaking on condition of anonymity told IPS. "We can see clearly now that Americans came with the idea that we, Sunni Arabs, are the enemies they have in mind no matter what we do to please them. We will fight for our existence, and this massacre will not go unpunished."

[...]

"Apache helicopters later fired at the trucks that were carrying the families out of the area, and killed so many civilians. They took some wounded people to their military base. I am sure hundreds of people would have been killed. It is just like the Fallujah crime." The cluster of Sunni villages was bombed just weeks after the U.S. military encouraged families to return to their village after heavy bombing earlier in which scores of people were killed. Many residents had fled fearing sectarian death squads, which they say were backed by the U.S.

[...]

"We know they will get away with their crime now, but we will teach our children that America and the whole West are our enemies, so that they take revenge for these crimes," 35-year-old Nada, a woman who has relatives in the village told IPS.

  IPS

Well, of course you can’t fight an endless war on terror if you don’t have an endless supply of terror to fight. If we can Fallujah the whole country, our odds are better.

Trolling in Iraq

[It] was an accepted policy for US snipers' units to carry fake explosives and other weapons as bait, leave them out in the open, then to shoot any suspected insurgents who tried to take them.

  Scotsman

Let me rephrase that in a way that makes more sense. Anyone who tried to take the bait was considered an insurgent and shot.

Sergeant Evan Vela was given 10 years in jail and a dishonorable discharge for the murder of an Iraqi man, allegedly under orders.

Torture Suits in the News

With little attention in the media, the Justice Department has filed papers in federal court arguing that the CIA did not have an obligation to preserve the infamous torture tapes and therefore was lawfully entitled to destroy them. The filing patently demonstrates the conflict of interest in Attorney General Michael Mukasey insisting that the Justice Department investigate the possible criminal conduct in the matter. Now, the Justice Department is not only investigating itself, but it is investigating a crime that it has rejected as baseless in court filings.

  Jonathan Turley

Clever, eh? Those DoJ lawyers are on their toes.

The D.C. Circuit Court ruled yesterday in Rasul v. Myers […] that four former Guantanamo prisoners […] may not sue Rumsfeld and military officers for torturing them because, in ordering the torture, those officials were not “act[ing] as rogue officials or employees who implemented a policy of torture for reasons unrelated to the gathering of intelligence.”

[...]

Upholding the lower court, the D.C. Circuit [finds]: “it was foreseeable that conduct that would ordinarily be indisputably ‘seriously criminal’ would be implemented by military officials responsible for detaining and interrogating suspected enemy combatants.”

  W3IAI

The actual torture commanders cannot be held responsible, because it was “foreseeable” that they would implement torture in the course of their duties.

Making It Plain

The House approved a measure outlawing eight specific types of torture, including waterboarding, in compliance with the Army Field Manual and the Geneva Conventions. Bush has threatened to veto it if it gets to him, but at the same time says we don't torture. "In other words", he is still saying that waterboarding is not torture. The objection is that if passed, it would prevent "lawful interrogations of senior al Qaeda terrorists." "In other words", some of those torture methods which the House wants codified as torture are indeed being used.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Update: No need for a veto. The Senate isn't going to vote on the bill.

This Will Surprise You

No, really. This one will. That is, if you haven't already seen it. (It's "old" news, but I was on vacation.)

International lawyers and anti-war campaigners reacted with astonishment yesterday after the influential Pentagon hawk Richard Perle conceded that the invasion of Iraq had been illegal.

In a startling break with the official White House and Downing Street lines, Mr Perle told an audience in London: "I think in this case international law stood in the way of doing the right thing."

  Guardian

Okay, that last part doesn’t surprise anyone.

"They're just not interested in international law, are they?" said Linda Hugl, a spokeswoman for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, which launched a high court challenge to the war's legality last year. "It's only when the law suits them that they want to use it."

At least they understand us.

Iran Coming Up

W3IAI posts comments by Bush in Europe denying any intent to attack Iran, acting as though people are pulling that idea out of their asses.

I’m currently reading U.S. v. Bush, by Elizabeth de la Vega, a former U.S. prosecutor, which presents the case for a grand jury indictment of the Bush gang for defrauding the U.S. in order to invade Iraq, and it’s a damned shame no one is going to file that indictment, because the gang is in the process of defrauding the U.S. again. Denial of intention while preparing for the invasion is one of the charges in a case of fraud.

It’s a federal crime to defraud the U.S. The case is all laid out in U.S. v. Bush for anyone with the gumption to file it. I wonder if a group of citizens could do it by class action. What prosecutor would take it on?

Read the book. It’s fairly short, and written with humor, believe it or not, in lay terms, after setting out what could be an actual legal pleading for U.S. District Court.

And while you’re waiting for your book to arrive, you can read Amy Goodman’s interview with de la Vega.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Herr Rumsfiend Charged in France

Add a French war crimes lawsuit against the Rummer to those in Germany, Argentina and Sweden. Soon he'll be forced to stay home.

October 26, 2007, Paris, France – Today, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) along with the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), and the French League for Human Rights filed a complaint with the Paris Prosecutor before the “Court of First Instance” (Tribunal de Grande Instance) charging former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld with ordering and authorizing torture.

[...]

The criminal complaint states that because of the failure of authorities in the United States and Iraq to launch any independent investigation into the responsibility of Rumsfeld and other high-level U.S. officials for torture despite a documented paper trail and government memos implicating them in direct as well as command responsibility for torture – and because the U.S. has refused to join the International Criminal Court – it is the legal obligation of states such as France to take up the case.

In this case, charges are brought under the 1984 Convention against Torture, ratified by both the United States and France, which has been used in France in previous torture cases.

[...]

Rumsfeld’s presence on French territory gives French courts jurisdiction to prosecute him for having ordered and authorized torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and elsewhere.

In addition, having resigned from his position of U.S. Secretary of Defense a year ago, Rumsfeld can no longer try to claim immunity as a head of state or government official. Nor can he claim immunity as former state official, as international law does not recognize such immunity in the case of international crimes including the crime of torture.

[...]

Rumsfeld was in Paris for a talk sponsored by Foreign Policy magazine, and left through a door connecting to the U.S. embassy to avoid journalists and human rights attorneys outside.

  Center for Constitutional Rights

Chickenhawk.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Another Big Surprise

A soldier is aquitted of murder.

A military panel acquitted US Army Specialist Jorge G. Sandoval of two counts of murder yesterday, apparently swayed by testimony from fellow Army snipers that two Iraqi men were killed on orders from a higher-ranking soldier.

Sandoval was convicted of a less serious charge of planting detonation wire on one of the bodies to make it look like the victim was an insurgent. As a result, he still could face five years in prison.

[...]

The [victim], who wore dark clothing and used a sickle to cut grass in a field, matched the general description Iraqi soldiers had given the Americans of one of two insurgents they had faced earlier in the day, according to testimony.

  Boston.com

Gee, how many Iraqi men do you think might fit that general description?

"He was just doing his job, as he was told. It's not his fault," said [squad mate Alexander] Flores, who, along with the rest of Sandoval's sniper platoon, greeted him with hugs and well wishes.

The German soldiers at Auschwitz were just doing their jobs, too.

Struggling to explain why a highly trained Army sniper unit, renowned for its lethal economy of patience and discipline, would bog down under a cloud of murder investigations, some soldiers in interviews faulted commanders for pushing units to keep their kill counts high.

  NYT

Not that any comanning officer will pay for the crimes.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

The Disappeared

Thirty-nine of them. And we're not talking about a Banana Republic here.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

CIA on Trial

MILAN, Italy -- The first trial involving the CIA's extraordinary renditions program opens Friday in the absence of all 26 American defendants accused of kidnapping an Egyptian terrorist suspect.

  WaPo

Yes, and good luck getting them extradicted if convicted, too.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

British Would-Be Whistleblowers Found Guilty

Recollect that leaked British memo about Bush and Blair discussing whether or not to bomb al-Jazeera headquarters in Qatar and the subsequent gag order a couple of years ago on the Mirror for publishing it?

The memo alleges that President Bush expressed his frustration with al-Jazeera, which is the equivalent of a large broadcast news company such as CNN and has a viewership of 50 million, and wanted to bomb their headquarters using US bombers stationed nearby.

Blair, according to the memo, dissuaded the President from this action because Qatar is an ally of the US and such an action would result in severe backlash.

   at-Largely post

Well, the leakers, a Foreign Office official in the Cabinet, David Keogh and Leo O'Connor, researcher for former Labor MP for Northampton South, Tony Clarke, were tried and found guilty of breaking the Official Secrets Act.

Larisa Alexandrovna (at-Largely) writes:

So, two government officials acting out of their conscience to expose President Bush's plans to bomb journalists are found guilty. So I suppose the next time the EU demands that Russia investigate the murder of countless Russian journalists, Vladamir Putin can point to this case and laugh. Qatar is a US ally and the US planned on bombing a major broadcasting organization.

In fact, what the US did do, was bomb al-Jazeera in Iraq, and apparently, that's okay.

....hey, do what you want....you will anyway.