Raymond
2011-05-06 03:33:10 UTC
When Will George W. Bush Be Tried for His War Crimes?
Monday, 21 February 2011 10:56
By Sheldon Richman
We should take a small measure of satisfaction in former President
George W. Bush’s cancellation of his trip to Switzerland after human-
rights groups threatened to bring legal action against him for
authorizing torture. Persons detained by the U.S. government after
9/11 were subjected to what the Bush administration euphemistically
called “enhanced interrogation,” including waterboarding. In reality
those methods constituted torture, violating U.S. law and
international agreements.
Under those agreements charges can be filed against members of the
Bush administration in jurisdictions outside the United States. The
Center for Constitutional Rights along with European groups said they
will ask Swiss authorities to initiate a criminal case against Bush.
They also planned to file their own complaint.
If all that Bush and members of his administration suffer for their
crimes are travel restrictions, it will be a mild penalty indeed.
(Alas, the U.S. government can and probably will obtain immunity for
him.) They deserve far more, starting with a public criminal
investigation in the United States, followed by trials. But President
Obama says there will be no investigation of top officials. Wishing to
“look ahead,” he has decided to treat Bush & Co. as above the law,
embracing Richard Nixon’s maxim, When the president does it, it’s not
illegal. In Germany that used to be known as the Führer Principle.
Many of us naively thought it was repudiated at the Nuremberg trials
after World War II. How wrong we were. The stain that Bush and Obama
have left on America won’t fade anytime soon.
It would have been bad enough to torture people actually suspected of
wrongdoing, but the Bush administration went well beyond that. Many
people subjected to hideous treatment were picked up on the flimsiest
of “evidence.” People were offered bounties to turn others in;
naturally, some saw that as a chance to settle old scores having
nothing to do with terrorism. Absence of evidence (as former Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld might say) was not considered evidence of
absence. In at least one case, a man was tortured — by the U.S.
government’s helper in Egypt, Omar Suleiman — to get the prisoner to
say that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had trained al-Qaeda agents.
Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney badly wanted to justify their
preexisting wish to effect regime change in Iraq by tying Saddam to
9/11. But there was never any evidence of Iraqi complicity.
That reminds us that torture was not the only crime committed by the
Bush administration. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars were also (and
still are) outrages because, among other reasons, they were based on
lies. Bush officials, such as Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin
Powell, now acknowledge “misstatements,” but that can hardly be taken
seriously. We know that back then grave doubts were expressed over the
quality of the so-called intelligence about Saddam’s alleged weapons
of mass destruction. Rumsfeld’s excuses are pathetic. When he beat the
drums for war, he said he knew where Saddam’s WMDs were. Now he says
he meant he knew the location of “suspected sites.” Did he step out of
Orwell’s 1984?
As many people long have believed, the Bush administration’s defector/
informants were lying, but their American handlers didn’t care. The
one known as Curvevball, Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, admits he lied
about Iraq’s biological weapons. “I had the chance to fabricate
something to topple the regime. I and my sons are proud of that....”
Janabi said, according to the Guardian.
Is he proud of the million Iraqis who died, directly and indirectly,
because of the war he helped bring about? How about all the maimed
children? Are Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, and Condoleezza Rice
satisfied that they relied on Janabi? Did they really have no reason
for skepticism about his claims and motives?
Americans are forced to spend billions of dollars on intelligence-
gathering every year. Yet many insiders doubted what the
administration was told about Iraqi WMDs in 2002. So what? Bush & Co.,
hell bent on killing Arabs after 9/11, weren’t interested in evidence
or the lack thereof. They needed a way to scare the American people
into war, and nothing was going to stop them.
Let us hope the retribution against this evil bunch is only just
beginning.
Sheldon Richman is senior fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation,
author of Tethered Citizens: Time to Repeal the Welfare State, and
editor of The Freeman magazine.
Monday, 21 February 2011 10:56
By Sheldon Richman
We should take a small measure of satisfaction in former President
George W. Bush’s cancellation of his trip to Switzerland after human-
rights groups threatened to bring legal action against him for
authorizing torture. Persons detained by the U.S. government after
9/11 were subjected to what the Bush administration euphemistically
called “enhanced interrogation,” including waterboarding. In reality
those methods constituted torture, violating U.S. law and
international agreements.
Under those agreements charges can be filed against members of the
Bush administration in jurisdictions outside the United States. The
Center for Constitutional Rights along with European groups said they
will ask Swiss authorities to initiate a criminal case against Bush.
They also planned to file their own complaint.
If all that Bush and members of his administration suffer for their
crimes are travel restrictions, it will be a mild penalty indeed.
(Alas, the U.S. government can and probably will obtain immunity for
him.) They deserve far more, starting with a public criminal
investigation in the United States, followed by trials. But President
Obama says there will be no investigation of top officials. Wishing to
“look ahead,” he has decided to treat Bush & Co. as above the law,
embracing Richard Nixon’s maxim, When the president does it, it’s not
illegal. In Germany that used to be known as the Führer Principle.
Many of us naively thought it was repudiated at the Nuremberg trials
after World War II. How wrong we were. The stain that Bush and Obama
have left on America won’t fade anytime soon.
It would have been bad enough to torture people actually suspected of
wrongdoing, but the Bush administration went well beyond that. Many
people subjected to hideous treatment were picked up on the flimsiest
of “evidence.” People were offered bounties to turn others in;
naturally, some saw that as a chance to settle old scores having
nothing to do with terrorism. Absence of evidence (as former Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld might say) was not considered evidence of
absence. In at least one case, a man was tortured — by the U.S.
government’s helper in Egypt, Omar Suleiman — to get the prisoner to
say that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had trained al-Qaeda agents.
Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney badly wanted to justify their
preexisting wish to effect regime change in Iraq by tying Saddam to
9/11. But there was never any evidence of Iraqi complicity.
That reminds us that torture was not the only crime committed by the
Bush administration. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars were also (and
still are) outrages because, among other reasons, they were based on
lies. Bush officials, such as Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin
Powell, now acknowledge “misstatements,” but that can hardly be taken
seriously. We know that back then grave doubts were expressed over the
quality of the so-called intelligence about Saddam’s alleged weapons
of mass destruction. Rumsfeld’s excuses are pathetic. When he beat the
drums for war, he said he knew where Saddam’s WMDs were. Now he says
he meant he knew the location of “suspected sites.” Did he step out of
Orwell’s 1984?
As many people long have believed, the Bush administration’s defector/
informants were lying, but their American handlers didn’t care. The
one known as Curvevball, Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, admits he lied
about Iraq’s biological weapons. “I had the chance to fabricate
something to topple the regime. I and my sons are proud of that....”
Janabi said, according to the Guardian.
Is he proud of the million Iraqis who died, directly and indirectly,
because of the war he helped bring about? How about all the maimed
children? Are Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, and Condoleezza Rice
satisfied that they relied on Janabi? Did they really have no reason
for skepticism about his claims and motives?
Americans are forced to spend billions of dollars on intelligence-
gathering every year. Yet many insiders doubted what the
administration was told about Iraqi WMDs in 2002. So what? Bush & Co.,
hell bent on killing Arabs after 9/11, weren’t interested in evidence
or the lack thereof. They needed a way to scare the American people
into war, and nothing was going to stop them.
Let us hope the retribution against this evil bunch is only just
beginning.
Sheldon Richman is senior fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation,
author of Tethered Citizens: Time to Repeal the Welfare State, and
editor of The Freeman magazine.