Tag: Cheney

Breaking News – Truth is Stranger than Fiction

This is just a quick one. I saw on the news that Dick Cheney strained his back while humping a moving box. Right! Apparently he strained it so bad that he’ll actually be in a wheelchair for (later today!) the inauguration. I hope he wears black leather gloves just like Peter Sellers did in Dr. Strangelove. This reality thing is getting too weird.

Come to think of it, I hope the Secret Service folks have that wheelchair sniffed for C4. Enjoy the video.

In nine hours Joe Biden will be sworn in. And fifteen minutes later it’ll be President Obama.

Thank you, God.

Torturing His Supporters

Hat tip to Armando this morning, for: AP: Obama Team Debating Violating UN Convention On Torture

The other day, the AP reported:

President-elect Barack Obama is preparing to prohibit the use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques by ordering the CIA to follow military rules for questioning prisoners, according to two U.S. officials familiar with drafts of the plans. Still under debate is whether to allow exceptions in extraordinary cases.

. . . Obama’s changes may not be absolute. His advisers are considering adding a classified loophole to the rules that could allow the CIA to use some interrogation methods not specifically authorized by the Pentagon, the officials said. They said the intent is not to use that as an opening for possible use of waterboarding, an interrogation technique that simulates drowning.

As Glenn Greenwald points out, such a “loophole” would constitute a violation of the UN Convention on Torture, codified as a crime under US law:

We all know by now, or we should know by now, that Obama has no problem endlessly torturing people who put him where he is with talk of torture loopholes.

The question is are the loopholes he’s talking about big enough to allow even more bush era torture fanatics like Brennan in, to enable Obama to co-opt far right GOP senators and reps?

This is all about gaining “bipartisan” support, and power. Nothing else.

There is virtually no sunlight between the two when it comes to amassing and retaining power, and when it comes right down to it any suggestion that presidential power be limited appears to justify “exceptions in extraordinary cases”, in Obama’s world.

Barack Obama appears to have the same problem (or fantasy, depending on your POV) that George Bush had,  a problem described by Phillip Carter and Dahlia Lithwick at Slate back in October 2007 in

All Wet: Why can’t we renounce waterboarding once and for all?…  

International Criminal Court – second of an unending series

Since Bob Fertik’s question got totally ignored then we can try another approach with the same potential result. Ask Obama to join the ICC. Let the world do what our fearful leaders won’t.

I just found this after hunting around change.gov a little bit. Added my $0.02 comment there.


United States joining the International Criminal Court

With all due respect President Obama,

If you are unwilling to prosecute the Bush Administration for war crimes in order to hold accountability and restore our moral standing in the world, then will you please have the United States join the International Criminal Court ?  This will ensure that you are sincere in being held accountable, ensure future administrations will not be able to repeat war crimes without being held accountable, and will restore our moral standing in the world.

1 Comment  ยป  Posted by Barbara D. on 1/16/2009 7:14 PM

Comments

Add Your Comment

RUKind

1/16/2009 7:18 PM

I fully and enthusiastically support this proposition. Please join the ICC. If you don’t have the simple decency to pursue the war crimes of the previous administration then let the American people have the freedom to ask the International Court for intervention.

Maybe Buhdy and Bob can get something going again along this path. We can’t stop. We can’t allow our voices to be silenced and ignored. Keep posting. Keep pushing. They may ignore ripples and small waves. They cannot ignore a tsunami. We need to be the tsunami.

Satya.

Failed Nation -The United States Of America

In the immortal words of Pogo “We have met the enemy… and he is us” That prophetic little possum utter those words in 1952, back when we were still mostly the good guys. Before the South American Death Squads and regime change and invading a sovereign nation for oil and murdering 1.3 million innocent people in the process.

Now that Bush and Cheney have admitted to torture and our new AG has reaffirmed what we already knew, torture is a war crime, illgal, forbidden and a useless occupation, will they be prosecuted. Before we get all silly about the change Obama brings, the new America, the return of the rule of law, understand we really have no choice but prosecute them for their crimes. Follow me below the fold for why it isn’t an option and there is no moving forward, no future and no hope, no redemption until we do.

Moving Forward? Here Are The Rules.

And in the naked light I saw

Ten thousand people, maybe more.

People talking without speaking,

People hearing without listening,

People writing songs that voices never share

And no one dared

Disturb the sound of silence.

Fools said I, you do not know

Silence like a cancer grows.

Hear my words that I might teach you,

Take my arms that I might reach you.

But my words like silent raindrops fell,

And echoed

In the wells of silence

Here are the rules.

The other day George Will, of all people, was comparing Obama refusing to prosecute Bush and Cheney to Ford pardoning Nixon.

If a far right crazed wingnut can get it right, why can’t the rest of us?

This comparison is one that we can use to good effect, but only if we do it continuously and loudly.

A friend of mine a couple of days ago, a nearly unquestioning Obama supporter, said to me, and I quote:

No argument from me.  Ford should have been stood against the wall and shot for that pardon.  Nixon cooling his heels in the clink for a few years would have prevented this mess, no doubt.

Ford’s pardon of Nixon was the beginning of the end of any hope Ford had of being politically effective, and absolutely killed his future chances for reelection.

So let’s see… if Obama doesn’t want a political blood bath that might define his first term as him being a bush enabler and a torture excuser and might drown him, then he’ll tell Holder to appoint a Special Prosecutor, and answer Fertik’s question directly himself, instead of hiding behind excuses and Joe Biden, since according to Biden it is not the job of the president or the vice president, but of the Justice department.  

Bush’s Too Easy Torture Defense

Cheers to the US for convicting Charles Emmanuel for torture he committed in Liberia.  It’s a no-brainer that the US prosecuting Emmanuel while not seriously considering prosecuting US officials for torture under any law is hypocritical. However, some progressives cite the Emmanuel case as evidence of US hypocrisy and legal precedent to prosecute Bush. But, in the legal context of torture prosecutions, hypocrisy arises only if the law used to prosecute Emmanuel is applicable to Bush but the US decides against prosecution.

While Emmanuel used different means of torture than the US, torture is torture…unless the law is the one used to prosecute Emmanuel. Emmanuel was prosecuted under a US law that creates a bifurcated torture system that distinguishes between Bush’s permissible “torture lite” and criminal “severe torture.” In fact, Bush created his “torture lite” system based on the law used to prosecute Emmanuel and likely decided to prosecute precisely because it creates legal precedent that Bush can cite to either prevent a prosecution or provide a defense creating reasonable doubt in one juror’s mind to set him free. Thus, progressives spotlighting this Emmanuel case may increase the odds against prosecution of US officials.  

ICC Now

All roads lead to the Rome Statute.

From Wiki:

Following years of negotiations aimed at establishing a permanent international tribunal to punish individuals who commit genocide and other serious international crimes, the United Nations General Assembly convened a five-week diplomatic conference in Rome in June 1998 “to finalize and adopt a convention on the establishment of an international criminal court”.[7][8] On July 17, 1998, the Rome Statute was adopted by a vote of 120 to 7, with 21 countries abstaining.[5] The seven countries that voted against the treaty were Iraq, Israel, Libya, the People’s Republic of China, Qatar, the United States, and Yemen.[5]

Article 126 of the statute provided that it would enter into force shortly after the number of states that had ratified it reached sixty.[3] This happened on April 11, 2002, when ten countries ratified the statute at the same time at a special ceremony held at the United Nations headquarters in New York.[9] The treaty entered into force on July 1, 2002;[9] the ICC can only prosecute crimes committed on or after that date.[10]

McClatchy has a great article that is pretty much a must-read summary of the consensus of where we are now on the subject of “War Crimes“.

Emboldened by a Democratic win of the White House, civil libertarians and human rights groups want the incoming Obama administration to investigate whether the Bush administration committed war crimes. They don’t just want low-level CIA interrogators, either. They want President George W. Bush on down.

There’s a little problem here, though.

Without wider support, the campaign to haul top administration officials before an American court is likely to stall.

In the end, Bush administration critics might have more success by digging out the truth about what happened and who was responsible, rather than assigning criminal liability, and letting the court of public opinion issue the verdicts, many say.

I strongly recommend reading the entire McClatchy article. I posted recently on the subject of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. I don’t like the Reconciliation part any more than anyone else does. Pat Leahy (D – VT) predicts that there will be no criminal punishments. He’s almost certainly right. Dick Cheney has just admitted his guilt to the entire world and nothing – absolutely nothing – is being done about it. And nothing will be done about it.

There is, however, one possibility: the United States of America joins the International Criminal Court.

Are we up to it? Are we willing to join the ICC and allow any potential war criminals in our population to be tried openly and fairly on the world stage? Bust ourselves and turn ourselves in and plead for mercy? I doubt it. But it would be nice.

Our biggest obstacle to making this happen is mentioned in the McClatchy article:

Also left unanswered is whether any top congressional Democrats consented directly or indirectly to the most controversial interrogation practices after the administration disclosed them in closed-door briefings.

I think one of them said something like “impeachment is off the table” after the 2006 elections. More and better. Right. Check the dates. Scrutinize the time-lines.

Our leaders don’t lead. They follow. Sometimes they need to get shoved out front. We may have a different one now. We’ll see. Joining the ICC would be an emphatic statement that the truth will be known.

Satya.

Truth and Shaming Commission

When looking around for something on Truth Commissions I found that for the most part they were called Truth and Reconciliation Commissions. Like I said in the essay I posted on that, I was still gagging on the “R” word. I still gag on it today.

You’ll find Josh Marshall of TPM fame listed at the bottom of the Wiki entry on TRCs as having proposed one for BushCo. He also has an interesting TPMtv interview with Burt Neuborne of the Brennan Center for Justice, NYU. Burt calls for a “shaming” commission. Basically he says let’s out the torturers and those who ordered the torturing so that the whole world will know them for who and what they are. This is the part of a Truth Commission that is the heart of what I would like to see.

You can see Burt make his case at the 4:30 mark in this TPM clip: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.c…

It sounds good to me. Personally, I’m not far enough along to go for the Reconciliation part even though I know that Mandela did it and Ghandi would do it. I do believe firmly in the Truth part. I’d like to see at least the top three tiers exposed to the public in all their lies and crimes against humanity. They need to stand naked before the Truth for all the world to see.

I resign myself to the reality that they’ll never see jail time even though they deserve it more than 95% of those incarcerated now. A good world-wide shunning and shaming will be sufficient. We can’t let the history of what happened these last eight years be lost, hidden or manipulated. The cost of letting this slide even a little will mean that our descendants will see this and worse happen in their lives. It has to stop somewhere. The conditions are right to do it now.

The Republicans will be a problem. The complicit Establishment Democrats will be an even worse problem. We need to not just keep their feet to the fire, we need to turn it up until they can’t ignore it anymore. We’ve got the Executive branch back. It’s time to steamroll the Legislative denizens.

Truth Now!

The REAL Bush Doctrine



Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

Most folks when asked to define the Bush Doctrine, other than stealing elections, would point to a document called the National Security Strategy of the United States published in September 2002, which states among other things:

To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively in exercising our inherent right of self-defense.

Preemptive war. The idea if the United States perceives a threat outside of our borders, even a 1% chance of danger against American interests, then the U.S. has the right to “defend” itself preemptively.

But I would argue historians will define the Bush Doctrine as something else. Something much more dangerous, reckless and un-American. The Unitary Executive.

Load more