International law applies to ALL the nations of the world, including the U.S. and George Bush

in a lengthy, well-researched, and well-written post in democratic underground, that co-blogger mettle was kind enough to point me to, poster time for change offers a comprehensive view of the prospects for holding george bush accountable for his crimes, despite the almost certain fact that it will not happen as a result of action taken in the united states...

here's his conclusion...

U.S. law is irrelevant to the charge of war crimes or crimes against humanity

No doubt one major reason for George Bush’s vehemence in pushing through the Military Commissions Act (MCA) was to immunize himself against punishment for the many crimes he has committed. By legalizing Bush’s abuse of his prisoners, that MCA violates our Fifth and Sixth Amendment guarantees to due process and a fair trial, as well as the Geneva Convention requirements for the treatment of prisoners of war. Bush’s attempt to nullify the Congressional “torture ban” attached to the MCA by issuing a signing statement to the effect that he is not obligated to be restricted by it, signaled his intention to violate our Eighth Amendment protection against “cruel and unusual punishment”, as well as the Geneva Conventions and The international Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment of 1984.

Of course, neither the MCA nor any other law that Bush might demand or Congress might pass in the future either nullifies our Constitution or makes it legal to violate international law, as far as the international community of nations is concerned. As was made quite clear at the time the Nuremberg Tribunal was created, international law applies to ALL the nations of the world. As much as George Bush, Dick Cheney, or certain members of Congress or the U.S. public may not like it, those laws apply to our country now just as much as they applied to the Nazis for whom the Nuremberg Tribunal was created in 1945. Robert Jackson, the Chief U.S. prosecutor for the Nuremberg Tribunal, made that quite clear. He said:

To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole … If certain acts in violation of treaties are crimes they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.

can't happen soon enough for me...

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