We WILL be inured to torture as U.S. policy IF we don't stand up and fight

two-time pulitzer winner, anthony lewis, a true "dean" of journalism in a way his fellow jewish journalist, robert novak, will never be, offers his views on the horror of torture as official u.s. policy...

In these last weeks of turbulent events, the single most significant has not been the financial crisis, not the fall of a governor, not the passing of the fifth year of the war without end in Iraq. It has been an American president's formal blessing of the use of torture.

That was what President Bush did in early March when he vetoed legislation prohibiting the use of brutal methods of interrogation by American intelligence agents. His action was quickly overtaken by other news. But in its redefinition of American values — of the American character — it had profound implications.

[...]

The corrupting effects of the adoption of torture as an American practice have been widespread. First of all, on the law. The Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, which makes binding interpretations of the law for the federal government, issued secret opinions defining torture away to the vanishing point, saying it must be equivalent in pain to "organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death" — and adding that Congress could not stop the president from ordering the use of torture. (The whole idea of secret official opinions defining the law should be anathema in a free republic, one that has boasted from the beginning of having a government of laws, not men. Secret laws are the hallmark of tyrannies.)

The Justice Department opinions were not abstractions. They were immediately taken up by political appointees at the Pentagon and led directly to the torture of dozens of prisoners and the killing of some at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.

Torture has had corrupting effects on our politics, too. Most Republicans in Congress have defended President Bush's claim of the right to use such methods, evidently as a matter of political solidarity. The corruption has even touched the man who more than anyone has been a symbol of resistance to torture, John McCain. Senator McCain led Congress in 2005 to pass the legislation reiterating the ban on the military's use of torture. But when it came to extending the ban to intelligence agents in this year's Intelligence Authorization Act, he sided with the president. It was as if he were saying that the North Vietnamese who so cruelly tortured him as a prisoner were war criminals if they were soldiers — but not if they were intelligence agents.

[...]

[T]he rest of us do not have to resign ourselves to being a Torture Nation. ... Col. Lawrence B. Wilkerson, U.S. Army (Ret.), who was chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, wrote: "We must start now to recognize our crimes and our complicity. We are all guilty, and we must all take action in whatever way we can. Torture and abuse are not American. They are foreign to us and always should be. We need to exorcise them from our souls and make amends."

there is only one surefire way to restore our country's integrity, and that's to insure that the criminals responsible are prosecuted for war crimes in the hague, in full view of the watching world...

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Are war crimes charges being readied...? Certainly one of the more interesting headlines of the day...

this would be the answer to one of my most fervent prayers...

from the politico...

Could war crimes charges be Oct. surprise?

It’s early October 2008, and Democratic nominee Barack Obama maintains a steady lead in the presidential race, although Republican standard-bearer John McCain, the most dogged campaigner in American politics, remains within striking range.

Suddenly, something happens overseas that throws the presidential campaigns off the TV screens entirely: Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, on vacation in Italy, is arrested and brought to The Hague to face war crimes charges.

Presidential campaigns try to prepare for these “October surprises,” late-breaking events and crises that can radically alter the race for the White House, such as the attack on the USS Cole in October 2000. But now there’s a new element in the mix, something presidential campaigns have never had to plan for. What if the October surprise is the greatest legal conflict between America and Europe since the creation of the Atlantic alliance?

Don’t think it can’t happen. I think the arrest abroad of an American is only a matter of time and, between now and November, is at least as likely as another terrorist attack on U.S. soil. As a former Marine Corps Commandant, Gen. Paul X. Kelley, reminded the nation in a July 2007 Washington Post op-ed, written with a University of Virginia law professor: “Violations of Common Article 3 are ‘war crimes’ for which everyone involved — potentially up to and including the president of the United States — may be tried in any of the other 193 countries that are parties to the conventions.”

accountability... it's not just for breakfast any more...!

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Latin America shows the rest of us how it's done (as opposed to the way the U.S. would have liked it to turn out)

Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe (R)
and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez
talk after they agreed to resolve the crisis
set off by an attack on a FARC guerrilla
camp inside Ecuadorian territory by the
Colombian armed forces last week at the
20th Group of Rio Summit in Santo
Domingo March 7, 2008.
REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
(DOMINICAN REPUBLIC)

the u.s. wanted a clear branding of the farc rebels as "terrorists," and for colombia to square off with ecuador and venezuela by insisting that, just like their patron, the united states, colombia would pursue "terrorists" wherever, whenever and however was necessary to annihilate them, even if it meant violating another country's sovereignty to do it... instead, the latin american countries decided to do it THEIR way with the result being that the farc rebels are now labeled as an "insurgency" rather than as "terrorists," colombia apologized to ecuador for violating its border and said it wouldn't follow through on its threat to seek genocide charges against venezuela at the hague, committed all the countries to work together to preserve national stability, and ended with the president of colombia and the president of ecuador shaking hands...

and THAT, folks, is how it's done...

South America moved away from talk of war as the presidents of Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador agreed to end a bitter dispute triggered by a Colombian cross-border raid with testy handshakes and an apology.

After intense regional diplomacy and emotional debate, Latin American leaders Friday approved a declaration resolving to work for a peaceful end to the crisis, which saw Venezuela and Ecuador send troops to their borders and Colombia accuse its neighbors of backing leftist rebels seeking to topple its government.

The leaders at the summit in the Dominican Republic wasted little time in reversing their steps toward conflict.

Colombia pledged not to follow through on its threat to seek genocide charges against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez at an international court for allegedly supporting the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which finances its insurgency through kidnapping and the cocaine trade.

Nicaragua said it would restore diplomatic relations with Colombia, broken off only the day before. Chavez said trade with Colombia should "keep increasing," two days after saying he didn't want even "a grain of rice" from his neighbor.

"We're going to begin to de-escalate," Chavez said. "Hopefully this compromise will be honored so this never happens again."

The statement approved by the presidents notes that Colombian President Alvaro Uribe apologized for the March 1 raid inside Ecuadorean territory that killed 25 people including a senior rebel commander, and that he pledged not to violate another nation's sovereignty again.

But it also commits all the countries to fight threats to national stability from "irregular or criminal groups," a reference to Colombia's accusation that its two neighbors have ties to rebels.

latin american countries have their problems, no doubt about it, lots of them, in fact... but i've always maintained that, if they could just figure out how to work together, they would be an unstoppable global force with a tremendous potential for making a positive difference in the world...

what just took place in la republica dominicana is an event of truly historic proportions that should be held up as a model for what ought to be happening in the rest of the world, most notably in the near and middle east... i've never been prouder of being a part-time resident of latin america than i am today...

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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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Seven things that MUST happen!

seven things with which i am in complete agreement...

excerpted from a forthcoming book, the art of mental warfare, via a site new to me called, a covert agent speaks out...

1. Try the Bush Administration for war crimes. If the case could ever be brought to court, the evidence to convict is definitely there. This is why the administration has been strongly against the International Criminal Court. If we are to begin repairing this country, and the world, we must begin by showing these power crazed and covert forces that they are accountable. If we can convict someone like Cheney, we will send a powerful message to the covert world. If we let them walk, we will keep having these problems. New people will follow them and take their place.

2. Investigate where all the military spending has been vanishing off to. There are literally trillions of taxpayer dollars unaccounted for. This money is fueling the covert world and terrorism in general. As part of this, I would include an investigation into war profiteering as well.

3. Make it mandatory that all electronic voting machines must have a 100% verifiable paper trail.

4. Get people into the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) who will smash the current media ownership rules. The concentration of media ownership is the foundation of the covert power structure. Without that, the whole thing is a house of cards. That’s why the FCC is currently trying to ram through rules that will further consolidate media ownership before the Bush administration leaves office. As part of this, it is pivotal that we protect the open architecture of the Internet. The media belongs to the people, as does the government, in theory anyway, but we need an information system that actually serves the public interest.

5. Declare a national and global emergency on the environmental front. We have already reached the breaking point. We need organized, governmental, policy driven, bold action now.

6. We need to address entities that now have power over the Constitution, such as the undemocratic and unelected corporate global governing structure - institutions like the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and “agreements” like NAFTA and DR-CAFTA, to name a few. Most Americans don’t even know what these power structures are, let alone that they have power that supersedes the Constitution. We must also address the National Security Act, that’s where the ultimate power of our country lies. The National Security Act has effectively made the Constitution meaningless and is the primary driver of the covert world. The PATRIOT Act and various other newly granted powers must also be drastically revised or eliminated completely in order to protect our civil liberties.

7. Lastly, we need to have publicly financed elections. As long as we have a system that requires candidates to raise tens of millions of dollars to even be considered for office, we will have politicians who bend over backwards for the richest one percent and the most powerful elements of society at the citizens’ expense. An important aspect of this has to be a requirement for large media companies to provide candidates with free airtime. Candidates have to spend the majority of their money on advertising in the mainstream media. That’s why the major news media spend so much time focusing on who is raising the most money, because they are the ones who end up with all that money. Once we have publicly financed elections and free airtime for candidates, we will get people in office who will work in the interests of the public because they are not beholden to the large and powerful entities. When you have politicians depending on the public instead of the private sector for survival, all the issues mentioned above could be addressed because they won’t have to fear the withdrawal of support from large corporations and the wealthy and powerful who do not want these things to happen. This will also enable us to eliminate tax breaks for the richest one percent, put an end to corporate welfare practices, and stop funding for obscene military and prison industrial companies that are profiting off of disasters and no longer serve security interests. Then we can redirect that money into environmental, education, health care and social security programs, to mention a few.

none of these will contain anything unfamiliar to readers of this blog, but they're still things that are very good to see all in one place... it's also good to be reminded of just what the stakes are and what we must do to start setting things right...

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War Crimes

the existentialist cowboy has a nice summary of the case for war crimes charges against bush and his criminal compadres... this video captures some of the discussion that was going on last november...

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Gosh, I'm so busy I can't even pay attention to the criminal disaster I helped perpetrate by lying

somehow, rummy as the white rabbit just doesn't work for me...



white rabbit...

I'm late / I'm late / For a very important date. / No time to say "Hello." / Goodbye. / I'm late, I'm late, I'm late.

but, hey... i'm glad to see he's keeping busy with what's REALLY important...

In an interview with Fox News last night, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld — one of the key architects of the Iraq disaster — was asked whether he currently “pays attention to specifics about what’s going on day to day in Iraq.”

Rumsfeld responded by claiming it’s impossible to follow events when you’re “on the outside.” He then added that he doesn’t have time to follow what’s going on in Iraq because he’s too busy with administrative tasks:

I’ve been very busy doing a series of things: setting up an office and hiring staff, arranging my papers to give to the Library of Congress, setting up a new foundation…

Rusmfeld re-emphasized the point, concluding his answer by stating: “So I’ve been busy doing those kinds of things and I have not even attempted stay as current as one would if you were in the government, constantly seeing all the intelligence and information.”

maybe when he's indicted for war crimes at the hague, he'll start to take notice...

(thanks to think progress...)

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"Most of Congress and the American public cannot imagine the degree of insanity that lies behind the Bush administration"

i often avoid reading paul craig roberts... besides being extraordinarily articulate, he is also writing from the conservative side of the fence, and as a former assistant treasury secretary under ronald reagan, when he writes on the horrors of the bush administration - as he routinely does - he writes with an unmatched credibility that, quite honestly, chills me to my very marrow...

The absurd analogy with Korea is so far-fetched that it raises the question whether the Bush/Cheney regime has entered a new, higher level of delusion. Bush cannot keep troops in Iraq permanently unless he intends to remain permanently in the White House.

[...]

The neoconservatives still have a death grip on the discredited Bush regime. Jim Lobe describes the extensive international organization that the neoconservatives have put into place for the purpose of orchestrating an attack on Iran.

A sane reader might wonder why neoconservatives would want to expand a conflict in which the US has failed.

[...]

The point is that the neoconservatives do realize this. Their defeat in Iraq and Israel's defeat in Lebanon has taught the neoconservatives that the US cannot prevail in the Middle East by conventional military means. ... [T]he neoconservatives' plan is to escape the failure of their Iraq plan by orchestrating a war with Iran in which the US can prevail only by using nuclear weapons.

[...]

The neoconservatives have rewritten US war doctrine to permit preemptive US nuclear attack on non-nuclear countries.

[...]

The neoconservative Bush regime has got away with more than I thought possible, perhaps because most of Congress and the American public cannot imagine the degree of insanity that lies behind the Bush administration. Most Americans who have turned against the regime think that the administration is incompetent, that it jumped to wrong conclusions about Iraq, and that it mismanaged the war and will not admit its mistakes. As every reason Bush gave for the war has proven to be false, people see no point in continuing the struggle.

If Americans understood the enormity of the deception behind the invasion of Iraq (and Afghanistan) and the pending attack on Iran, Bush and Cheney would be impeached and turned over to the War Crimes Tribunal at the Hague, and AIPAC would be forced to register as a foreign agent.

Just as Goebbels said, some lies are too big to be disbelieved. It is this disbelief that is so dangerous. The inability of Americans to see through the Big Lie to the secret agenda allows the neoconservatives to escape accountability and to continue with their plot.

The neoconservatives also believe that nuclear attack on Iran will isolate America in the world and, thereby, give the government control over the American people. The denunciations that will be hurled at Americans from every quarter will force the country to wrap itself in the flag and to treat domestic critics as foreign enemies. Not only free speech but also truth itself will disappear along with every civil liberty.

i guess what i find particularly chilling is to find someone who has a much better perspective and a great deal more experience in the way of our government than i do, that completely captures my own less-informed views... as i've said here ad nauseam, i think the u.s. is in the worst crisis of its history and i boil over at every mention i see of "incompetence..." it is nothing of the kind and the scenario roberts describes in his last paragraph is and has been the goal from the beginning, and, by god, they're doing a damn good job of getting us there - fast...

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U.S. bombings in Iraq at TWICE the rate of 2006 & may contravene the Hague and Geneva

thanks to juan cole...

U.S. warplanes have stepped up attacks in Iraq, dropping bombs at more than twice the rate of a year ago.

[...]

n the first 4 1/2 months of 2007, U.S. aircraft dropped 237 bombs and missiles in support of ground forces in Iraq, already surpassing the 229 expended in all of 2006, according to Air Force figures obtained by The Associated Press.

[...]

At the same time, the number of civilian Iraqi casualties from U.S. airstrikes appears to have risen sharply, according to Iraq Body Count, a London-based antiwar research group that maintains a database compiling media reports on Iraq war deaths.

The rate of such reported civilian deaths appeared to climb steadily through 2006, the group reports, averaging a few a month in early 2006, hitting some 40 a month by year's end and averaging more than 50 a month so far this year.

professor cole also makes this observation...

I think it is contrary to the Hague Regulations and the Geneva Conventions for an occupying power to bomb the cities it occupies.

given that the u.s. does not see itself as subject to international law and has repudiated the geneva convention, i guess that's not really an issue...

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"We don't even take the trouble to be united."

exceptionalism, clarified...

We are Americans, and so until recently, we knew that we were the best. Because so many people wanted to be us, we could act as we pleased — and we did, because we were the Great Exception; we were America the Blessed. Hence...

• [O]ur complacent belief, so long borne out by the facts, that American movies and American brands would always sell.

• [T]he Kyoto Protocol did not apply to us, so that we could spew out all the greenhouse gases we liked, and use a pig's share of the world's resources.

• [W]e could seize war criminals in any part of the globe and whisk them off to The Hague.

• [W]e insisted that should we ever commit war crimes, we would remain immune to prosecution in that court.

• [T]his president and his two attorneys general have quite literally legalized torture

• Bull your way ahead. If you meet obstacles, overcome them with arrogant bluster. If this fails, proceed to vicious, mendacious brutality.

• Americans not only voted for [George Bush], but after he proved himself to be a criminal, they reelected him.

• Why not do whatever suited our whims?

• "They hate us," we whisper to one another in amazement.

• What if we had to follow the rules that everyone else does? Well, why not put off that pain as long as possible?

• [W]e don't even take the trouble to be united.

• Alaskan towns are tilting in the melting permafrost, but who cares down in the Lower 48?
  

• Republicans and Democrats hate each other.
  

• Automobiles isolate us.
  

• Generations of advice-givers have made us believe that profit best defines the successful life.

it's tough swallowing a heavy dose of truth on a sunday morning...

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