Counterterroriam Czar: Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld All Committed War Crimes

War Crimes Trial - Nuremberg

I have long argued that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney - who is a real dick - and Donald Rumsfeld committed war crimes and knowingly violated the Geneva Conventions.  Roughly 70 years ago, the United States and its allies tried - and in some cases executed - German and Japanese military and political leaders who committed similar breaches of the Geneva Convention and/or authorized the use of torture.  Now, George W. Bush’s own former top counter terrorism czar has said that he is convinced that Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld all committed war crimes during the Iraq war. If America wants to be taken seriously on the issue of human rights and the rule of law, there is no option but to put these three heinous men on trial.  Sadly, Barack Obama was too weak kneed to push for this back in 2009.  As a result we continue to see Cheney, a Darth Vader clone if there ever was one, spewing lies and bullshit on news shows.  The man should be behind bars - if not dead from execution for the war crimes he masterminded and authorized.   Here are highlights from The Raw Story:

President George W. Bush’s former top counterterrorism official said this week that he is convinced that Bush, former Vice President Dick Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld all committed war crimes during the Iraq war. 

In an interview that will air in full next week, Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman asked former National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism Richard Clarke if “President Bush should be brought up on war crimes [charges], and Vice President Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, for the attack on Iraq.”

“I think things that they authorized probably fall within the area of war crimes,” Clarke agreed. “Whether that would be productive or not, I think, is a discussion we could all have.”

“But we have established procedures now with the International Criminal Court in The Hague, where people who take actions as serving presidents or prime ministers of countries have been indicted and have been tried. So the precedent is there to do that sort of thing,” he pointed out. “And I think we need to ask ourselves whether or not it would be useful to do that in the case of members of the Bush administration.”

“It’s clear that things that the Bush administration did — in my mind, at least, it’s clear that some of the things they did were war crimes.”

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who was chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, has also said that he would be willing to testify in a war crimes trial against Bush administration officials.

Cheney in particular strikes me as one of the most amoral individuals one might encounter.  Sadly, Bush is an idiot who I suspect Cheney manipulated like a empty headed puppet.  He should NEVER have been president. Everyday that Cheney walks free without facing a trial for his misdeeds  is an insult to the Americans he sent to their deaths not to mention the thousands and thousands of Iraqis tortured or needlessly killed in a war that had no justification.  Thankfully, at least one nation has convicted them in absentia for war crimes.  

Bush/Cheney and CIA Torture

Unrepentant War Criminals

Today's Washington Post has a piece noting that after years of being near political outcasts the Bush family is back in the lime light - sadly, the family that brought us the disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan and threw away thousands of American lives and squandered countless billions of dollars is in the limelight for the wrong reason.  Does anyone really give a damn about the paintings by the cretinous George W?   If they do, it is a testament to just how fucked up many Americans' values have become.  The more important piece in the Washington Post looks at the CIA torture program launched by Bush/Cheney and the war crimes that are the true defining aspect of those eight dark years of America's history.  Worse yet, the American public was lied to by both the CIA and Bush Cheney.  I remain of the view that both Bush and Cheney need to be tried for war crimes and dealt with as the Allies dealt with German and Japanese officials following World War II.  Until that happens, America has no moral credibility in the world.  Here are article highlights:

A report by the Senate Intelligence Committee concludes that the CIA misled the government and the public about aspects of its brutal interrogation program for years — concealing details about the severity of its methods, overstating the significance of plots and prisoners, and taking credit for critical pieces of intelligence that detainees had in fact surrendered before they were subjected to harsh techniques.

The report, built around detailed chronologies of dozens of CIA detainees, documents a long-standing pattern of unsubstantiated claims as agency officials sought permission to use — and later tried to defend — excruciating interrogation methods that yielded little, if any, significant intelligence, according to U.S. officials who have reviewed the document. 

The 6,300-page report includes what officials described as damning new disclosures about a sprawling network of secret detention facilities, or “black sites,” that was dismantled by President Obama in 2009. 

Classified files reviewed by committee investigators reveal internal divisions over the interrogation program, officials said, including one case in which CIA employees left the agency’s secret prison in Thailand after becoming disturbed by the brutal measures being employed there. The report also cites cases in which officials at CIA headquarters demanded the continued use of harsh interrogation techniques even after analysts were convinced that prisoners had no more information to give.

The Senate Intelligence Committee is expected to vote Thursday to send an executive summary of the report to Obama for declassification. U.S. officials said it could be months before that section, which contains roughly 20 conclusions and spans about 400 pages, is released to the public.

The report’s release also could resurrect a long-standing feud between the CIA and the FBI, where many officials were dismayed by the agency’s use of methods that Obama and others later labeled torture.
  
The Senate report is by far the most comprehensive account to date of a highly classified program that was established within months of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, a time of widespread concern that an additional wave of terrorist plots had already been set in motion.

Officials said millions of records make clear that the CIA’s ability to obtain the most valuable intelligence against al-Qaeda — including tips that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011 — had little, if anything, to do with “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

The American public needs to be forced to realize that its government under Bush and Cheney engaged in conduct more akin to Nazi Germany than what those who wrap themselves in the American flag like to hold up as this nation's image.  Again, until those who ordered such barbarous practices are held accountable, America has no moral credibility.

Bradley Manning: Traitor or Hero?

As the prosecution of Bradley Manning continues to unfold for his alleged crime of aiding the enemy, one thing is becoming increasingly clear: George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and other high ranking officials of the Bush/Cheney regime should be on trial for war crimes.  Among the things that the documents traced to Manning indicate that torture and repeated violations of the Geneva Conventions occurred - i.e., the same things that led to imprisonment and execution for some of the leaders of the Nazi and Japanese governments after World War II.  And as Andrew Sullivan notes the credit for the exposure of these crimes is because of Manning.  Indeed, Andrew notes:

How did we find all this out? Bradley Manning’s leaks. Sometimes a whistleblower is not only a traitor. He can also be a patriot, uncovering war crimes. 

I for one view Manning as a patriot.  And the fact that the military and the Obama administration are so hot to crucify Manning shows that Manning's real offense was to document just how morally bankrupt the Bush/Cheney regime really was.  If Obama had any guts, he'd open the door for criminal prosecutions of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and others who committed nothing short of war crimes.  Naturally, much of the investigative work on these crimes is being done by the foreign media.  Here's more from Andrew's post:

The Guardian, in a 15-month investigation, has unearthed the fact that Donald Rumsfeld brought veterans from the dirty wars in Latin America, Colonel James Steele and Colonel James H Coffman, to empower sectarian warfare against the Sunni insurgency in Iraq. He set up detention centers for Sunni insurgents that were run by Iraqis but monitored and checked on by two men, one of whom reported to Rumsfeld, the other to Petraeus. So we have the first solid evidence that Petraeus, the golden mediocrity of Washington, was also an abetter of the worst forms of torture imaginable:

“Every single detention centre would have its own interrogation committee,” claimed [Iraqi General Muntadher] al-Samari, who worked with Petraeus’ and Rumsfeld’s designated men on the ground] … “Each one was made up of an intelligence officer and eight interrogators. This committee will use all means of torture to make the detainee confess like using electricity or hanging him upside down, pulling out their nails, and beating them on sensitive parts.” There is no evidence that Steele or Coffman tortured prisoners themselves, only that they were sometimes present in the detention centres where torture took place, and were involved in the processing of thousands of detainees.

But reporters witnessed horrifying war crimes in US-occupied Iraq, under the authority of those reporting directly to Rumsfeld and Petraeus:

Samari claimed that torture was routine in the commando-controlled detention centres. “I remember a 14-year-old who was tied to one of the library’s columns. And he was tied up, with his legs above his head. Tied up. His whole body was blue because of the impact of the cables with which he had been beaten.”

Gilles Peress, a photographer, came across Steele when he was on assignment for the New York Times, visiting one of the commando centres in the same library, in Samarra. “We were in a room in the library interviewing Steele and I’m looking around I see blood everywhere.”

The reporter Peter Maass was also there, working on the story with Peress. “And while this interview was going on with a Saudi jihadi with Jim Steele also in the room, there were these terrible screams, somebody shouting ‘Allah, Allah, Allah!’. But it wasn’t kind of religious ecstasy or something like that, these were screams of pain and terror.”

And we wonder why America's image has fallen abroad.   I would argue that those who authorized these crimes deserve to be on trial far more than Bradley Manning.  Oh yes, the Republicans would scream and shriek.  But as the evidence was rolled out, I suspect that the American public would be repulsed by what the GOP rubber stamped during the Bush/Cheney years.  It's truly ugly, but Americans need to know what was done allegedly in their name.

Onward Christian Soldiers - Bush's Daily Briefings

GQ of all publications has published a series of top secret daily intelligence briefings from Donald Rumsfeld's office at the Pentagon for the Chimperator a/k/a President George W. Bush early in the Iraq war. What is both startling and frightening is that all are adorned with militaristic Bible verses perhaps further proving that for 8 years the USA was headed by a delusional religious nutcase. Bob Felton aptly describes it over at Civil Commotion:
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I don’t suppose we’ll ever really know how much this sort of thing influenced Bush’s thinking but, increasingly, the more we learn the more he appears to have been out of touch with reality, believed himself invested by God with a great work, and certain that everything would come right in the end so long as he held inflexibly to the cosmic instructions given him.
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I urge readers to watch the GQ slide show here and to ponder long and hard whether we can survive more of this kind of lunacy in our elected officials and political policies. Remember too that this is the mindset that controls the opponents of gay rights and candidates like Bob McDonnell who are able to grasp objective reality because of their extreme religious beliefs. I am not anti-religion per se, but at some point some connection with reality is required. Obviously, George W. , the leadership of the Christian Right, and the GOP base do not have that much needed connection with reality.

Enough Evidence to Prosecute Rumsfeld for War Crimes

While there are many who say that prosecuting the Chimperator, Cheney, Rumsfeld and others in the former Bush administration would be divisive and take up precious time needed to save the U.S. economy, part of me worries that if these men are allowed to escape accountability for their deliberate misdeeds a terrible message will be sent to other nations as well as here at home to other future would be tyrants. Between the documented torture and countless needless deaths of U.S. service members and Iraqi civilians, the evidence cries out that someone be held accountable - especially for actions in clear violation of the Geneva Conventions. One United Nations official according to Raw Story says there is enough evidence to prosecute Rumsfeld. Here are some highlights:

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Monday, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture Manfred Nowak told CNN's Rick Sanchez that the US has an "obligation" to investigate whether Bush administration officials ordered torture, adding that he believes that there is already enough evidence to prosecute former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

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"We have clear evidence," he said. "In our report that we sent to the United Nations, we made it clear that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld clearly authorized torture methods and he was told at that time by Alberto Mora, the legal council of the Navy, 'Mr. Secretary, what you are actual ordering here amounts to torture.' So, there we have the clear evidence that Mr. Rumsfeld knew what he was doing but, nevertheless, he ordered torture."

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A bipartisan Senate report released last month found Rumsfeld and other top administration officials responsible for abuse of Guantanamo detainees in US custody.It said Rumsfeld authorized harsh interrogation techniques on December 2, 2002 at the Guantanamo prison, although he ruled them out a month later.The coercive measures were based on a document signed by Bush in February, 2002.

Ex-Iraq Commander: Bush Administration Guilty of Goss Incompetence

Tell us something that we don't already know! Nonetheless, it is telling that Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez, the former Commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, in a new memoir provides new stark details of the misdoings at high levels of the Chimperator's regime in the first year of the Iraq War. His assessment of the Chimperator's invented war:

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"Hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars were unnecessarily spent, and worse yet, too many of our most precious military resource, our American soldiers, were unnecessarily wounded, maimed, and killed as a result. In my mind, this action by the Bush administration amounts to gross incompetence and dereliction of duty."

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Exerpts from the book can be found at Time.com. Naturally, Rumsfeld who was one of the master minds of the disaster tried to claim ignorance as shown by this statement:
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"Mr. Secretary, when V Corps ramped up for the war, our entire focus was at the tactical level. The staff had neither the experience nor training to operate at the strategic level, much less as a joint/combined headquarters. All of CFLCC's generals, whom we called the Dream Team, left the country in a mass exodus. The transfer of authority was totally inadequate, because CENTCOM's focus was only on departing the theater and handing off the mission. There was no focus on postconflict operations. None! In their minds, the war was over and they were leaving. Everybody was executing these orders, and the services knew all about it." Starting to get a little worked up, I paused a moment, and then looked Rumsfeld straight in the eye. "Sir, I cannot believe that you didn't know I was being left in charge in Iraq."

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One can only hope that some day Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the others that lead the USA into this venture based on lies and false propaganda will be held accountable for the death and destruction that they have wrought on others.