Bush War Crimes: Newly obtained Bush administration memos show that torture was authorized

Just another brick in the wall of evidence of war crimes.

The American Civil Liberties Union has obtained through Freedom of Information several internal Bush administration documents that authorizes the CIA to torture detainees.

“These documents supply further evidence, if any were needed, that the Justice Department authorized the CIA to torture prisoners in its custody. The Justice Department twisted the law, and in some cases ignored it altogether, in order to permit interrogators to use barbaric methods that the U.S. once prosecuted as war crimes.”

-- Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU National Security Project

As we know, the coverup is in full swing. A look at the documents show they have been highly redacted and the Justice Dept. has launched a criminal investigation into the destruction of the CIA torture videos ... which of course is a sham.
Criminals investigating criminals.

Just a reminder here... there is no statute of limitations on the prosecution of war crimes. Since these war crimes have been confirmed by US Gov't investigators, physicians, an Oscar winning documentary film, and the International Red Cross, there is no longer any debate or doubt.

Press release on memos. USA Today story

CNN interview on war crimes interview

Bush is a war criminal. Fact.

Not befitting of a great nation

Some might say it's excusable to torture an innocent detainee to death, or to detain war combatants for no reason, these are just isolated instances. After all, nothing is worse than the videoed beheadings we've seen or the way that the enemy extremists have tortured. But as a nation as great as these United States, do we need to stoop to that level for no apparent reason? The Supreme Court has ruled we shouldn't. Now the courts will expose the Bush policy for what it is... illegal war crimes.

NYT:

In the first case to review the government’s secret evidence for holding a detainee at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, a federal appeals court found that accusations against a Muslim from western China held for more than six years were based on bare and unverifiable claims.

The court compared that to the absurd declaration of a character in the Lewis Carroll poem “The Hunting of the Snark”: “I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true.”

“This comes perilously close to suggesting that whatever the government says must be treated as true,” said the panel of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

The unanimous panel overturned as invalid a Pentagon determination that the detainee, Huzaifa Parhat, a member of the ethnic Uighur Muslim minority in western China, was properly held as an enemy combatant.

The 3 judge panel included one of the court’s most conservative members, the chief judge, David B. Sentelle, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan, and Judge Thomas B. Griffith, a 2005 appointee of President Bush.

MASS SCHOOL OF LAW TO HOLD CONFERENCE ON BUSH WAR CRIMES

Remember Saddam's punishment?
If the Dean of the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover has his way, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Yoo are going to swing. That is hang by the neck until dead - the death penalty - an appropriate punishment for war crimes.

Press release:

On September 13-14, 2008, Lawrence Velvel, the dean of the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover, plans to convene a 'convention' at the school's facilities; the attendees of which will plan strategies to prosecute members of the Bush administration for war crimes.

"This is not intended to be a mere discussion of violations of law that have occurred," said convener Lawrence Velvel, dean and cofounder of the school. "It is, rather, intended to be a planning conference at which plans will be laid and necessary organizational structures set up, to pursue the guilty as long as necessary and, if need be, to the ends of the Earth."

"We must try to hold Bush administration leaders accountable in courts of justice," Velvel said. "And we must insist on appropriate punishments, including, if guilt is found, the hangings visited upon top German and Japanese war-criminals in the 1940s. For Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and John Yoo to spend years in jail or go to the gallows for their crimes would be a powerful lesson to future American leaders," Velvel said.

Bush war crimes confirmed

After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.

-- Maj. General Antonio Taguba

A new report released by Physicians for Human Rights: Broken Laws, Broken Lives, presents irrefutable medical evidence that confirms first-hand accounts of men who endured torture by US personnel in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay. These men were never charged with any crime.

This year's Oscar winning documentary, Taxi to the Dark Side, also chronicles the Bush Administration's moral values on torture. The story is about the controversial death of an Afghan taxi driver named Dilawar. Dilawar was beaten to death by American soldiers while being held in detention at the Bagram Air Base.

Impeachment would not be a sufficient for such crimes. A war crimes tribunal is in order.