The Existentialist Cowboy: 2008-09-14

Friday, September 19, 2008

The Prosecution of George W. Bush, et al, for Mass Murder, High Treason

The fact that George W. Bush ordered and/or 'signed off' on that series of crimes called 911 can be proven in court. George W. Bush, therefore, must be prosecuted for the crimes of high treason, waging war upon the people of the US, and instances of mass murder in the US, Afghanistan, and Iraq. There is more than mere probable cause to bring those charges --there is a case that can be made now with official documentation available in the public record.

Much more will be revealed in a real investigation, as opposed to another 'whitewash' commission like that now literally dis-owned by the co-chairs of the 911 Commission. The question then is: what must be done to make the question of prosecutions an issue that must be addressed by the candidates? What must be done to take this issue to the media and on the internet?

Recently, speakers Vincent Bugliosi, author of “Prosecuting George W. Bush For Murder”, Colleen Costello, Human Rights USA, David Lindorff, and Journalist David Swanson raised the issues at the Robert H. Jackson conference.

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Bush should be indicted for war crimes uner US Codes.

(a) Offense.— Whoever, whether inside or outside the United States, commits a war crime, in any of the circumstances described in subsection (b), shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both, and if death results to the victim
--US Codes, TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 118 > § 2441

The commission of war crimes in which death results is a CAPITAL offense. The war against Iraq is just such an offense, begun as it was upon a pack of malicious and deliberate lies. There are also numerous counts that fall under the 'category' of murder as described by Vincent Bugliosi in his book: The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, in which Bugliosi puts George W. Bush on trial in an American courtroom for the murder of nearly 4,000 American soldiers fighting the war in Iraq, a war begun fraudulently, upon a pack of deliberate, planned, malicious lies.

Additionally, Bush may be prosecuted, as well, in international courts, in this case, the Hague for having abrogated US treaty obligations with respect to the conduct of war, i.e, war crimes.

While there is good reason to expect multiple prosecutions of George W. Bush and of his Vice President and top advisors by individual nations, the rule of law would benefit were the International Criminal Court to take the lead. Should it fail to do so, the entire idea of international law will suffer seriously. In the time since your 2006 letter, Judge Baltasar Garzón of Spain, on March 20, 2008, has written these words in El Pais:
"Breaking every international law, and under the pretext of the war against terror, there has taken place since 2003 a devastating attack on the rule of law and against the very essence of the international community. In its path, institutions such as the United Nations were left in tatters, from which it has not yet recovered....We should look more deeply into the possible criminal responsibility of the people who are, or were, responsible for this war and see whether there is sufficient evidence to make them answer for it....There is enough of an argument in 650,000 deaths for this investigation and inquiry to start without more delay."
You wrote in your 2006 letter that you cannot prosecute the crime of aggressive war but only the commission of war crimes that take place during a war, and that in 2009 it may become possible for you to prosecute the crime of aggression. While we must all strive to make that prosecution possible in 2009, it is not needed in order to prosecute George W. Bush, and his prosecution should not wait.
As the Nuremberg Tribunal stated so well, "To initiate a war of aggression…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." This has proven to be true in Iraq, and in Bush's global "war on terrorism", and there is no reason to delay prosecution for each separate element of the accumulated evil.
--Prosecution of George W. Bush by the International Criminal Court, An Open Letter to Luis Moreno-Ocampo, Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court

According to Richard Behan, buried among some 94 pages of the Military Commissions Act of 2006[lengthy PDF file], the Bush Administration admitted that it had committed prosecutable war crimes.

Corporal Charles Graner, Private First Class Lyndie England, and several of their teammates are serving time, for mistreating prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.
At the time these soldiers were tried and sentenced many people felt the culpability must extend above the ranks of enlisted personnel, up some distance into the chain-of-command, perhaps to the top. Many still do.
There are two pairs of dots to be connected. One is a pair of small dots, the other two are huge.
On December 28, 2001, a memo to President Bush from his Office of Legal Counsel made two claims: the US court system had no jurisdiction regarding the detainees at Guantanamo, and the Geneva Conventions did not apply to them.
Acting on this advice, on February 7, 2002 President Bush suspended Common Article 3 of those conventions-which, among other things, prohibits torture. Two years later, thanks to CBS' 60 Minutes and the New Yorker magazine, the prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib came to light. Connect those dots. These are the small ones.
Subsequent lawsuits addressing the detainee issue were considered and resolved by the Supreme Court. Rasul v. Bush found the US courts did have jurisdiction over the detainees. Hamdi v. Rumsfeld said detainees have a right to contest their detention: they are entitled to habeas corpus protections. Hamdan v. Rumsfeld tested the military tribunals President Bush created to bring the detainees to justice. The Supreme Court found the tribunals in violation of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, and their existence to be illegal, absent a basis in federal statute. The decision was handed down June 29, 2006.
Hamdan v. Rumsfeld put on display the Bush Administration's guilt in committing war crimes. This is one of the huge dots. It will be connected to another one shortly.
--Richard W. Behan, How George Bush Admitted His War Crimes

At last, Bush should be indicted for the Crime of mass murder in connection with 911. Despite the political rhetoric clouding this issue, there is probable cause now to bring charges of high treason and mass murder against Bush. The 'official conspiracy theory of 911' itself must be taken apart. That such a pack of lies was deliberately concocted and intended to deceive is, itself, a crime, a deliberate act of obstruction of justice.

Stanley Hilton was a senior advisor to Sen Bob Dole (R) and has personally known Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz for decades. This courageous man has risked his professional reputation, and possibly his life, to get this information out to people.

"This (9/11) was all planned. This was a government-ordered operation. Bush personally signed the order. He personally authorized the attacks. He is guilty of treason and mass murder."
--Stanley Hilton, The Intelligence Daily

Hilton, a successful lawyer, was a former chief of staff for Bob Dole who was once a GOP Presidentail hopeful. On behalf of hundreds who lost relatives and family in the crime called 911, Hilton has filed suit against George W. Bush alleging the 'President's' personal involvement and culpability.

Our case is alleging that Bush and his puppets Rice and Cheney and Mueller and Rumsfeld and so forth, Tenet, were all involved not only in aiding and abetting and allowing 9/11 to happen but in actually ordering it to happen. Bush personally ordered it to happen. We have some very incriminating documents as well as eye-witnesses, that Bush personally ordered this event to happen in order to gain political advantage, to pursue a bogus political agenda on behalf of the neocons and their deluded thinking in the Middle East. I also wanted to point out that, just quickly, I went to school with some of these neocons. At the University of Chicago, in the late 60s with Wolfowitz and Feith and several of the others and so I know these people personally. And we used to talk about this stuff all of the time. And I did my senior thesis on this very subject - how to turn the U.S. into a presidential dictatorship by manufacturing a bogus Pearl Harbor event. So, technically this has been in the planning at least 35 years.
--Stanley Hilton, The Intelligence Daily

Bush, indeed, appeared almost "uninterested and nonchalant" when, on the morning of 911, his Chief of Staff, Andy Card, whispered to him the news that a 'second plane' had crashed in New York. Bush, claims Hilton, thought it just 'another rehearsal'.

In fact, he even made a Freudian slip a few months later at a California press conference when he said he had, quote, "seen on television the first plane attack the first tower." And that could not be possible because there was no video.

How could Bush have seen what he said he saw?

How Could Bush Have Seen What He Said He Saw?

Hilton states that Bush had personally ordered 911, it was "... a personally government-ordered thing."

We are suing them under the Constitution for violating Americans' rights, as well as under the federal Fraudulent Claims Act, for presenting a fraudulent claim to Congress to justify the bogus Iraq boondoggle war, for political gains. And also, under the RICO statute, under the Racketeering Corrupt Organization Act, for being a corrupt entity. And I've been harassed personally by the chief judge of the federal court who is instructing me personally to drop this suit, threatened to kick me off the court, after 30 years on the court. I've been harassed by the FBI. My staff has been harassed and threatened. My office has been broken into and this is the kind of government we are dealing with.
--Stanley Hilton

Bush, of course, could not have seen the first plane. He lied.

It was a stupid lie that gives the game away. Bush lied about it on two separate occasions. Only an idiot would repeat a transparent lie about an event in which the only credible explanations implicate Bush himself in an act of high treason and mass murder! I have bad news for Bush: 'idiocy', at this level, is not a defense.

Religious folk will tell you that the term deceiver of nations' is how the book of Revelations defines 'The Beast'. Trouble is, Bush didn't really deceive anyone. For most of his critics, Bush was always suspect number 'one'. Nor did Bush deceive millions of willful idiots who knew he was lying but didn't care. They were doing just fine banking the tax cuts that only the very wealthy got. Marginally smarter than Bush, they were still duped into believing that the war of aggression against Iraq would result in cheap gasoline with which to fuel their SUVs. Lately, however, their tune has changed. But too late to shuck off the the disease of complicity. The really big contributors --those with policy influence --should be rounded up and charged.

The following video summarizes how the Bush cabal found common interests with Larry Silverstein, how both groups benefited by helping Larry Silverstein remove the 'white elephant' form his otherwise profitable portfolio. These irredeemably evil people had method, motive and opportunity.

911 has turned out to be short-term political bonanza for George W. Bush who parlayed the events into a virtual dictatorship. Upon the 911 pretext, he waged wars against Afghanistan on behalf of a pipeline consortium and against Iraq on behalf of almost every major oil company in the United States.

It was all, in fact, a very simple crime. The facts of the case are undeniable. It could become a prosecutor's dream. The 'official conspiracy' is not true in any way or any part. The official theory is, in fact, impossible, a bald-faced lie which even the co-chairs of the 911 Commission now disown. It was Conan Doyle by way of his creation, Sherlock Holmes who said: "When you have eliminated the impossible whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth!"

The truth is that George W. Bush conspired to commit high treason and mass murder that he might embark upon a program of additional mass murders in Afghanistan and Iraq even as he waged war upon the people of the United States. The term for that is: HIGH TREASON! The other term is: MASS MURDER!

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Tuesday, September 16, 2008

When the Sea Walks Over the Land

History, they say, repeats itself. But always with a variation. On September 8, 1900, before hurricanes were given names, the city of Galveston was slammed by the 'Storm of the Century'. A 17 foot wall of water seemed to have just risen up to walk across a thin sliver of land, in truth little more than a glorified sand bar. Driven by winds of 135 mph, it submerged the island city and laid waste to all houses but those of the very, very rich. Those houses still dominate the atmosphere and personality of Galveston.

Over the last week, Ike threatened to relive the experience of some 100 years ago. There were many echoes of the past but significant differences. Modern Galveston, as a result of its 1900 experience, built a protective 17 foot seawall to protect the city against another storm surge of such biblical proportions. The nature of a storm surge was explained best in a line of dialogue from the Bogey/McCall movie Key Largo: "The wind blows so hard the ocean gets up on its hind legs and walks right across the land."

A storm surge is, literally, the apogee of a huge wave formed by high winds and low pressure. It is as if the ocean literally rises up and moves landward with the storm accompanied by high winds and pounding rain. There are few natural events more exciting than a hurricane; even fewer are so deadly.

Rescuers saved nearly 2,000 people from waterlogged streets and shredded houses in Galveston.
"Quite frankly we are reaching a health crisis for the people who remain on the island," said Steve LeBlanc, the city manager in Galveston, where at least a third of the community's 60,000 residents remained in their homes - refusing to leave.
Galveston Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas pleaded with those residents who left last week not to return right away.
"Do not come back to Galveston," the mayor said. "You cannot live here at this time."
Houston, the nation's fourth-largest city, was under a week-long dusk-to-dawn curfew to prevent looting.
Energy provider CenterPoint Energy reported power was restored to 500,000 customers, but more than 1.6 million remained in the dark, including Houston's big corporations.
Mayor Bill White said all city workers were expected to report to work, but most corporations told employees to stay home.
--Devastated Galveston tells residents their town is unlivable

The Worst of Ike

In Houston, I slept through many tropical storms and a hurricane or two. Some important points must be made. I never lived in what the locals call a "flood plain"; I never lived within sight of the Gulf; I never tried to sleep through storms of the magnitude of Andrew, Rita, or Gustav.

My very first experience with a hurricane was Audrey which struck the coast and seemed to gain strength even as she struck deep in the Piney Woods of SE Texas. Audrey had reached Category 4 status in June and went on to cause 'catastrophic damage across eastern Texas and western Louisiana'. I was a child but still remember clearly incredible winds of some 75 miles MPH striking deep inland, ripping branches off oak and pine, slamming them into parked cars and houses. A window was blown out. Heavy oaken furniture was blown across the room.

It is appropriate that the name 'Audrey' is now retired. Audrey left in its wake 600 dead and 1 billion dollars in damages, the sixth deadliest US hurricane since accurate record-keeping began in 1900. There was nothing like Audrey until Katrina swept into New Orleans in 2005.

What is so striking is that Ike, Audrey of 1957, and the unnamed storm of 1900 all seem to have made 'landfall' between Galveston and the Texas-Lousiana border. We may be justified in calling it Hurricane alley.

If you wish to imagine what it might be like to survive the first impact to find yourself inside the eerie 'eye of the storm, there is probably no better read than Isaac's Storm by Erik Larson. Galveston was not taken completely by surprise. City 'fathers' were, indeed, aware of the island city's vulnerability. There were no barrier islands to protect it against the sea and sky. Galveston put its bare face against the Gulf.

Instead of warning the residents of Galveston, instead of lending his support to efforts to float bonds for the construction of a seawall, meteorologist Isaac Cline, instead, wrote an article in 1891, in which he characterized the fear of hurricanes as an 'absurdd delusion. He claimed that rising surgewaters would spread first over the vast lowlands 'behind Galveston which, he claimed, were even closer than Galveston to sea level. "It would be impossible," he wrote, "for any cyclone to create a storm wave which could materially injure the city."

At the competing Galveston Tribune, editor Clarence Ousley spent Saturday morning writing his editorials for the Sunday editions. He looked out the window at the harsh sky, patches of blue still showed, but mostly he saw clouds a black and low as any he had ever seen. The storm seemed a good subject for comment. Off and on that morning had called home for reports from his family on the condition of the surge, which his wife and children could watch from the windows of the second floor. It was very exciting --storms always were --but he did not think this one would be terribly different from any other.
--Eric Larson, Isaac's Storm

As the storm approached Galveston, the rains increased. Many sought refuge at the train station. An elderly man produced a barometer and insisted upon reading out the descending atmospheric pressure periodically, a practice that did not endear him to his fellows.

No one else seemed terribly worried either. Galveston apparently took such things in strike.
The first 'intimation' of the true extent of the disaster, Benjamin recalled, "came when the body of a child floated into the station."
--Eric Larson, Isaac's Storm

It is not only the Gulf Coast states of the US that are threatened by hurricanes. In 1703, an "extratropical hurricane", believe to have originated in the Atlantic east of Florida, struck the great city of London.

Though it has been called 'the perfect hurricane', it is atypical. It was reported to have crossed the 'cold Atlantic'. Storms associated with SE US are believed to be nurtured by warm Gulf water. Otherwise, decriptions of London's storm read very much like a descriptions of Ike or Andrew moving right up the Houston Ship Channel. The storm wreaked havoc upon some 700 ships, moored in the 'Pool of London'. The Royal Navy lost 13 war ships. The death toll was staggering --as high as 15,000. Queen Anne sought refuge in the cellar at St. James Palace'. Lead roofing was blown off Westminster Abbey. Like Andrew and Ike over the lowlands north of Galveston, TX, London's storm moved northward over the Midlands. In his very first book, The Storm, Daniel DeFoe wrote of "...the tempest that destroyed woods and forests all over England. No pen could describe it, nor tongue express it, nor thought conceive it unless by one in the extremity of it."