The Right Wing is 'Trawling for Assassins'!

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Radical right wingers --tea baggers et al --are accused of 'trawling for assassins. It's but one of several outrages now associated with the disingenuous, bigoted 'tea bagger movement'. The idea of 'assassinating' a President because he is both black and Democratic threatens to finish off America as a nation of noble ideals. Earlier the self-absorbed right wing --thinking themselves rich --allowed themselves to be used by a GOP party machine. They were fooled. To them, I say that like the rest of us, you have awakened as a cockroach unless you were one already.

A nation in which about one half of the population openly pines for the murder of the only fairly elected president in some 9 years may be finished. It's hard to see any redemption following from that crooked, malevolent mentality. The writing is on the wall. The American ideals most us grew up with are on life-support!

It was all by design and began with the Presidency of Ronald Reagan about whom GOP-types swooned: "He made us feel good about ourselves!"

Not only have the Wall Street Journal and the hosts of Fox News been issuing their usual dark mutterings, but a new slogan has began appearing on bumper stickers, t-shirts, and even teddy bears: "Pray for Obama: Psalm 109:8."

That psalm reads, “Let his days be few; and let another take his office. Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow."

Maddow seemed mainly amused by the teddy bears, but when she turned for comment to former right-wing evangelical leader Frank Schaeffer, he emphasized that in a religious context "it means something more threatening."

"The situation that I find genuinely frightening right now," Schaeffer explained, "is that you have a ramping up of biblical language ... and what it's coalescing into is branding Obama ... as 'not us.' ... Now he joins the ranks of the unjust kings of ancient Israel ... who should be slaughtered, if not by God then by just men."

--Former evangelist: Religious right is ‘trawling for assassins’

'Missing America' is about mourning the loss of ideals --freedom, equality, Democracy, inherent rights, self-evident truths, the promise that this government, this nation, unlike the monarchies of Europe, recognized in its founding document that the people are sovereign. Alas! None of that means shit to about to the congenital psychopathic idiots who have never bothered to read the U.S. Constitution but are, nevertheless, experts!

Now that the GOP has been transformed by the rise of the South, the trauma of terrorism and George W. Bush's conviction that God wanted him to be president, a deeper conclusion can be drawn: The Republican Party has become the first religious party in U.S. history.

We have had small-scale theocracies in North America before -- in Puritan New England and later in Mormon Utah. Today, a leading power such as the United States approaches theocracy when it meets the conditions currently on display: an elected leader who believes himself to speak for the Almighty, a ruling political party that represents religious true believers, the certainty of many Republican voters that government should be guided by religion and, on top of it all, a White House that adopts agendas seemingly animated by biblical worldviews.

--Kevin Phillips, How the GOP Became God's Own Party, Sunday, April 2, 2006

The GOP, especially the top tier, that ruling one percent, was never interested in American ideals but those it could exploit politically, those with which it might seize more wealth and power. These often 'super' patriots never loved 'America' but for its utilitarian value, most prominently the awesome military with which it might seize the resources of other nations, most recently Afghanistan for the pipeline to the Persian Gulf and Iraq for the oil. Dick Cheney's 'energy task force' met prior to 911 in order to carve the oil fields of Iraq. Somewhere on my hard drive is the map on which the fields are literally assigned the conspirators --Exxon et al!

When did we lose our grip? I often recall the moment, in Houston's Jones Hall, at the height of the Watergate Scandal, I covered a news conference by then President Richard Nixon. Dan Rather of CBS News approached the microphone to ask his two questions of Nixon. When he introduced himself at the microphone, there was thunderous applause.

"Are you running for something," Nixon asked!

"No, Mr President" Rather responded, "Are you?"

In that moment, a division within the media was made clear to me. The so-called 'media executives', boardroom types, owners et al were in Nixon's corner if not his pocket. Rather, rather, represented the 'working' press, dogged, interested in the getting to the truth about how 'Watergate' represented a clear and present danger to the 'Republic'. There really was such a 'media' in those days. Nixon's Vice President, Spiro T. Agnew called them "nattering nabobs of negativism"!

But we overcame and rose above Watergate. It was an old 'Western' in which the 'good guys' won. They did win, didn't they?

It was Reagan!

It was not Nixon but Reagan and the psychopathic ilk who followed him blindly over the cliff that all but finished off Democracy. It was Reagan who destroyed labor as he enriched his 'base' of extremely wealthy and powerful people. It was Reagan who transferred the wealth of this nation to an elite that had done nothing to deserve it, had done nothing to earn it. It was Reagan's 'tax cut' specifically that resumed a trend that had reversed during FDR's 'New Deal', that is, the rich began once again to grow much, much richer as those not among the upper 20 percent began to lose ground. As they had done during the era of the Great Robber Barons, Reagan must be remembered for having undone the good that had been done by FDR. This can all be proven with official figures from the Census Bureau, The Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S. Commerce Department-Bureau of Economic Analysis.

To accomplish GOP/right wing goals, Reagan pandered to ignorance, bigotry, hate, and prejudice. Reagan made psychopaths feel good about being psychopaths. Reagan sold out American industry and labor. As a result, the U.S. is now on the very bottom of the CIA's 'World Fact Book' with the world's largest Negative Current Account Balance, formerly called the 'balance of trade deficit'. China boasts both the World's largest positive Current Account Balance and control over the value of the U.S. dollar.

It was the neo-imperialists, parasites upon the Military-Industrial Complex, who dared dream of an 'American Empire' in the PNAC document: REBUILDING AMERICA’S DEFENSES Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century [PDF]. These neo-imperialists openly pined for a new a 'catalyzing event', a new 'Pearl Harbor', that would be exploited to justify a campaign of aggressive wars, in fact, crimes punishable by death even under U.S. Codes, Title 18, Section 2441.

Documents from Dick Cheney's May 2001 energy task force -- released under court order to the public interest group Judicial Watch -- include charts and maps detailing Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, and refineries. The recently disclosed information also reveals maps of Saudi Arabian and United Arab Emirates oilfields, pipelines, refineries, and tanker terminals with supporting charts of major oil and gas developments. Thus, the billowing cloud of thick, black controversy rising from the task force and resulting energy policy of the Bush Administration grows even thicker. Two years ago, the Los Angeles Times published an extensive investigative piece showing that the 'Cheney-led task force consulted extensively with corporate executives. Its findings boosted their interests.' In April of this year the Washington Post reported that Cheney's lawyer 'received a scolding yesterday from a panel of federal appeals judges over the Bush administration's use of an unusual legal maneuver to avoid disclosing information about Cheney's energy policy task force.' The newly released information once again raises suspicion about what happened behind closed doors and heightens the need to answer what Cheney is trying so hard to keep classified. As Judicial Watch's President Tom Fitton said, 'These documents show the importance of the Energy Task Force and why its operations should be open to the public.'

--Cheney Energy Task Force Had Maps of Iraqi Oilfields

These people benefited from the inability of the American people to grasp the significance of the 'catalyzing event' that, in fact, gave Bush the pretext he needed to attack and invade Iraq, a nation that had been recently 'carved up', like 'spoils of war' by the members of Dick Cheney's Energy Task Force.

Why I moderate comments

• SPAM: 'comments' that link to junk, 'get rich' schemes, scams, and nonsense! These are the worst offenders.
• Ad hominem attacks: 'name calling' and 'labeling'. That includes the ad hominem: 'truther' or variations!

---

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Texas Oil Man: US Should Plunder Iraqi Oil

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Texas oil man T. Boone Pickets typifies what is dead wrong about America and what passes for 'foreign policy'. Pickens claims the US is 'entitled' to Iraqi oil. How convenient for the oil barons who conspired with Dick Cheney to carve up the oil fields of Iraq before 911 would give Bush the pretext he would need to attack and invade Iraq, a nation that had nothing whatsoever to do with 911.

Nevertheless, it would be claimed that Iraq was --somehow --a part of the 'war on terror'. Is there no end to the lies? Might I remind that on 911, it was a gang of Israelis, perhaps criminals from Mossad, who were seen dancing and celebrating! It was NOT Iraqis who celebrated the deaths of innocent Americans! Clearly --Bush waged war on everyone but the 'real terrorists'.

Mossad is just as crooked as is the CIA about which I have written, possibly, thousands of pages [See: Why the CIA is the world's number one terrorist organization] Secondly, the US is perpetually auctioned off to the highest bidders on K-Street! And the the most powerful lobby on K-street is most certainly the Jewish Lobby. Meanwhile, Israel is breaking every international law with respect to Palestine as we write and post.

Every cover, every rationalization, every pretext for war was a treasonous lie from traitors who betrayed the people of the US, the Constitution, and specific US Codes that make any death resulting from such a war a crime punishable by death. If you are reading this, George W. Bush, you are not out of the woods.

Now for the idiot du jour:

Oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens told Congress on Wednesday that U.S. energy companies are "entitled" to some of Iraq's crude because of the large number of American troops that lost their lives fighting in the country and the U.S. taxpayer money spent in Iraq.

Boone, speaking to the newly formed Congressional Natural Gas Caucus, complained that the Iraqi government has awarded contracts to foreign companies, particularly Chinese firms, to develop Iraq's vast reserves while American companies have mostly been shut out.

"They're opening them (oil fields) up to other companies all over the world ... We're entitled to it," Pickens said of Iraq's oil. "Heck, we even lost 5,000 of our people, 65,000 injured and a trillion, five hundred billion dollars."

--Reuters, Pickens says U.S. firms 'entitled' to Iraqi oil

T. Boone Pickens is either stupid, ignorant or just doesn't care! I am referring to various kinds of law, specifically English Common Law upon which most US laws and Constitution are based and, secondly, US Codes, Title 18, Section 2441 which makes what the US did in and to Iraq and to the people of Iraq a war crime punishable by death.

That applies, of course, to Bush who ordered the attack and invasion as well as his close associates who conspired with him knowing that Iraq had no WMD. It applies as well to the Army brass in an all volunteer army. They must take responsibility for having willingly participated in the commission of war crimes for which the penalty is death as prescribed by US law.

Now --are we to believe that US laws are no longer valid? Certainly --there must be a reason the Bush crime family is never brought to justice! There must be a reason that a certain 'class' in America is --in fact --above the law! Perhaps the law has become quaint replaced by a sophisticated but unjust two-tiered affair in which the criminal justice system enforces laws on behalf of an elite 'ruling class' which is itself place above the rule of law to which everyone is expected to pay obeisance and tribute! This elite ruling class of just one percent of the total US population own more than about 95 percent of the rest of us combined and is, in fact, the only beneficiary of US wars of aggression and oil theft in Iraq and elsewhere. Big Brother has arrived!

FACT TIME: there is only ONE justification for war under International Law and that is ''imminent threat'. Iraq POSED no such threat to the US or its interests. That's why Bush tried to claim that Iraq was a part of the so-called 'war on terrorism'' though there is absolutely NO EVIDENCE that Iraq had anything at all to do with 911.

I say revolution now! I say bring down this elite! I say arrest the war criminal who continue to rape the sovereign nation of Iraq! I say file capital charges against George W. Bush, his guilty staff and the Pentagon brass who knowingly and willing planned the entire heist on behalf of big oil!

I say charge every member of the Dick Cheney 'Energy Task Force' for planning it all, literally carving up the oil fields of Iraq before the all-too-convenient Riechstag Fire called 911 gave them the broad and wide ranging pretext to begin a perpetual war in which the US would plunder the Middle East.

Secondly, the US has an all volunteer army. Should that army commit war crimes, are not the willing participants of those crime subject to prosecution?

Is the legacy of the GOP/Reagan/Bush era the abolition of the rule of law? Clearly --unless things change, unless Bush and a gang of war criminals in the Pentagon are brought to justice, the very concept of the 'rule of law' will have become a macabre and ludicrous joke.

Oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens told Congress on Wednesday that U.S. energy companies are "entitled" to some of Iraq's crude because of the large number of American troops that lost their lives fighting in the country and the U.S. taxpayer money spent in Iraq.

Boone, speaking to the newly formed Congressional Natural Gas Caucus, complained that the Iraqi government has awarded contracts to foreign companies, particularly Chinese firms, to develop Iraq's vast reserves while American companies have mostly been shut out.

"They're opening them (oil fields) up to other companies all over the world ... We're entitled to it," Pickens said of Iraq's oil. "Heck, we even lost 5,000 of our people, 65,000 injured and a trillion, five hundred billion dollars."

--Reuters, Pickens says U.S. firms 'entitled' to Iraqi oil

What the US did in and to Iraq and to the people of Iraq is a war crime punishable by death. That applies to Bush who ordered the attack and invasion as well as his close associates who conspired with him in the knowledge that Iraq had NO WMD. It applies as well to the Army brass who must take responsibility for having willingly participated in the commission of war crimes.

A Nation of Laws or Outlaws? 

Clearly --unless things change, unless Bush and a gang of war criminals in the Pentagon are brought to justice, the very concept of the 'rule of law' will have become a macabre and ludicrous joke.

Goodbye America, you sold your soul to the likes of T. Boone Pickens!

Also see:

• A Spiritual Mind Movie
• How the US Became a Vassal State of China
  
• Terrorism is Worse Under GOP Regimes
  
• The US Army Document That Proves the US is the World's Number One Sponsor of World Terrorism
• Dissecting the Scrambled Brains of the GOP
  
• Why the CIA is the World's Number One Terrorist Organization
  [w/LINKS]
• Why the CIA is the World's Number One Terrorist Organization [PDF]
• How the GOP Pays Off its 'Base' of Elites
  

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The Movement to Try George W. Bush et al for War Crimes

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Members of the Bush administration and George W. Bush personally conspired to violate the Geneva Convention, the Nuremberg Principles and US obligations to both. Bush and key members of his administration deliberately violated US criminal codes and tried to make their crimes legal after they had already committed them. Bush and his minions embarked upon this subversive action when it was made clear to them that they could be put to death for violations of US Codes which bind the US to Geneva and other treaties that were almost insisted upon by the United States.

These are not abstract principles, politics, spin or PR. These are legal principles upon which a distinguished American --Justice Robert Jackson --help codify at the Nuremberg trials of major Nazi war criminals.
It is encouraging that, of late, there is a growing chorus demanding that George W. Bush and members of his criminal regime be held to account for the crimes of aggressive war, mass murder, and torture.

Can there be a better reason for prosecuting George Bush and his administration for war crimes than those words from the chief prosecutor of the Nazis, a U.S. Supreme Court Justice, with the full support of the U.S. government? Robert Jackson’s words and the values this nation claims to stand for provide sufficient moral basis for putting Bush and Cheney, their underlings who implemented their policies and the perverted legal minds who justified them all in the dock. If those are not sufficient reasons, there is a long list of binding law and treaties – written in black and white in surprisingly plain English.
Bush imagined, and his attorneys advised, that he could simply wave aside these laws with “they don’t apply.” Imagine how a judge would treat even a simple traffic court defendant who brazenly stated the law was only a quaint notion, just “words on paper?”

--Mike Fermer, Why we must prosecute Bush and his administration for war crimes
The Bush administration itself is aware that it is in deep, deep trouble. 

...there is one group of people that has always taken the war crimes charges seriously--the members of the Bush administration themselves. They have good reason for doing so, because they have exposed hundreds of Americans to possible prosecution for violating US law. As long as George Bush is president and controls the Department of Justice, there will no prosecutions for war crimes, but after Bush is gone, anything could happen and hundreds of Americans could be charged with war crimes.  

--David Wallechinsky, Is George Bush Guilty of War Crimes...and Who Cares?

Unless Bush plans to make his escape to Paraguay while still 'President', his exit from the Oval Office will make him vulnerable to process for violations of the War Crimes Act of 1996 passed by both houses of Congress without dissent. The act covers every crime that may be charged to Bush as of this moment and as of the time Bush will exit the 'cover' of the Oval Office.

The act deals specifically with his deliberate "killing, torture or inhumane treatment" of 'detainees' at Abu Ghraib, GITMO and the gulag archipelago of 'detention centers' throughout Eastern Europe. Violations of the War Crimes Act that result in the death of a detainee carry the death penalty and there is no statute of limitations.

(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, shall also be subject to the penalty of death.

--TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 118 > § 2441 § 2441. War crimes

Bush had been planning to commit capital crimes long before 911 and, in fact, tried to make 'legal' the crimes that he had intended to commit.

Wishing to rebuke the unpunished war crimes of dictators like Saddam Hussein, in 1996 a Republican-dominated Congress passed the War Crimes Act without a dissenting vote. It defined a "war crime" as any "grave breach" of the Geneva Conventions. It thereby advanced a global trend of mutual reinforcement between national and international law.
The War Crimes Act was little noticed until the disclosure of Alberto Gonzales's infamous 2002 "torture memo." Gonzales, then serving as presidential counsel, advised President Bush to declare that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to people the United States captured in Afghanistan. That, Gonzales wrote, "substantially reduced the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act."

--The Nation, Bush Aims to Kill War Crimes Act

Bush did not succeed in putting himself above the laws that prescribed the death penalty for the very violations of laws that he had planned. Title 18 of the US Code as currently published by the US Government [as quoted above] reflects the laws passed by Congress as of Jan. 3, 2007, and it is this version that is published here.

It was because Bush knew he was guilty that he tried to ram through Congress amendments to the War Crimes Act that would exonerate him EX POST FACTO. Ex post facto laws are unconstitutional. Bush defenders will waste their time trying to convince me that ex post facto prohibition applies only to those laws making one prosecutable for acts that were legal at the time of commission. In other words, if it was legal to spit on the sidewalk at the time you did so, you are immune to prosecution under any law passed after you had so spit!

Clearly --Bush can not commit murder now and expect to escape prosecution by making it legal after the fact. That is nothing less than rule by decree and is utterly inconsistent with the very concepts of 'rule of law' or 'due process of law'. Don't confuse this with amnesty, which, to my knowledge, Bush has not sought nor does he deserve. Rather, Bush has tried to rewrite both laws and history. He tried to make legal those capital crimes that he had already committed, a tyrannical notion that is absurd on its face.

Several yeas ago, I wrote an article that pointed out that any federal grand jury could indict Bush for capital crimes and, in fact, could begin an investigation of Bush upon its own volition. Any federal judge can, upon his/her own motion, convene a federal grand jury to consider any case deemed worthy of investigation. I would suggest that any Federal Judge reading this, get off your bench and convene a jury! It is your patriotic duty to this nation and its laws!

Former LA Prosecutor Vince Bugliosi makes another case, that because Bush deliberately lied in order to send US soldiers to their deaths in an illegal war, Bush is prosecutable for murder.

In the first sentence, we're told:

The book you are about to read deals with what I believe to be the most serious crime ever committed in American history - - the president of the nation, George W. Bush, knowingly and deliberately taking this country to war in Iraq under false presences, a war that condemned over 100,000 human beings, including 4,000 American soldiers, to horrific, violent deaths." (V. Bugliosi, p. 3)

The president "knowingly and deliberately" caused the deaths of US soldiers and Iraqi civilians and that's called murder, plain and simple. This is not a hypothetical case that could happen under special legal interpretations. When the president leaves office, he is subject to the same law as the rest of us. Bugliosi explains the ability to prosecute the case against George W. Bush by a district attorney or states attorney in any local jurisdiction where a life was lost in the Iraq war. Federal prosecutors also have that option. Bugliosi's detailed analysis of this phenomenon offers some of the best analysis in the book and the detailed end notes.   

--E. Pluribus Media, Bugliosi's The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder 

Because he has notoriety, Bugliosi has succeeded in attracting some attention to this issue. My fear is that in the post-election atmosphere of relief that Obama turned back the GOP wave the pressure to bring George W. Bush to justice will subside. That would be a grave mistake, a catastrophic precedent. If Bush is allowed to make good a get away, the signal will have been sent that US presidents are above the law and may perpetrate mass murder and war crimes at will.

Violations of US Codes, Title 18, Section 2441 are NOT to be confused with violations of international treaties which may have the effect of putting Bush in the dock at the Hague. Certainly, Bush had planned to commit acts that were known to be violations of US laws and our treaty commitments. Even before 911 provided Bush the pretext to attack and invade both Afghanistan and Iraq, Tom DeLay sponsored legislation that provided for a US military invasion of The Hague in those instances should Bush find himself in the dock for war crimes. The timing of the bill is material to the case against Bush and speaks to the fact that Bush had been planning to wage war and wished to immunize himself against prosecution for the acts that were known at the time to be violations of international laws to which the US was bound by treaty.

I know of no reason why Bush should be impeached before he is indicted. Impeachment is a political remedy, the purview of Congress. What is discussed here are specific acts that are against the law. Bush should fear the very real possibility of being hauled before a federal judge charged with capital crimes.

There are yet other legal ghosts that will haunt Bush. He may be charged with perpetrating the crime of genocide.

U.S. Code; Chapter 50A; Section § 1091. Genocide
(a) Basic Offense. - Whoever, whether in time of peace or in time of war, in a circumstance described in subsection (d) and with the specific
intent to destroy, in whole or in substantial part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group as such.

(1) kills members of that group;

(2) causes serious bodily injury to members of that group;

(3) causes the permanent impairment of the mental faculties of members of the group through drugs, torture, or similar techniques;

(4) subjects the group to conditions of life that are intended to cause the physical destruction of the group in whole or in part;

(5) imposes measures intended to prevent births within the group; or

(6) transfers by force children of the group to another group; or attempts to do so, shall be punished as provided in subsection (b0.

--US Codes; Chapter 50A, Section § 1091. Genocide

As this blog has pointed out for years, the crimes prosecuted at Nuremberg apply as well to Bush and those key members of his cabinet with whom he conspired.

At Nuremberg, the foremost crime identified was starting a “war of aggression,” later codified by U.N. Resolution 3314, Art. 5, as “a crime against international peace.” Launching a war of aggression, as Hitler did against Poland, is considered so monstrous that the nation responsible can then be charged with “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity,” spelled out in detail in the Geneva Conventions. As Tom Paine said long before the U.N. formalized the definition of aggression, “He who is the author of a war lets loose the whole contagion of Hell and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death.”
A small sampling of the contagion of Hell let loose by Bush includes illegally invading a sovereign state, using banned weapons such as white phosphorous and napalm, bombing hospitals and civilian infrastructure, withholding aid and medical supplies, terrorizing and knowingly killing civilians, torturing prisoners, killing a million people and displacing four million more. 

Following World War II, humanity resolved that wars do more than spark a series of loathsome, individual crimes. Leaders responsible for a war actually commit crimes against the entirety of humanity. They inflict harm on every human being, something that must be put right before humanity can be restored. 

There is a final reason why we must prosecute Bush and Co. It is not what some argue, although they point to a serious danger: that Bush trashed the law and usurped powers, encouraging future presidents to expand where he left off. Such reasons are about George Bush and those who hold the office after him, but in the final analysis this is about us.
We are complicit in the horrors of this administration.

We can claim neither ignorance nor innocence. We are complicit by the very fact that we are citizens of the United States, more so because we paid for the war, and even more so for this reason. Listen to a village sheik I met in Iraq describe it better than I ever could. 

--Mike Fermer, Why we must prosecute Bush and his administration for war crimes [
Hat tip to: Above Top Secret] 

A Congress which did not have the stomach for impeachment shirked it's duty. Impeachment might have saved this nation the nightmare that it has not yet survived. The Congressional leadership of both parties have much to answer for.

I would hope that a hard nosed federal judge will consider the crimes holistically, in accordance with the conspiracy laws that are currently on the books. America's leaders betrayed the people in order to conduct war crimes for which Nazis were hanged! How we do justify to the world a double standard that says, in effect, if Nazis do it, we hang them! But if Americans perpetrate precisely the same crimes for the same purposes, we let them retire and bequeath a library!

I would urge that a federal grand jury be convened immediately to consider upon the probable cause and the evidence whether or not George W. Bush is guilty of capital crimes and whether or not he should be put to death!
_________________________________________________________________________________

Congress is powerless to absolve Bush of capital crimes and torture charges

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy 

Bush is in a heap of trouble. The US Congress should be impeaching Bush —NOT conspiring with him to cover his backside! Whatever torture compromise may work its way through an intimidated Congress, it must not help Bush. The US Constitution requires nothing less than a Constitutional Amendment to relieve U.S. obligations under the Geneva convention. At least one Constitutional provision means that nothing legal can get Bush off the hook for the crimes that he has already committed.

Bush seeks an ex post facto law that will make legal —after the fact —his violations of the Geneva Convention having to do with torture.

No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.

—US Constitution, Article I

That means that Bush cannot commit crimes and make them "legal" later. That includes his having ordered summary executions and brutal tortures, only to have them made legal ex post facto, The Constitution flatly states that it doesn't work that way!

George Washington University Professor and Countdown resident Constitutional expert Jonathan Turley joined Keith tonight to discuss the legal implications of President Bush’s proposed changes to Article III of the Geneva Conventions. Keith raises an obvious yet seldom mentioned point: Is the Bush administration trying to retroactively legalize crimes it very well may have already committed? Wouldn’t be the first time.

—John Amato, Crooks and Liars

Bush is beyond help from a mere act of Congresst. It'll take either the second coming or a constitutional amendment to change any US treaty obligation; the chances of that happening are very, very slim.

This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.

—US Constitution, Article VI, Annotations

Therefore, the Geneva Convention is the supreme law of the land and Bush is subject to it even if Congress should pass a measure that attempts to pardon him or, in any other way, absolve him of the capital crimes that he has already committed.

 US Codes, Title 18, § 2441. War crimes bind the US to the those international treaties which address issues of war crimes, crimes against the peace and crimes against humanity. Bush deliberately violated all of them. There is probable cause to bring severe criminal charges against Bush now. If the US government had not been hijacked by a handful of crooked corporations, Bush would already have been impeached, tried, and removed from office to stand trial in ordinary criminal courts. Partisan politics has kept him in office.

Meanwhile in London, Britain's Attorney-General Lord Goldsmith warns that the US risks "international condemnation" should it try to renounce Geneva or limit its obligations. Goldsmith's comments come after a US Senate committee rejected changes in the law that Bush had demanded. An alternative measure has been proposed by GOP Senator John McCain and supported by former Secretary of State, Colin Powell, who stated earlier:

The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism.

—Colin Powell

The world has every reason to doubt. There is no moral basis for the US position and the actions taken on Bush's watch. Bush, like Hitler before him, has thumbed his nose at US international obligations though we are bound to them by our own Constitution —the supreme law of the land.

The media has done the American public a disservice, dealing with this story in Orwellian terms, calling torture "tough questioning" or "stringent interrogation techniques" or some other absurd euphemism. Bush, himself, calls it "an alternative set of procedures"! Hey! We're talking about torture, folks! It's a crime! And when death results —as it has in fact —it's a capital crime prohibited by federal laws, punishable by death.

Moreover, it will take a constitutional amendment to undo those obligations and even that will not exonerate Bush after the fact. Bush perpetrated a fraud upon the nation in order to wage of war of naked aggression, itself a war crime under the Nuremberg Principles. Then, in the course of waging that criminal war, Bush violates Geneva which he now pressures Congress to abjure. My position is: it is not Geneva that Congress should abjure —but Bush! Instead of papering over his crimes with what Bush hopes will exculpate his sorry ass, the Congress should be drafting his impeachment.

An update:

People have died under U.S. torture

Published: September 23, 2006

The writer of the Sept. 21 letter of the day, "They may be detained, but they get food," ignores the Pentagon's admission that more than 20 detainees deaths have been classified as homicides in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo.

These deaths were at the hands of U.S. soldiers and civilian contractors, in our facilities. Decent food, medical treatment and humane conditions did not help these detainees. They are dead through some means of torture.

The letter writer also suggested liberals don't understand the enemy we face. Quite the contrary, we see the inhumanity all around and question the leadership, direction and tactics of our war against terrorists.

The US War Crimes Act of 1996 makes it a felony to commit grave violations of the Geneva Conventions. The Washington Post recently reported that the Bush administration is quietly circulating draft legislation to eliminate crucial parts of the War Crimes Act. Observers on The Hill say the Administration plans to slip it through Congress this fall while there still is a guaranteed Republican majority–perhaps as part of the military appropriations bill, the proposals for Guantánamo tribunals or a new catch-all “anti-terrorism” package.

As David Cole of the Georgetown University Law Center pointed out in the August 10 issue of The New York Review of Books, the Supreme Court’s decision in Hamdan v. Rusmfeld “suggests that President Bush has already committed a war crime, simply by establishing the [Guantánamo] military tribunals and subjecting detainees to them” because “the Court found that the tribunals violate Common Article 3–and under the War Crimes Act, any violation of Common Article 3 is a war crime.” A similar argument would indicate that top US officials have also committed war crimes by justifying interrogation methods that, according to the testimony of US military lawyers, also violate Common Article 3.

Lo and behold, the legislation the Administration has circulated on Capitol Hill would decriminalize such acts retroactively.

—Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith, The Nation 

From Joseph Story's venerable Commentaries on the Constitution:

§ 1339. Of the same class are ex post facto laws, that is to say, (in a literal sense,) laws passed after the act done. The terms, ex post facto laws, in a comprehensive sense, embrace all retrospective laws, or laws governing, or controlling past transactions, whether they are of a civil, or a criminal nature.

—Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution 3:§§ 1338--39

And from a more contemporary commentator, the syndicated liberal talk personality from KCAA, Los Angeles:

There is no slicker way to exalt Bush above the law than to simply make legal the laws he's already broken. ...
I have more to say about ex post facto attempts to make legal the numerous crimes Bush has committed but first the Hamden decision to date: In Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, handed down June 29, the United States Supreme Court ruled that George W. Bush exceeded his authority. Neither the Congressional Authorization for the Use of Military Force, the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), nor the so-called inherent powers give Bush a legal authority to set up military tribunals at Guantanamo.

For those of us who have maintained for some time now that Bush is a "war criminal" -- who has breached not only international conventions but also U.S. criminal codes -- the high court's decision is vindication. In effect, SCOTUS has said that for a period of some five years, the Bush/Rumsfeld/Cheney gang has been guilty of violating the Third Convention on treatment of prisoners of war as well as a U.S. federal law of 1996 which binds the U.S. executive to those relevant parts of the Geneva convention.

Predictably, a conspiratorial GOP is scrambling to let Bush off the hook, even though he is most certainly guilty of violating U.S. and international law. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., says that Congress will reverse the Supreme Court's declaration and Sen. Arlen Specter is already at work on the language of the bill. I submit to Sen. McCain that Congress does not have the authority to reverse a decision of the supreme court; it can only pass a new law addressing its objections. Moreover, there is no precedent for excusing culprits ex post facto! On it its face, this is unfair; but more importantly, unconstitutional

No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.

—Article I, U.S. Constitution

Bush and his GOP co-conspirators are routinely at odds with the supreme law of the land but also simple common sense. Because ex post facto laws change —after the fact —the legal consequences of acts already committed, the ex post facto law becomes an instrument of oppression and tyranny. Hoping to crack down on dissenters, for example, a government need only make the voicing of certain opinions a crime but only after they've been printed, broadcast or spoken. Such a government need only make the law, round up the usual suspects, and prosecute them for actions that were legal at the time of their commission. Conversely, the dictator-in-chief in such a society need only subvert the very foundations of law and order itself and demand that his actions be made legal —after the fact! Convenience is the enemy of the rule of law.

—Barry Gordon, summa cum laude political science, California State University, Los Angeles; J.D. Loyola Law School, 1991, BarryTalk.com

A law, however, cannot be denominated retrospective, or ex post facto, which merely changes the remedy, but does not affect the right.

—U.S. Supreme Court, HOLLINGSWORTH v. STATE OF VIRGINIA, 3 U.S. 378 (1798)

The Torture President Additional resources:

• Republican rift over CIA program continues
• A defining moment for the United States
• U.S. wartime prisons have left 14,000 detainees in a legal vacuum
• Congress should block Bush torture proposal
• Why GOP trio is bucking the White House

I am pleased to have been picked up by a French language blog called Paroles de Québécois Here's a portion of the story they wrote about the ex post facto issue:

J'ai mentionné précédemment que Bush cherchait un pardon rétroactif pour les crimes qu'il a commis en relation avec la convention de Genève sur le traitement des prisonniers. Heureusement, la voie qu'il poursuit est anticonstitutionnelle en raison de ce petit "bout de papier" (le terme utilisé par Bush pour référer à la constitution, ironiquement le seul et unique devoir du président est de la faire respecter), particulièrement cette ligne révélatrice:

No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.

—US Constitution, Article I

Howard Zinn's name has come up several times now in the comments section. Here's Zinn's latest essay:

America’s Blinders

By Howard Zinn

April 2006 Issue

Now that most Americans no longer believe in the war, now that they no longer trust Bush and his Administration, now that the evidence of deception has become overwhelming (so overwhelming that even the major media, always late, have begun to register indignation), we might ask: How come so many people were so easily fooled?

The question is important because it might help us understand why Americans—members of the media as well as the ordinary citizen—rushed to declare their support as the President was sending troops halfway around the world to Iraq.

A small example of the innocence (or obsequiousness, to be more exact) of the press is the way it reacted to Colin Powell’s presentation in February 2003 to the Security Council, a month before the invasion, a speech which may have set a record for the number of falsehoods told in one talk. In it, Powell confidently rattled off his “evidence”: satellite photographs, audio records, reports from informants, with precise statistics on how many gallons of this and that existed for chemical warfare. The New York Times was breathless with admiration. The Washington Post editorial was titled “Irrefutable” and declared that after Powell’s talk “it is hard to imagine how anyone could doubt that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction.”

It seems to me there are two reasons, which go deep into our national culture, and which help explain the vulnerability of the press and of the citizenry to outrageous lies whose consequences bring death to tens of thousands of people. If we can understand those reasons, we can guard ourselves better against being deceived.

One is in the dimension of time, that is, an absence of historical perspective. The other is in the dimension of space, that is, an inability to think outside the boundaries of nationalism. We are penned in by the arrogant idea that this country is the center of the universe, exceptionally virtuous, admirable, superior.

If we don’t know history, then we are ready meat for carnivorous politicians and the intellectuals and journalists who supply the carving knives. I am not speaking of the history we learned in school, a history subservient to our political leaders, from the much-admired Founding Fathers to the Presidents of recent years. I mean a history which is honest about the past. If we don’t know that history, then any President can stand up to the battery of microphones, declare that we must go to war, and we will have no basis for challenging him. He will say that the nation is in danger, that democracy and liberty are at stake, and that we must therefore send ships and planes to destroy our new enemy, and we will have no reason to disbelieve him. ...

An update from my good friends at Bad Attitudes:

Donald Rumsfeld is onto something when he suggests that opponents of Bush’s occupation of Iraq are at best appeasers like Chamberlain and at worst Vichy collaborators like Marshal Pétain. World War II parallels to Georgie’s Excellent Adventure actually do exist, although not where our Secretary of “Defense” finds them. They’re in Casablanca.

Doesn’t the Nazi, Major Strasser, remind you of Rummy himself? And of course to most of the world (all of the Arab world), Feldmarschall Rumsfeld’s Iraqi “terrorists” look strikingly like that heroic resistance fighter, Victor Laszlo.

--Speaking of Invidious Comparisons

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