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Banned
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Originally Posted by Mojo_PeiPei
Before we get into why nuclear weapons are bad, could you explain to me how Bush is a "war criminal"?
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I have responded to this several times before, and the place, IMO, to discuss it is here: http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=87571
In the interest of defending my choice for titling this thread, I'll post some excerpts of detailed references here in support: (I hope that we can shift back to the subject of the thread; Macnamara's epiphany later in his life, his advice to the Bush admin. on nuclear weapons, especially interesting because of his experience, especially as Kennedy's Defense Secty during the Cuban missle crises and as architect and manager of 7 years of the Vietnam war......)
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http://www.roberthjackson.org/Henry_...articipant.asp
THE NUREMBERG CONTEXT
FROM THE EYES OF A PARTICIPANT By Henry T. King,a Nuremberg prosecutor
What was the law which governed in the handling of these cases? In the first case before the International Military Tribunal, it was the London Charter of August 8, 1945. In the subsequent proceedings, it was the Control Council Law Number 10. These two documents were basically similar with two exceptions which I shall mention.
Both defined crimes against peace as planning or waging of aggressive war. But Control Council Law Number 10 defined “crimes against peace” to include invasions as well as wars – thus, providing a basis for charging the Austrian and Czechoslovak conquests as crimes against peace.
The second category of crimes was war crimes – violations of the laws and customs of war.
The third category of crimes was crimes against humanity – atrocities committed against civilian populations on racial, political, or religious grounds. The London Charter added the provision that “such crimes must be in execution of or in connection of any crime within the jurisdiction of the tribunal.” Thus, these crimes under the London Charter could not stand on their own bottom. Control Council Law Number 10 removed this provision; therefore, we could take cognizance of atrocities perpetrated prior to the outbreak of the war.
Back up for the changes in the case of war crimes against humanity came from The Hague and Geneva Conventions of 1907 and 1928, respectively, and in the case of crimes against peace, from the Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact of 1928 which outlawed war as an instrument of national policy and various treaties that Germany had signed covering the peaceful resolution of disputes (i.e., the Locarno Treaties).
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Quote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/08/bo...rint&position=
http://www.cfba.info/analyst/nyt_rev...greenberg.html =Alternate
THE ARTS/CULTURAL DESK
BOOKS OF THE TIMES; Following A Paper Trail To the Roots Of Torture
By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
Published: February 8, 2005, Tuesday
'THE TORTURE PAPERS'
'The Road to Abu Ghraib'
Edited by Karen J. Greenberg and Joshua L. Dratel
''The Torture Papers,'' the new compendium of government memos and reports chronicling the road to Abu Ghraib and its aftermath, definitively blows such arguments to pieces. In fact, the book provides a damning paper trail that reveals, in uninflected bureaucratic prose, the roots that those terrible images had in decisions made at the highest levels of the Bush administration -- decisions that started the torture snowball rolling down the slippery slope of precedent by asserting that the United States need not abide by the Geneva Conventions in its war on terror................
.......Indeed, Justice Department memos suggested that in a war like the present one, presidential power can override both congressional laws and ''customary international law'': in short, that the president can choose to suspend America's obligation to comply with the Geneva Conventions if he wishes, authorize torture or detain prisoners without a hearing.
On Feb. 7, 2002, President Bush signed an order that would have all manner of unreckoned consequences: ''I accept the legal conclusion of the Department of Justice and determine that none of the provisions of Geneva apply to our conflict with al Qaeda in Afghanistan or elsewhere throughout the world.'' Instead, prisoners at Guantánamo Bay were to be designated ''unlawful combatants,'' who fell under rules that the administration itself would determine. That included all Qaeda suspects and Taliban detainees, who President Bush said were not entitled to prisoner of war status, but should instead be treated ''humanely and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in a manner consistent with the principles of Geneva.'' In September 2002, a secret C.I.A. study raised questions about the significance of the Guantánamo detainees, reportedly suggesting that many of them might be low-level recruits or even innocents swept up in the fog of war.
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld would later approve the use of special interrogation techniques for key terrorist suspects. Eventually techniques designed to be used on hard-core al Qaeda suspects at Guantánamo migrated to Iraq, where military intelligence officers told the Red Cross an estimated 70 percent to 90 percent of the detainees had been arrested by mistake.
A second seminal premise embraced by the administration was that the global war on terrorism represents ''a new paradigm,'' and that this new sort of war required new sorts of tools. In an interview on Sept. 16, 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney reworked the means-and-ends equation, asserting that the United States was going to have to work ''sort of the dark side'' and that ''it's going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective.'' Alberto R. Gonzales, the White House counsel at the time, was more specific; he argued that the ''new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners.'
There were some dissenting voices. In January 2002, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell argued that withholding prisoner of war status across the board (instead of case by case) to al Qaeda and Taliban suspects would ''reverse over a century of U.S. policy and practice,'' ''undermine the protections of the law of war for our troops,'' have ''a high cost in terms of negative international reaction'' and ''undermine public support among critical allies.'' His warnings were not heeded..............
.....What happened to higher-up architects and consultants on administration policy? Mr. Rumsfeld revealed last week that he twice offered to resign over the Abu Ghraib scandal and was twice turned down by President Bush. Mr. Bybee, who defined torture as pain equivalent to ''organ failure,'' was nominated by Mr. Bush to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and took his seat there in 2003. Michael Chertoff, who in his capacity as head of the Justice Department's criminal division advised the C.I.A. on the legality of coercive interrogation methods, was selected by President Bush to be the new secretary of homeland security. William J. Haynes II, the Department of Defense's chief legal officer, who helped oversee Pentagon studies on the interrogation of detainees, was twice nominated by President Bush to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. And Mr. Gonzales, who used the words ''obsolete'' and ''quaint'' in reference to the Geneva Conventions, was confirmed last week as attorney general, the nation's top legal post.
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Quote:
http://www.nytimes.com/ref/internati...EMO-GUIDE.html
The New York Times, Newsweek, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal have disclosed memorandums that show a pattern in which Bush administration lawyers set about devising arguments to avoid constraints against mistreatment and torture of detainees. Administration officials responded by releasing hundreds of pages of previously classified documents related to the development of a policy on detainees.
Additional documents were released in December and January by the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a civil lawsuit seeking to discover the extent of abuse of prisoners by the military. Those papers are posted at aclu.org.
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Quote:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...593607,00.html
The secret Downing Street memo
.......................C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.
CDS said that military planners would brief CENTCOM on 1-2 August, Rumsfeld on 3 August and Bush on 4 August. (2002) .........................
.........................The Foreign Secretary said he would discuss this with Colin Powell this week. It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force.
The Attorney-General said that the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action. There were three possible legal bases: self-defence, humanitarian intervention, or UNSC authorisation. The first and second could not be the base in this case. Relying on UNSCR 1205 of three years ago would be difficult. The situation might of course change......................
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Quote:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story...477620,00.html
International court hears anti-war claims
Lawyers for families and groups present evidence they say shows government acted unlawfully on Iraq
Richard Norton-Taylor
Friday May 6, 2005
.............Lawyers acting for anti-war groups yesterday presented the international criminal court with evidence which, they say, shows that the government acted unlawfully by participating in the US-led invasion of Iraq.
They say that British forces acted out of all proportion to the official war aim - ridding Iraq of its banned weapons programme but not regime change.
They also argue that British troops acted, and were ordered to act, beyond the bounds of military necessity. British soldiers acted unlawfully by detaining and, they allege, mistreating Iraqi civilians, and by targeting cluster munitions on urban areas.
The submissions to the ICC, which is based in The Hague, have been drawn up by Public Interest Lawyers, a Birmingham-based firm which is representing the Stop the War Coalition, Peacerights, a non-government organisation set up to promote peaceful conflict resolution, Military Families Against the War, and relatives of Iraqi civilians allegedly injured and killed by British troops.
The attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, warned Tony Blair on March 7 2003, less than two weeks before the invasion that "given the controversy surrounding the legal basis for action, it is likely that the [international criminal] court will scrutinise any allegations of war crimes by UK forces very closely".
Luis Moreno Campo, the ICC's chief prosecutor, has told Public Interest Lawyers that the cases are potentially significant and that he is treating seriously evidence already submitted to it.................
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Look at track record of CCR vs. Bush Admin:
http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/newsroom/releases/archives.asp
Law Professors and NGO’s Warn President Bush of Legal Consequences of Iraq War
Letter To Adminstration Officials Highlights Actions Which
New York, January 24th, 2003 – A group of over 100 prominent law professors and non-governmental organizations organized by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) today sent a letter to President Bush and senior government officials warning that their conduct during a potential war on Iraq would be closely scrutinized based on well established principles of international law including humanitarian law.:
Quote:
http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/newsroom/do...georgebush.pdf
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache...ush.pdf+&hl=en
Re: CONSEQUENCES OF FUTURE USE OF FORCE AGAINST IRAQ
Dear Sirs:
We, the undersigned Law Professors and U.S. Non-Governmental Organizations write to you
to raise our concerns about possible violations of international humanitarian law (IHL) that may
occur in any future use of force against Iraq. This letter does not concede or accept that any
future use of force would be lawful under international law. Nor do we accept that all “peaceful
means” to resolve the dispute have been exhausted as required under Article 33 of the UN
Charter. Indeed, we consider that any future use of force without a new U.N. Security Council
Resolution would constitute a crime against peace or aggressive war in violation of the U.N.
Charter.
Our primary concern in this letter is with the large number of civilian casualties that may
result should U.S. and coalition forces fail to comply with IHL in using force against Iraq...................
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The legal precedence since the 1946 Nuremberg trials that define war crimes that Bush and members of his administration have committed in attacks and invasions of sovereign nations Afghanistan and Iraq, are illegal invasion, unprovoked aggressive war. willful and premeditated violations of the key provisions of the Geneva Convention, regime change, failure to plan for and provide adequate security to the civilain populations in the aftermath of invasion, the use of radioactive materials in munitions, torture of prisoners, intentional military destruction of hospitals, the near total destruction of the civilian population center of Fallujah.............
Last edited by host; 05-10-2005 at 12:15 AM..
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