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Banned
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Originally Posted by reconmike
Will, it might not be in this thread, but I am certian he has said it in one of his 400 Lam posts, I will find it, it might take me 3 months to reread through all his posts but its there.
And Will I said Host is posting AS IF Lams firing was illegal.
And for the war being illegal all I'll say is UN resolution 1441.
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reconmike, I hold the opposite opinion of yours, with regard to both the crimes of Randy Cunningham, during a time that your president describes as a "long war"....a period when president Bush uses "war time" as an excuse to usurp extraordinary powers explicitly denied the executive in the plain wording of our US Constitution, and also with regard to the crimes against humanity of pre-emptive war....undertaken in clear violation of international law, and the treaty that organized the UN, and in contradiction to the principles that the US stated in 1945 were the foundation for the prosecutions of the Nazi aggressors at Nuremberg.....and...I have "the goods" to support my argument.....what can you post in support of yours?
I would ask General Gonzales why he not only authorized the firing of Randy Cunningham prosecutor Carol Lam, in view of the following, stated by the DOJ's own prosecutor, and did not demand that Cunningham be prosecuted for the crime of treason, and thus....will be allowed to draw a pension for his 21 year tenure of "service" to the US government....and I would ask Gonzales what he could say to the esteemed former Nuremberg prosecutor and senior expert on international law and the crime of pre-emptive war, to counter Ferencz's argument that implicates Gonzales in the same crimes against humanity with which Ferencz implicates Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair.
I would specifically ask Gonzales for his reaction to this....from the article linked below, by Ben Ferencz....how did Gonzales, with his background as a Texas Judge and counsel to governor and then president Bush, presume to know that this expert was incorrect in her judgment....and for that matter, how do you presume to know this, too....reconmike?:
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http://www.benferencz.org/arts/83.html
The Legality of the Iraq War
....Elizabeth Wilmshurst, resigned. Her letter of resignation, after more than 30 years of service, stated: "I regret that I cannot agree that it is lawful to use force against Iraq without a second Security Council resolution..." She had, for many years, represented the UK at meetings of the UN preparatory committees for an international criminal court and was recognized as one of the foremost experts on the subject of aggression. Her letter stated..."an unlawful use of force on such a scale amounts to the crime of aggression; nor can I agree with such action in circumstances that are so detrimental to the international order and the rule of law."......
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Quote:
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2006...2_463_2_01.txt
Last modified Saturday, March 4, 2006 9:30 PM PST
North County congressman avoids maximum sentence
By: Mark Walker, William Finn Bennett and Teri Figueroa - Staff Writers
......"He agrees his conduct is a violation of the public trust and his sentence should be severe enough to send a message," Blalack said.
But prosecutor Forge said Cunningham deserved the maximum sentence because of the five years he took bribes starting in 2000.
"He committed crime after crime because he wanted more."
<h3>Assistant U.S. Attorney Phillip Halpern argued that Cunningham effectively turned two "insignificant businessmen" into major defense contractors with Pentagon work that wasn't necessary and took money from other vital defense programs.</h3>
"The defendant sold out his office," Halpern said.
The two contractors he referred to were defense firm founder Mitchell Wade of Washington's MZM Inc., and Brent Wilkes, owner of a Poway defense firm called ADCS. Wade pleaded guilty to bribery and election fraud a week ago and faces 11 years in prison. Wilkes remains under investigation, as does New York developer Thomas Kontogiannis and his son-in-law, John T. Michael.
Prosecutors point to menu
At one point during his address, Halpern waved a plastic evidence envelope containing the "bribe menu" that Cunningham used to lay out his price for securing Pentagon work for the defense contractors.
"It was this memorandum that memorialized the price of betrayal," Halpern said. "He failed to put the nation's interests ahead of his own greed."
In responding to Cunningham's statement that he had made a wrong turn, Burns said it was much more.
"It wasn't a one-time lapse," the judge said to Cunningham. "It wasn't a one time U-turn. You made a U-turn and kept going for five years."
Outside the courthouse after the sentencing, Rick Gwin, special agent in charge of the Pentagon's Defense Criminal Investigative Service western regional office, said that he is not convinced Cunningham has been fully cooperating with the ongoing investigation.
"I don't know that we are necessarily getting all the cooperation we should from him," Gwin said. "Maybe once he is sitting in a jail cell we will get more cooperation."
Blalack said he is hopeful that further cooperation with federal investigators may result in a reduction in the prison sentence. The federal prison system allows only 54 days credit per year for good behavior. Assuming he earns good-behavior credit and there is no further reduction in his sentence, Cunningham will have to serve seven years and one month.
As he left the courthouse, Congressman Hunter said he continues to worry about Cunningham and his family.
"I was here as Duke's friend," Hunter said. "Our job now is to help his family make sure Duke stays alive."
'Sad but well-deserved'
Prosecutors were less merciful.
Speaking to reporters in front of a bank of microphones after the sentencing, Forge said he hoped the prison term would help restore public confidence in elected officials.
"Frankly, today's sentencing is a sad but well-deserved end to Mr. Cunningham's career," Forge said.
Once investigators discovered the bribe menu, which Forge cited as his most "flagrant act," prosecutors said they knew Cunningham's fate was sealed.........
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reconmike....this is the background of some of what was occuring while Cunningham was doing what was highlighted in large bold letters in the preceding quote box:
Quote:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/...in652491.shtml
GIs Lack Armor, Radios, Bullets
What About The Troops, Asks 60 Minute's Steve Kroft
Oct. 31, 2004
......<b>The Army acknowledged to 60 Minutes that there is a shortage of radios in Iraq and a shortage of bullets for training, and says both are in the process of being remedied. There have also been problems with maintenance and replacement parts for critical equipment like Abrams tanks, Bradley personnel carriers and Black Hawk helicopters.</b>
Winslow Wheeler, a long time Capitol Hill staffer who spent years writing and reviewing defense appropriations bills, thinks he knows one reason why those shortages exist, after looking at the current Defense budget. Army accounts that pay for training, maintenance and repairs are being raided by Congress to pay for pork-barrel spending.
Wheeler says $2.8 billion that was earmarked for operations and maintenance to support U.S. troops has been used to "pay the pork bill."
Wheeler, who has written a book called "The Wastrels of Defense," says congressmen routinely hide billions of dollars in pet projects in the defense bill........
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Quote:
http://www.benferencz.org/arts/83.html
The Legality of the Iraq War
The following essay was written by Ben Ferencz a few days after the secret information contained therein became public. Since the American Society for International Law had published a comprehensive scholarly review of the legal issues as seen from various perspectives, Ferencz submitted his essay, on April 10, 2005.....
.....On August 3, 2002, UK military spokesmen briefed the Pentagon and US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on the status of UK's preparation. The next day they briefed President Bush. Coordinated plans for the attack on Iraq continued, despite a reported private statement by Britain's Foreign Secretary Straw that "Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran." His legal advisers in the Foreign Office had submitted a Confidential 8-page memorandum casting doubt on whether Security Council (SC) resolutions 678 (1990) or 687 (1991), that had authorized members "to use all necessary means" to restore peace in the area" could justify the forceful invasion of Iraq.
Straw made the interesting point that if the SC would again demand that Saddam allow UN inspectors to confirm that he had complied with earlier resolutions to destroy his WMD and, if the inspectors discovered that he had failed to do so, that might justify a renewed use of force. A refusal to accept inspection would also be politically helpful to justify the invasion. The best that could be achieved, however, was SC Res. 1441 of November 8, 2002, again demanding that Iraq disarm and allow UN inspectors to report back within 30 days. The Resolution ''recalled" that Iraq had repeatedly been warned that it would "face serious consequences as a result of its violations". The "decision" taken by the Council was to "await further reports" and then "to consider the situation." Troops were being mobilized for a combined massive military assault but there was still no clear agreement on the legal justification for such action.
<b>On February 11, 2003. Attorney General Lord Goldsmith went to Washington where he conferred with leading lawyers in the Bush administration - including White House lawyer Alberto Gonzales</b>, State Department Legal Adviser William Taft IV, Jim Haynes, Adviser for the Defense Department and US Attorney General, John Ashcroft. A 13- page memo by Lord Goldsmith dated March 7, 2003, still expressed doubts about the legality of the contemplated assault on Iraq but seemed to be softer than the firm stand taken by him at the meeting of July 23, 2002.
Ten days later, on March 17, 2003, and just two days before the war was scheduled to begin, Goldsmith made a summary statement in Parliament in which he noted that a reasonable case could be made "for war without a Security Council resolution." William Taft IV is reported to have commented that the Goldsmith statement "sounded very familiar" - presumably because it echoed the US position.
In his report to his Prime Minister, Goldsmith wrote: " I remain of the opinion that the safest legal course would be to secure the adoption of a further resolution to authorize the use of force...nevertheless, having regard to the information on the negotiating history, which I have been given, and to the arguments which I heard in Washington, I accept that a reasonable case can be made that Resolution 1441 is capable in principle of reviving the authorization in 678 without a further resolution." He noted that such an argument could only be sustainable if there was clear evidence of non-compliance and non-cooperation by Iraq. These qualifying conditions were not mentioned in the 1-page summary given to the Cabinet on March 17.
UK military leaders had been calling for clear assurances that the war was legal under international law. They were very mindful that the treaty creating a new International Criminal Court in the Hague had entered into force on July 1, 2002, with full support of the British government. General Sir Mike Jackson, chief of the defense staff, was quoted as saying "I spent a good deal of time recently in the Balkans making sure Milosevic was put behind bars. I have no intention of ending up in the next cell to him in the Hague." On the eve of war, the British Attorney General's abbreviated statement of March 17 was accepted as legal approval of the official US/UK line. Not everyone in the British government could agree that the war that was about to begin was legal.
Prime Minister Blair chose to rely on the summary opinion of his Attorney General rather than the views of the Foreign Office which, ordinarily, would be responsible for opinions affecting foreign relations and international law. On March 18, 2003, the Deputy Legal Adviser to the Foreign Ministry, Elizabeth Wilmshurst, resigned. Her letter of resignation, after more than 30 years of service, stated: "I regret that I cannot agree that it is lawful to use force against Iraq without a second Security Council resolution..." She had, for many years, represented the UK at meetings of the UN preparatory committees for an international criminal court and was recognized as one of the foremost experts on the subject of aggression. Her letter stated..."an unlawful use of force on such a scale amounts to the crime of aggression; nor can I agree with such action in circumstances that are so detrimental to the international order and the rule of law."
Elizabeth Wilmshurst remembered that the Nuremberg trials had condemned aggressive war as "the supreme international crime" That decision had been affirmed by the UN General Assembly and followed in many other cases. She demonstrated Professor Tom Franck's concluding appeal in the 2003 Agora that "lawyers should zealously guard their professional integrity for a time when it can again be used in the service of the common weal."
Benjamin B. Ferencz
A former Nuremberg Prosecutor
J.D. Harvard (1943).....
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Quote:
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/38604/
Could Bush Be Prosecuted for War Crimes?
By Jan Frel, AlterNet. Posted July 10, 2006.
......Perhaps no person on the planet is better equipped to identify and describe our crimes in Iraq than Benjamin Ferencz, a former chief prosecutor of the Nuremberg Trials who successfully convicted 22 Nazi officers for their work in orchestrating death squads that killed more than one million people in the famous Einsatzgruppen Case. Ferencz, now 87, has gone on to become a founding father of the basis behind international law regarding war crimes, and his essays and legal work drawing from the Nuremberg trials and later the commission that established the International Criminal Court remain a lasting influence in that realm.
Ferencz's biggest contribution to the war crimes field is his assertion that an unprovoked or "aggressive" war is the highest crime against mankind. It was the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 that made possible the horrors of Abu Ghraib, the destruction of Fallouja and Ramadi, the tens of thousands of Iraqi deaths, civilian massacres like Haditha, and on and on. Ferencz believes that a "prima facie case can be made that the United States is guilty of the supreme crime against humanity, that being an illegal war of aggression against a sovereign nation."
Interviewed from his home in New York, Ferencz laid out a simple summary of the case:
"The United Nations charter has a provision which was agreed to by the United States formulated by the United States in fact, after World War II. Its says that from now on, no nation can use armed force without the permission of the U.N. Security Council. They can use force in connection with self-defense, but a country can't use force in anticipation of self-defense. Regarding Iraq, the last Security Council resolution essentially said, 'Look, send the weapons inspectors out to Iraq, have them come back and tell us what they've found -- then we'll figure out what we're going to do. <b>The U.S. was impatient, and decided to invade Iraq -- which was all pre-arranged of course. So, the United States went to war, in violation of the charter."........</b>
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