BushCo. may be investigated for War Crimes...

[Cypress]

Conservative's favorite war -- the Three Trillion Dollar Iraq Disaster.....still staining America's once sterling reputation.

U.S. Military And CIA Leaders May Be Investigated For War Crimes

On November 3, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) informed the court’s Pre-Trial Chamber, ”[T]here is a reasonable basis to believe that war crimes and crimes against humanity have been committed in connection with the armed conflict in Afghanistan.”

In what Amnesty International’s Solomon Sacco called a “seminal moment for the ICC,” Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda asked the court for authorization to commence an investigation that would focus on US military and CIA leaders, as well as Taliban and Afghan officials.

Bensouda wrote in a November 14, 2016, report that her preliminary examination revealed “a reasonable basis to believe” the “war crimes of torture and ill-treatment” had been committed “by US military forces deployed to Afghanistan and in secret detention facilities operated by the Central Intelligence Agency, principally in the 2003-2004 period, although allegedly continuing in some cases until 2014.”

The chief prosecutor noted the alleged crimes by the CIA and US armed forces “were not the abuses of a few isolated individuals,” but rather were “part of approved interrogation techniques in an attempt to extract ‘actionable intelligence’ from detainees.” She added there was “reason to believe” that crimes were “committed in the furtherance of a policy or policies ... which would support US objectives in the conflict of Afghanistan.”

In accordance with its Rome Statute, the ICC only asserts jurisdiction over people whose home country is unwilling or unable to bring them to justice. In explaining why this war crimes investigation falls under the ICC’s jurisdiction, Bensouda wrote that the US Department of Justice investigations regarding ill-treatment of 101 detainees were limited to whether interrogation techniques used by CIA interrogators were unauthorized and violated criminal statutes. The US Attorney General (AG) said the Justice Department would not prosecute anyone who acted in good faith and within the guidance provided by the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC).

The AG investigated only two incidents and found the evidence insufficient to obtain convictions. In one case, Gul Rahman froze to death after being stripped and shackled to a cold cement floor in the secret Afghan prison known as the Salt Pit. In the other, Manadel al-Jamadi died in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison after he was suspended from the ceiling by his wrists which were bound behind his back. Former military policeman Tony Diaz, who witnessed al-Jamadi’s torture, said that blood gushed from his mouth like “a faucet had turned on” when he was lowered to the ground. A military autopsy concluded that al-Jamadi’s death was a homicide. However, the AG ultimately refused to prosecute the Bush officials responsible for the torture and deaths of those two men.

In 2008, ABC News reported that Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet and John Ashcroft met in the White House and micromanaged the torture of terrorism suspects by approving specific torture techniques such as waterboarding. George W. Bush admitted in his 2010 memoir that he authorized waterboarding. Cheney, Rice and John Yoo - author of the OLC’s most egregious torture memos - have made similar admissions.

Were the ICC to pursue its investigation, the United States, which is not a party to the Rome Statute, would very likely refuse to relinquish any US person to the ICC. During the Bush administration, Congress passed the American Service-Members Protection Act, which says if US persons are sent to the ICC in The Hague, the US military can forcibly extract them. The act also restricts US cooperation with the ICC and prohibits military assistance to states parties to the Rome Statute unless they sign bilateral immunity agreements with the US.

States which sign these “Article 98” agreements ― referring to the section of the Rome Statute that addresses treaties between countries ― pledge not to hand over US nationals to the ICC. The United States has reportedly extracted those agreements from over 100 countries ― primarily small nations, or fragile democracies with weak economies. Moreover, the US government has withdrawn military aid from several nations that refused to be coerced into signing them.

continued https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry...b023121e0e9313

Threadban applies to racists, sexists, dunces, pathological liars, and socially-inept resentful losers.

[NOVA]

Conservative's favorite war -- the Three Trillion Dollar Iraq Disaster.....still staining America's once sterling reputation.



Threadban applies to racists, sexists, dunces, pathological liars, and socially-inept resentful losers.

Are they gonna go after the ISIS murderers that chopped off hundreds of heads, burned prisoners in cages
to death, raped thousands of women, used children as human bombs, etc.....

[christiefan915]

About damn time.

[Phantasmal]

Are they gonna go after the ISIS murderers that chopped off hundreds of heads, burned prisoners in cages, raped thousands of women, etc.....

I imagine they will if they aren’t dead and could identify them. Ohhh, your boyfriends being charged, you must be miserable.

[Cypress]

Are they gonna go after the ISIS murderers that chopped off hundreds of heads, burned prisoners in cages, raped thousands of women, etc.....

Yes.
https://globalnews.ca/news/3750096/u...is-war-crimes/

[NOVA]

I imagine they will if they aren’t dead and could identify them. Ohhh, your boyfriends being charged, you must be miserable.

Let me know when the put the cuffs on...I don't wanna miss that...

[cawacko]

Conservative's favorite war -- the Three Trillion Dollar Iraq Disaster.....still staining America's once sterling reputation.



Threadban applies to racists, sexists, dunces, pathological liars, and socially-inept resentful losers.

What am I missing here, you're talking about Iraq and the article is talking about Afghanistan. Wasn't Afghanistan the "correct war"?

[Phantasmal]

Let me know when the put the cuffs on...I don't wanna miss that...

I feel the same way about Cheney, would love to see him in those silver bracelets!

[Cypress]

Let me know when the put the cuffs on...I don't wanna miss that...

Conservative radio host who once thought waterboarding was nothing more that a fraternity prank, volunteers to get waterboarded....and then calls it horrific torture.

[NOVA]

What am I missing here, you're talking about Iraq and the article is talking about Afghanistan. Wasn't Afghanistan the "correct war"?

Cypress gets confused easily....

[Cypress]

What am I missing here, you're talking about Iraq and the article is talking about Afghanistan. Wasn't Afghanistan the "correct war"?

You're right. Someone at work told me Iraq, this article is about Afghanistan.
That was my mistake.


No, I have been on record for many years - over a decade - saying Afghanistan was no a "good war". It was in fact, one of George Dumya's greatest blunders, and that is saying a lot!

[Phantasmal]

You're right. Someone at work told me Iraq, this article is about Afghanistan.
That was my mistake.


No, I have been on record for many years - over a decade - saying Afghanistan was no a "good war". It was in fact, one of George Dumya's greatest blunders, and that is saying a lot!

We should have only gone in to take out the training camps and Osama. Now we have been there more years then we should have been.

[anatta]

Are George W. Bush, Dick Cheney unable to visit Europe due to threat of arrest?

By Louis Jacobson on Thursday, July 17th, 2014
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-me...visit-europe-/
Action on Afghanistan, which is an ICC party, is more plausible, and the preliminary examination first made public in 2007 is ongoing. However, Schaefer said, "it is uncertain whether the court will actually proceed to a formal case."

But even if the ICC did advance its investigation to a later stage, the most important takeaway is that neither Bush nor Cheney would be personally at risk. While 122 nations have become members, the United States has not -- and that makes a big difference in cases such as this.

While the court may prosecute individuals from ICC-state parties, such as the United Kingdom, for alleged crimes even in places like Iraq where it does not have jurisdiction, Schaefer said, the fact that the United States is not a party -- at least for now -- means "this is not an issue for President Bush or Vice President Cheney."

Obstacles to prosecution

It’s conceivable that national courts could take action instead, experts say. But while some non-governmental human-rights groups have pushed for criminal prosecutions, the experts we checked with were not aware of any pending, and public, warrants for Bush or Cheney.

An obstacle to a national-court prosecution of Bush or Cheney is that "most states don't have laws allowing for prosecution based on universal jurisdiction -- the international law principle that allows any state to try certain serious crimes, no matter where committed," said Steven R. Ratner, a University of Michigan law professor. "And some that do have cut them back in recent years due to fears of a flood of litigation or foreign-policy concerns."

A state that did seek to prosecute Bush or Cheney would face both the practical difficulty of carrying it out as well as an expected diplomatic backlash from the United States. "No state has any interest in arresting a former U.S. president or vice president," Ratner said. "Say goodbye to good relations with the U.S.!" This reality, he said, makes the likelihood of a prosecution of Bush or Cheney "highly doubtful."

[Cypress]

Bensouda said that "information available provides a reasonable basis to believe" that U.S. military personnel and CIA operatives "committed acts of torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity, rape, and sexual violence against conflict-related detainees in Afghanistan and other locations, principally in the 2003-04 period."

https://www.rferl.org/a/hague-court-.../28865842.html

Us old timers here can remember when conservatives and Bush defenders were claiming that "enhanced interrogation" was nothing more serious than fraternity pranks.

You know what I remember? Liberals - to a man and woman - were all against all torture, all abuse of prisoners, and anything that went counter to international law and standards of human conduct.

Guess who was on the right side of history, who held the the moral high ground?

Yep, that's right....liberals.

[Cypress]

We should have only gone in to take out the training camps and Osama. Now we have been there more years then we should have been.

Yep, you are right.
Invading, occupying, and nation-building in hindsight was a stupid ass idea.

Irrespective of whether or not Afghanistan is the "right" war of the wrong war, when the eff is torture ever justified?
Never in the eyes of liberals, international law, and common human decency.

In my entire message board career up until Abu Ghraib, I never would have imagined we would ever even be debating torture. I thought all sentient Americans would be against it.

That was before I saw conservatives and Bush-lovers cheering for torture, excusing it, or minimizing it. It was honestly one of the most eye opening things I remember witnessing during the Bush regime -- the conservative lust for torture.