Should Mr G.W.Bush be charged with War Crimes

[Type941]

Originally Posted by mog

It isn't a debate. Those who voted Yes in the poll have not made a case; they can't even identify what law GWB is alleged to have broken.

As opposed to those who debate 'NO' and their facts are 'tell me what he did wrong?'.

Obviously you didn't read all the replies.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by The Avon Lady

More reports on HRW and other left-tilting NGOs can be found at Discover The Network and at NGO Monitor.

Agendas. Agendas.

First Israpundit, now this. Okay, I already understood before you are a rightie. Israpundit's extreme right-wing reputation, to put it midly, is widely known over here, so this new site now comes as no surprise.

But to answer more directly: The nice thing about NGOs is that sometimes they do not hang at the lips of a government that has it's own selfish interests not to let these things get known if they are true. Or would you easily admit to microphones that you have tortured somebody in your garage?

That someone is called a leftie by a rightie is no argument in itself. It simply is distractive blabla.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...071302380.html

http://www.veteransforpeace.org/A_Gu...ize_120103.htm

http://web.amnesty.org/report2005/usa-summary-eng

http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engamr510932004


"Gitmo' Better Blues
The folly of the new Guantanamo trials.
By Neal Katyal (Neal Katyal teaches law at Georgetown University. He has filed a lawsuit on behalf of military defense lawyers that challenges the military commissions. )

Posted Friday, March 19, 2004, at 11:07 AM PT

The rush to create the fig leaf of justice at Guantanamo Bay has begun. Next month, the Supreme Court will review the Bush administration's claim that no one at Guantanamo is entitled to civilian court adjudication of their detentions. On the eve of the Supreme Court deadline for filing its brief defending that policy, the administration announced a newly minted procedure for annual reviews of detentions. The irony of this and other actions (including the decision announced the day before another Supreme Court filing deadline, to allow Jose Padilla, the alleged "dirty bomber," access to a lawyer) should not be lost: By modifying its policies in the past months, the administration has made the definitive case for civilian review of Guantanamo. The only due process that's happened there came only after the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.

But don't let these initiatives lull you into thinking that the administration has suddenly decided to follow the rule of law. The most dramatic step—and one likely to be trumpeted by the government at oral argument—was their decision to bring the first charges against detainees: charges based on the offense of conspiracy, to be heard by the first military commission since World War II. As some readers of Slate know, I am a big fan of the conspiracy doctrine in general. But despite the tremendous merits of our civilian conspiracy law, these military charges are unconstitutional, inconsistent with international law, and unwise.

They will demonstrate what critics of the military tribunals have been saying all along: that the administration has sought to create an end run around guarantees of fundamental rights enshrined in our Constitution and universally accepted agreements such as the Geneva Conventions.


There are three main problems with the conspiracy indictments at Guantanamo. The first is their targets. One would have thought that, having decided to rock the constitutional order and flout international law, the administration would have at least reserved the military tribunals for the worst offenders—Osama Bin Laden and the like. Instead, charges have been filed against, if the prosecutor's claims prove accurate, someone armed with a TV camera (a videographer of the Cole bombing) and Bin Laden's accountant—both of whom also allegedly served as his bodyguards. While glorifying the Cole bombing and moving al-Qaida money are certainly bad acts, if there were any evidence that these two men actually engaged in serious war crimes, it would be in the indictment. It's not. Instead, the government can only allege the amorphous crime of aiding of al-Qaida.

Contrast these vague indictments with the position of Assistant Attorney General Herbert Wechsler during World War II. Wechsler, perhaps the most important 20th-century scholar of American criminal law, deplored a Pentagon proposal to file conspiracy charges against Germans who were not "prime leaders." To Wechsler, such charges could not be based on ideas drawn from American conspiracy law without "proof of personal participation in a specific crime." In the absence of such proof, he said, "the force of the broad criminal charge against the leaders may be seriously weakened in the eyes of the world," especially "if too many individuals are included in it." Today there is no Wechsler in the administration advising restraint—striking, in light of America's recent experience with the Independent Counsel Act, another device that encouraged overzealousness at the price of balance and fairness. Fairness and process, of course, can give way in an emergency or when the matter concerns Bin Laden or his close associates. But a cameraman and an accountant, even if they double as bodyguards, just don't come close.

The second problem is in the substance of the conspiracy charges. The Department of Defense, bowing to the will of the prosecutors, defined the offense of conspiracy in the broadest terms possible. This definition is similar to the one the United States proposed to use at Nuremberg, with disastrous results. When the Americans proposed it then, it was roundly criticized by our allies. And when a variant of it was used at trial, the Nuremberg judges ruled that there could be no such offenses as conspiracy to commit war crimes or conspiracy to commit crimes against humanity. Even U.S. Attorney General Francis Biddle, who sat as a judge, wanted to throw out the conspiracy charges altogether. The result of the Nuremberg ruling was to confine conspiracy only to very limited acts and only against high-level German officials, directly involved in specific acts of aggression. This glaring deficiency will pose problems because the Supreme Court has acknowledged that military commissions can, at most, only try violations authorized by Congress or international law, and the current conspiracy charges do not fit either category.

To make matters worse, the conspiracy charges in both of the indictments are based largely on conduct that occurred before 9/11, yet military commissions can only adjudicate violations of the laws of war. It is a tremendous stretch to argue that this war began in 1999 or 1989. (No doubt that claim would be news to former President Clinton and his national security team. Indeed, it would apparently be a surprise even to President Bush, who, in justifying his campaign's use of 9/11 imagery, stated at a March 6, 2004, press conference, "The terrorists declared war on us that day.") Again, Wechsler is instructive: "Atrocities committed prior to a state of war" ... "are not embraced within the ordinary concept of crimes punishable as violations of the laws of war."

There are good reasons why the laws of war, unlike American civilian law, place powerful limits on the conspiracy doctrine. Recall that the civilian offense is based largely on a theory of deterrence—that draconian punishments will scare people into avoiding association with criminal organizations. But these arguments fail with respect to the military proceedings at Guantanamo. For one thing, the idea that other would-be war criminals are watching the proceedings at Guantanamo and modifying their conduct is far-fetched, especially if, as the Pentagon has asserted, the proceedings may be closed to public view. For another, deterrence works best when the perceived costs of the action exceed the perceived benefits, and it is very difficult to make a claim that the speculative risk of punishment in U.S. military courts would change the calculus of future war criminals (particularly when military operations against them are already ongoing). This isn't to say that there is no upside to conspiracy charges, only that the benefits are more attenuated than they are in ordinary criminal cases and eroded by serious risks of error. And if there are cases in which the advantages of a conspiracy charge become apparent, then the administration is free to use the civilian offense of conspiracy—one written into law by Congress instead of drafted by a Pentagon bureaucrat—in a standard criminal action.

The third and final problem with the Guantanamo tribunals lies in the procedural rules. American criminal law has been able to develop a vibrant offense of conspiracy only because of its strong commitment to criminal procedural guarantees. So, while charges can be somewhat vaguer in a civilian conspiracy trial and hearsay evidence may be admitted, the standard checks on prosecutorial and judicial abuse exist—indictment by a grand jury, the right to a jury trial, the right to confront witnesses, the right to obtain exculpatory evidence, and so on. Those of us who defend a broad substantive offense of conspiracy treat these procedural rights as preconditions before such a wide-ranging offense could be established. Yet the military tribunals offer no such guarantees.

The administration thus gives birth to a legal Frankenstein. It picks its jurisdictional theory—that no one can have civilian review—from 1950, before we had earth-shattering developments in international law (e.g., the Geneva Convention's ratification and its worldwide acceptance) and domestic military law (the 1951 Uniform Code of Military Justice). It picks its procedural theory from the same time period—before the massive revolution in procedural rights in American criminal trials. And it derives its substantive law—the offense of conspiracy—from no real time period at all; it's inspired by cases brought in the 1970s against organized crime. This mix-and-match cannot produce even the closest approximation to fairness.

The chief criticism of the tribunals has always been that the president cannot have the unilateral power to define offenses, pick prosecutors, select judges, authorize charges, select defendants, and then strip the civilian courts of all powers to review tribunal decisions. This principle goes all the way back to the Declaration of Independence, which listed, among the founders' complaints against King George, that he "has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power"; "depriv[ed] us, in many Cases, of the benefits of trial by jury"; "made Judges dependent on his Will alone"; and "transport[ed] us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended Offences." For these reasons, the Supreme Court said during the Civil War that if tribunals are ever appropriate, it is up to Congress to define how and when they are to be used. The current administration has argued that this constitutional history and structure is not relevant because military necessity permitted it to act without explicit congressional authorization.

But charges aren't being brought against planners of the Sept. 11 attacks or other terrorist atrocities. Instead, the president is using these tribunals against minor offenders, where the claim of military necessity is weak. To boot, charges are being brought nearly two and a half years after Sept. 11, dramatically undermining the arguments for avoiding congressional delay. And if the administration prevails at the Supreme Court, the rules for the military commissions—from the definition of substantive offenses to the procedural rules and review guidelines—will be slanted even more in favor of the prosecution than they already are.

Times of crisis demand special responses. But when the crises are long in scope, without a definitive end, and when time permits national deliberation and decision-making, both constitutional and pragmatic values are best served by having our nation's representatives and judges consider that response—not resorting solely to executive decree. The conspiracy charges are the most dramatic step yet in the slide down a dangerous anticonstitutional spiral.

[August]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Okay, I already understood before you are a rightie...................
..................That someone is called a leftie by a rightie is no argument in itself. It simply is distractive blabla.

Yet when someone is called a rightie by a lefty like yourself its not distractive blabla?

:rotfl:

[MadMike]

This sums it up pretty well-

http://www.husseinandterror.com/

Skybird, the detainees at Gitmo are terrorists, not prisoners of war as defined in the Geneva Convention. Remember the case of those Nazi saboteurs (of American citizenship) captured in 1942 landed by U-boats in the States?

http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20011207.html

By the way, when is the Federal Republic of Germany going to jail all those Red Army Faction and Baader-Meinhof terrorists identified after the wall fell?!?

Yours, Mike

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by MadMike

Almost forgot, oh Skybird, the detainees at Gitmo are terrorists,

Proove it. Your saying alone is not enough - even if you spend years saying so, it is no evidence. you can say this, or that, or something different, all day long, no court in the world would take that as evidence, and right so. So far it is only wishful thinking and hear-say, as long as no independent examination by a court and lawyer/judge takes place and evidence is presented that they are not only suspects, but terrorists indeed. Simply saying "They got caught, thus they are guilty" is totally unacceptable and does not suffice even the most minimal legal standards in Western laws.

Mike, you also are a terrorists,even if you don't know. You are, becausee I say so, and that is evidence enough. The simple fact that I saw you in this or that location, and that you have a weapon in your household justifies that you get imprisoned for the next couple of years to interrogate you, and if that is not producing results and I feel a little bit stressed, I maybe may attacjh you to a car battery for some time, who knows. That is no torture, because I do not whip or beat you, and I do not do the electrical shocks to you, itS' the battery, if you don't like it why don't youz stop beeing attached to it? Amnesty is wrong in labelling my doing as tirture, ebvery reasonable man knows that they are just leftist whiners. If you are lucky, I get tired of you, and set you free again after let's say two years. You are free again,so why do you complain. Isn't this just and fair that you got freed after I decided that you were NO terrorist ? I would say that it is just to set you free. I think it is not fair that you accuse me afterwards and blame me for things in the public that I never have done (I really never have done that, I am for a strong legal authority, and for laws and legislative control, I always said that, and so it must be true, and it is you who is lying. Or can you proove different, eh? you even cannot proove that you got impriosned and hijacked. Can you? No? so shut up, will you. We have legal standards in Germany that prevent us from doing like you accuse me of. we are civilized. I am proud to be German, and I love my country. Schroeder is the greatest leader the Western world ever has seen, and he believes in the only true God. And bla and bla and more blabla. My club is bigger than yours, ätsch!)

what? It's just blabla to you? And for you it is only a thought experiment. Dozens have been releasded for whom it was no blabla, but painful reality, for months, for years.

Ridiculous, you think? No, the sad truth. Confirmed by legal experts from your own country, the lastest of which was a lawyer from NY who teaches at their univeristy their and whio gave is disillusioned view on things in TV some weeks ago (and no, he was no leftie, but a Republican, Vietnam veteran, and former Bush fan - which he now regards as one of the biggest imposters that ever have hit the White House). This acting is possible now in your country. If I board an airliner (this professor's example) and fly to some place, and the plane lands in your country to refuel and take up again, during that brake your authorities have now the legal right to catch me and get me out of the plane and bring me to oversea and interrogate me and torture me for months and years, if they want, without ever a judge being consulted, without ever an official accusation presented, withoiut the need to justify that kidnapping to any legal authority, or different office. Espoecially niced is that I even get rejected any chance tol make a defense, I am kept from prooving my innocence. Also, my family, that was sitting in the airplane, has no right to your authorities to get information on where I am and what is done to me. If someone doesn'T like my nose, I am doomed. Maybe you say it is unlikely that this would happen - fact remains that this scenrio by your formulated laws and rules is possible now, and was not before (only when braking the law). what was considered to be illegally and kidnapping, now is accepatbale and existing law, and in accordance with the law. Your authorities are no longer in need top proove that I am guilty. I must proove that I am not guilty, a complete 180° reversion, but I am not allowed to proove that, even if I could. And to proove rigth now that I am no terrorist is something i would find difficult - how should I do that? By stopping to publicly critize Bush? that is no evidence, it could be a trick only. Everyone is guilty as long as he is not found to be unguilty. since that process is under no legal control and can consume unlimited time... go figure what that means for a society. In principle you can shut down your courtrooms: iof this is the new american standard of justice and legislative, you don't need them anymore.

There is a reason why in western societies the role of the court and that of the police is strictly separated, but you have molten it into one and the same now, a formidable "Judge Dredd" of the military/intel community so to speak. That someone can be hold unlimited time without ever beeing accused of anything before a court, without beeing subject to law and order, but because of HEAR-SAY AND BELIEVING AND ARBITRARY ACTING ONLY (to prevent that is WHAT LAWS AND COURTS WERE MADE FOR!!!), and without any evidence beeing found, without any legal examination taking place - all this is a backfall into darkest medieval.

Those women that got burned in the medieval also were "terrorists" (alias: "witches"), because they had been brought to the inquisition. That they were subject to inquisition was evidence enough that they were guilty. The accusation itself was proove and evidence for the guilt. that is perverted, circular logic. That is dangeous. that is tyranny. Some of them even confessed to be witches, when they got tortured long enough, so definetly they must have been guilty, right, so what's the trouble, eh?

Honestly, the "justification" for Guantanamo, the kidnapping of foreign people from their Western homecountries and transportation to some godforsaken places where they can be questioned and tortured without needing to present a reasonable evidence or even just a suspicion to some public controlled authority that it is necessary to deal with this individual, is not different from the moral justification of the Gestapo's acting. The cases of people that good freed again and had been released, obviously unguilty of anything, are counted by the dozens and dozens by now. Obviously there is some basci fault in this system that got designed to evade monitoring by you own legal and constitutional laws and bodies. Noone get'S brought to guantanamo for security concerns, you have for more secure HiSec prisons in the US. It is only about avoiding beeing monitored when doing with them whatever it is that ios done there, and having not days or months or years time, but a whole life, if needed.

Arbitrary rule by the offices and services. Here with us we call this a Polizeistaat.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by August

Yet when someone is called a rightie by a lefty like yourself its not distractive blabla?

:rotfl:

A taste of your/her own medicine.

[August]

Originally Posted by Skybird

A taste of your/her own medicine.

Oh is THAT what it is? And here i thought you were off the Anti-Americanism shtick. Silly me.

[The Avon Lady]

Originally Posted by Skybird

First Israpundit, now this.

Oh my gosh! IsraPundit! Oh my gosh!

Okay, I already understood before you are a rightie.

Just as we understand you're a southpaw, from head to toe.

Israpundit's extreme right-wing reputation,

Whine! Whine! Whine!

Got a grievance? Wish to disprove something? State the facts. Can you?

to put it midly, is widely known over here,

Where is that? In Moonbatistan?

so this new site now comes as no surprise.

Who cares!

But to answer more directly: The nice thing about NGOs is that sometimes they do not hang at the lips of a government that has it's own selfish interests not to let these things get known if they are true.

I agree.

Or would you easily admit to microphones that you have tortured somebody in your garage?

Hah!

I caught you now!

We don't have a garage! :rotfl:

But if we did............................ :hmm:

That someone is called a leftie by a rightie is no argument in itself. It simply is distractive blabla.

No it isn't and it was indeed not a very relevant part of my post. But you distract.....................

http://web.amnesty.org/report2005/usa-summary-eng

http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engamr510932004

"The Biteback Effect: Do we even have a word to describe the new criticism?" By Victor Davis Hanson.

A small to-the-point quote:

Rules of interrogation, Korans, prayer arrows pointed to Mecca, visits by U.S. congressmen, Middle Eastern food, inmates as voracious readers of Harry Potter, and the absence of a single inmate lost in captivity: All of that suggests humane treatment toward terrorists — often caught in combat, always out of uniform, and not subject to the Geneva Convention. Guantanamo seems radically different from any prison run by any other current wartime state, much less like anything in our own past when, for example, we summarily shot German agents not in German uniforms during the Battle of the Bulge.

Indeed as a general rule, the more hysterically Guantanamo is cited, the more it seems, after introspection, to be a sensible wartime jail under nearly impossible conditions.

[Damo1977]

Well I am taking my bat and ball and running away for the week, so don't get your hopes up Sea Demon and co.!!!

As Mr Schwarzenegger says, "I'll be back''

Have a happy and safe week all.

[MadMike]

Skybird (Marcel X of Muenster),
Haha! You've finally lost it!
I'm copying your post for future reference, no doubt some of my friends in the "government" will be interested in your past meetings with Iranian mullahs and Revolutionary Guards. :hmm:
Think about that one next time you plan to travel to the US, we'll have a cell awaiting you at Gitmo.

Skybird's very own Club Gitmo t-shirt-

http://store.rushlimbaugh.com/Produc...oductID=433314

Yours, Mike

[Skybird]

Mike, you must not do that, for I am pretty much sure that my repeated use of key phrases and alarm words already have triggered the automatted recording of my internet communication in your NSA's automatted electronic surveillance station in Menwith Hill, Harrogate (GB), that already is sniffing after almost all of Europe's internet and telephone traffic for many years now.

And no, I do not mean that as a joke.

[Sea Demon]

Originally Posted by Damo1977

Well I am taking my bat and ball and running away for the week, so don't get your hopes up Sea Demon and co.!!!

As Mr Schwarzenegger says, "I'll be back''

Have a happy and safe week all.

Take Care, Damo (no sarcasm here, bud). Have a nice week.

OK now that the pleasantries are over..........you'll still be wrong when you get back. :P

Sea Demon

[Sea Demon]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Mike, you must not do that, for I am pretty much sure that my repeated use of key phrases and alarm words already have triggered the automatted recording of my internet communication in your NSA's automatted electronic surveillance station in Menwith Hill, Harrogate (GB), that already is sniffing after almost all of Europe's internet and telephone traffic for many years now.

And no, I do not mean that as a joke.

paranoia, self-destroya.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Sea Demon

paranoia, self-destroya.

...sais the citizen of a country with 26 secret services and a defense budget bigger than the six next biggest defense-spending nations together.

[August]

Originally Posted by Skybird

...sais the citizen of a country with 26 secret services and a defense budget bigger than the six next biggest defense-spending nations together.

...says a citizen of a country that has been protected by that nation and those intelligence services for 60 years.