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Bush's Crimes
Impeach the president? Yes. A well-documented case ties him to Abu Ghraib.
(BOB NORMAN, New Times, 30 Sep 04)

President Bush is coming to town... (to) try to earn your vote. But the question emerging now is not whether he should be elected but if he should be impeached for war crimes. Remember when the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal broke with all those detestable pictures and the administration repeated that it was the fault of a "few bad apples"? Well, they were right. Thankfully, the bad apples have been identified: John Ashcroft, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and President Bush. Bush decided to ignore the federal War Crimes Act, which is punishable by death. But impeachment will do. It takes a very high crime to justify removing the president, especially during time of war -- even an unpopular and disastrous war like the one in Iraq. But Bush, unfortunately, has risen to that height. ...In the February 7 directive, Bush wrote that Taliban soldiers don't qualify as prisoners of war. Instead, he declared them "unlawful combatants," a new and legally ambiguous designation that strips detainees of many of the Geneva protections. In short, that move introduced the opportunity for torture. Since Afghanistan is a party to Geneva, Bush needed a rationale. White House records show it came from Cheney's office, Ashcroft's Justice Department, Rumsfeld's Defense Department, and Bush's own chief counsel, Alberto Gonzales. In a January 22, 2002 memo, Justice lawyer Jay S. Bybee wrote that the president could "determine that Afghanistan was not a functioning state and therefore the Taliban was not a government." After Bush signed his historic order, Taliban prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay were subjected to treatment outside the Geneva Conventions. That alone is an impeachable offense, argues McGovern, since the president authorized those soldiers to break Geneva and, therefore, the federal War Crimes Act. "This is really, really important -- Americans aren't supposed to torture people," he says. "[White House counsel] Gonzales says there is a reasonable basis in law where they can escape prosecution, but there isn't a decent lawyer that agrees with that." ...Most chillingly for the president, the so-called Schlesinger Report revealed that Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez specifically used Bush's February 7 directive to justify the use of dogs and other unlawful techniques at Abu Ghraib. "Interrogators and lists of techniques circulated from Guantanamo and Afghanistan to Iraq," Schlesinger wrote in the August 24 report. There you have it. Not only did Bush break federal law but his actions led to Abu Ghraib, creating a mess that will haunt this country long after Bush has vacated the Oval Office. And that's all it would take, one courageous congressman -- you listening, Robert Wexler? -- to file a resolution for impeachment. Even with all the damning facts on the table, the House would vote against it, just as surely as it voted to authorize the foolhardy debacle in Iraq.

But at least the people might hear the truth.

*****COMMENT***** I think Mikey likes it!!!

posted by A Curmudgeon 8:30 PM