Prosecuting the Bush admin

[Ladywriter 7,783]

ZaRkPTyya3w

I am one of those Americans disgusted by a variety of travesties the former administration committed.
Its a kick in the ass when politicians and their toadies get away with petty crimes let alone stripping our rights and freedoms; its un-American in the most extreme way, taking a shit all over the principals this country was founded on. Many years ago we as a people agreed torture=bad and we got down with the Geneva convention and its body of rules pertaining to warfare.
Our former president and his toadies went psycho. They turned on us because we didn't agree with illegal/retarded wars and thus started taking away our rights to oppose our government. Crimes have been committed against us and those fuckin people in Gitmo.
As the people of this nation of freedom and democracy we can't just let it slide. This torture issue is a stain on the blue dress of America. Until we dry clean this mutherfucker we're going to look like shit to the rest of the world; as it stands right this second Americans condone torture. I can't accept that and I'm just one of many that can't.

[Myk JL 1,731]

:nosebleed:If only we could hang the entire GWB Administration.

[Ladywriter 7,783]

That would be nice.... but seeing Dick Cheeny take the perp walk would also be nice

[Ladywriter 7,783]

RUMSFELD KNEW HIS GUYS WERE TORTURING PEOPLE TO DEATH, WHICH IS A SERIOUS CRIME

By Stephen Pizzo, News for Real

71% of Americans want to see Bush investigated, and it's

about time Obama's team hightailed their way over to court

to start doing it.

http://www.alternet.org/workplace/126904/

71% of Americans are in favor of an investigation into the possible misuse of the Department of Justice by the Bush administration according to a Gallup poll released yesterday. (Full Story)

That's a pretty startling number, even for those of us who've been arguing for investigations for some time now. After all, Obama didn't get 71% of the vote, which means that a lot of folks who voted for McCain also want equal justice applied equally.

One reason for this surprisingly robust groundswell for investigations may be that each day, formerly secret Bush-era documents surface that truly shock the conscience.

Just yesterday the ACLU got it's hands on a truly smoking gun memo written for then Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. This document informed Rumsfeld that those he'd tasked with beating information out of suspected terrorists had not just tortured them, but tortured some of them, to death. In other words, they murdered them.

No, I'm not kidding. Here read the original document yourself.

If Rumsfeld had been, say, some local police captain in charge of these guys, this document would make him – at very least – accessory-after-the-fact to murder. He not only conspired to keep this evidence secret, but did not report this as the crime it is, nor order the perpetrators arrested, charged and put on trial.

There's a legal name for this crime: “Misprison of a Felony.” Defined here as:

“The failure to perform a public duty...Misprision is a versatile word that can denote a number of offenses. It can refer to the improper performance of an official duty...The most familiar and popular use of the term misprision describes the failure to report a crime....The first Congress passed a misprision of felony statute in 1789. The statute holds, "Whoever, having knowledge of the actual commission of a felony … conceals and does not as soon as possible make known the same to some judge or other person in civil or military authority under the United States" is guilty of misprision of felony and can be punished with up to three years in prison.

Under the federal statute, the prosecution must prove the following elements to obtain a misprision of felony conviction:

(1)another person actually committed a felony;

(2)the defendant knew that the felony was committed;

(3)the defendant did not notify any law enforcement or judicial officer; and

(4)the defendant took affirmative steps to conceal the felony.”

As for Rumsfeld, this document, the crimes it describes, and the available evidence indicate that, were he charged for misprison of a felony, he would be found; guilty on each count.

(An aside: Chances are very good that other high-placed officials in the Bush administration saw this document as well. A prosecutor and grand jury can find out just who else's chestnuts are in this particular fire.)

I am completely sympathetic to the extraordinary economic burden Obama and his team shouldered on January 21. But during the campaign it was Obama himself who posited the notion that a president had to be capable of do “more than one important thing at a time.”

The economic meltdown – likely the worst since the Great Depression – demands immediate and intense attention. But the economy is not the only thing that melted down during the Bush years. Core American values melted down as well, and require equally urgent attention from this new administration.

Because America's strength and moral authority in the world don't flow solely from a robust US economy, but also by an unswerving adherence to a unique and lofty set of moral values. Both the economy and our moral authority need urgent and immediate repair. Obama needs to work night and day to return health and stability to our economy. He also needs to work night and day to restore our moral authority. And that can only be accomplished by holding those who so despoiled our national soul accountable for their (well-documented) crimes.

But so far I've not seen a glimmer that Obama or his Attorney General, Eric Holder, have the stomach for real investigations that could lead to real crimes and real prosecutions. For example, even though Obama has repeatedly promised to lift the many lids of secrecy the Bush administration slammed down on the public's right to know, he hasn't. It's currently just as hard to get information and documents about the Bush years out of the Obama administration as it was to get the same out of the Bush folks themselves.

sfgate.com -- For the second time this week, the Obama administration has gone to court in San Francisco to argue for secrecy in defending a terrorism policy crafted under George W. Bush - in this case, wiretapping that President Obama denounced as a candidate. (Full Story)

They need to be told to keep their promise and loosen up, to release the kind of hard evidence we need to fully know what crimes were committed, by whom, where, when and how many.

To help get this message through to them please sign this petition.

The must. Who says so? Just 71% of the people they represent. That's who.

One more thing. Now that the Obama folks have those documents, they also have constructive knowledge of felonies committed. Which means if they don't investigate and prosecute, they may be the next ones found guilty of misprision of a felony. Ya know?

(For more Bush administration documents see the Document Drawer at -- http://www.bushproject.com)

[Sledgstone 8,672]

The entire former GWB administration should be prosecuted and imprisoned. If only we had an impel down we could send them to.

[Crazy Gravy 100]

I have a better idea, if it werent for them having gov secrets drop em off in irag to be tortured. Better yet, to protect gov secrets but still help what comes around go around. set up a cell in gitmo before it closes for the prosners to be punishers. If this is extreme I apologize Its early and I havent had coffee yet./

[Myk JL 1,731]

I have a better idea, if it weren't for them having gov secrets drop em off in iraq to be tortured. Better yet, to protect gov secrets but still help what comes around go around. set up a cell in gitmo before it closes for the prisoners to be punishers. If this is extreme I apologize Its early and I haven't had coffee yet./

It's not extreme enough... Where's the death penalty in that?

[Ladywriter 7,783]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/#29289778

[Sledgstone 8,672]

And now the ball begins to roll down the hill.

[Ladywriter 7,783]

I hope fuckin so

we wouldn't be the 1st nation to live through and then prosecute a criminal regime, doubt we'd be the last either

the point is to fuckin do it

[Ladywriter 7,783]

HOW A MAN WAS THROWN INTO GITMO AND TORTURED FOR CLICKING ON MY ARTICLE

By Barbara Ehrenreich, Barbaraehrenreich.com

America in the Bush years was so vicious and stupid that it

managed to take my freedom of speech and turn it into

someone else's living hell.

http://www.alternet.org/rights/128888/

OBAMA NEEDS TO SEEK JUSTICE FOR BUSH'S CRIMES

By Cynthia Boaz, TruthOut.org

Directly punishing their predecessors is something done by

tyrants in authoritarian regimes, not by democratic leaders

in an open society.

http://www.alternet.org/rights/128463/

SECRET BUSH MEMOS RELEASED: READ THEM HERE!

By Staff, Huffington Post

Memos about warrantless wiretaps and warrantless search and

seizures released today.

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/rights/129722/

CONFIRMED: CIA DESTROYED 92 INTERROGATION TAPES

By Liliana Segura, AlterNet

The number is 'far higher' than the agency has ever admitted

destroying.

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/rights/129611/

WHO WATCHED THE 92 TORTURE TAPES BEFORE THE CIA HAD THEM DESTROYED?

By Emptywheel, Firedoglake

I'm curious whether Cheney, David Addington, or John Yoo

might be among the list of folks who checked out the tapes

before they were destroyed.

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/rights/129676/

[Ladywriter 7,783]

Red Cross Described 'Torture' at CIA Jails

Secret Report Implies That U.S. Violated International Law

By Joby Warrick, Peter Finn and Julie Tate

Washington Post Staff Writers

Monday, March 16, 2009; A01

The International Committee of the Red Cross concluded in a secret report that the Bush administration's treatment of al-Qaeda captives "constituted torture," a finding that strongly implied that CIA interrogation methods violated international law, according to newly published excerpts from the long-concealed 2007 document.

The report, an account alleging physical and psychological brutality inside CIA "black site" prisons, also states that some U.S. practices amounted to "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment." Such maltreatment of detainees is expressly prohibited by the Geneva Conventions.

The findings were based on an investigation by ICRC officials, who were granted exclusive access to the CIA's "high-value" detainees after they were transferred in 2006 to the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The 14 detainees, who had been kept in isolation in CIA prisons overseas, gave remarkably uniform accounts of abuse that included beatings, sleep deprivation, extreme temperatures and, in some cases, waterboarding, or simulating drowning.

At least five copies of the report were shared with the CIA and top White House officials in 2007 but barred from public release by ICRC guidelines intended to preserve the humanitarian group's strict policy of neutrality in conflicts. A copy of the report was obtained by Mark Danner, a journalism professor and author who published extensive excerpts in the April 9 edition of the New York Review of Books, released yesterday. He did not say how he obtained the report.

"The ill-treatment to which they were subjected while held in the CIA program, either singly or in combination, constituted torture," Danner quoted the report as saying.

Many of the details of alleged mistreatment at CIA prisons had been reported previously, but the ICRC report is the most authoritative account and the first to use the word "torture" in a legal context.

The CIA declined to comment. A U.S. official familiar with the report said, "It is important to bear in mind that the report lays out claims made by the terrorists themselves."

Often using the detainee's own words, the report offers a harrowing view of conditions at the secret prisons, where prisoners were told they were being taken "to the verge of death and back," according to one excerpt. During interrogations, the captives were routinely beaten, doused with cold water and slammed head-first into walls. Between sessions, they were stripped of clothing, bombarded with loud music, exposed to cold temperatures, and deprived of sleep and solid food for days on end. Some detainees described being forced to stand for days, with their arms shackled above them, wearing only diapers.

"On a daily basis . . . a collar was looped around my neck and then used to slam me against the walls of the interrogation room," the report quotes detainee Tawfiq bin Attash, also known as Walid Muhammad bin Attash, as saying. Later, he said, he was wrapped in a plastic sheet while cold water was "poured onto my body with buckets." He added: "I would be wrapped inside the sheet with cold water for several minutes. Then I would be taken for interrogation."

ICRC officials did not dispute the authenticity of the excerpts, but a spokesman expressed dismay over the leak of the material. "We regret information attributed to the ICRC report was made public in this manner," spokesman Bernard Barrett said.

"The ICRC has been visiting the detainees formerly held by the CIA," he added, "at Guantanamo since 2006. Any concerns or observations the ICRC had when visiting the detainees are part of a confidential dialogue."

President George W. Bush acknowledged the use of coercive interrogation tactics on senior al-Qaeda captives detained by the CIA in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, but he insisted that the measures complied with U.S. and international law. Former CIA director Michael V. Hayden confirmed last year that the measures included the use of waterboarding on three captives before 2003.

President Obama outlawed such practices within hours of his inauguration in January. But Obama has expressed reluctance to conduct a legal inquiry into the CIA's policies.

The report gives a graphic account of the treatment of Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, better known as Abu Zubaida, a Saudi-born Palestinian who was the first alleged senior al-Qaeda operative seized after Sept. 11 -- a characterization of his role that is disputed by his attorneys, who describe him as having a different philosophy of jihad than bin Laden.

Abu Zubaida was severely wounded during a shootout in March 2002 at a safe house he ran in Faisalabad, Pakistan, and survived thanks to CIA-arranged medical care, including multiple surgeries. After he recovered, Abu Zubaida describes being shackled to a chair at the feet and hands for two to three weeks in a cold room with "loud, shouting type music" blaring constantly, according to the ICRC report. He said that he was questioned two to three hours a day and that water was sprayed in his face if he fell asleep.

At some point -- the timing is unclear from the New York Review of Books report -- Abu Zubaida's treatment became harsher. In July 2002, administration lawyers approved more aggressive techniques.

Abu Zubaida said interrogators wrapped a towel around his neck and slammed him into a plywood wall mounted in his cell. He was also repeatedly slapped in the face, he said. After the beatings, he was placed in coffinlike wooden boxes in which he was forced to crouch, with no light and a restricted air supply, he said.

"The stress on my legs held in this position meant my wounds both in my leg and stomach became very painful," he told the ICRC.

After he was removed from a small box, he said, he was strapped to what looked like a hospital bed and waterboarded. "A black cloth was then placed over my face and the interrogators used a mineral bottle to pour water on the cloth so that I could not breathe," Abu Zubaida said.

After breaks to allow him to recover, the waterboarding continued.

"I struggled against the straps, trying to breathe, but it was hopeless," he said. "I thought I was going to die."

In a federal court filing, Abu Zubaida's attorneys said he "has suffered approximately 175 seizures that appear to be directly related to his extensive torture -- particularly damage to Petitioner's head that was the result of beatings sustained at the hands of CIA interrogators and exacerbated by his lengthy isolation."

Danner said the organization's use of the word "torture" has important legal implications.

"It could not be more important that the ICRC explicitly uses the words 'torture' and 'cruel and degrading,' " Danner said in a telephone interview. "The ICRC is the guardian of the Geneva Conventions, and when it uses those words, they have the force of law."

He discounted the possibility that the detainees fabricated or embellished their stories, noting that the accounts overlap "in minute detail," even though the detainees were kept in isolation at different locations.

Human rights groups echoed his assessment.

"These reports are from an impeccable source," said Geneve Mantri, a counterterrorism specialist at Amnesty International. "It's clear that senior officials were warned from the very beginning that the treatment that detainees were subjected to amounted to torture. This story goes even further and deeper than many us of suspected. The more details we find out, the more shocking this becomes."