IF USA Cares About Int'l War Crimes Law-We Would Do Better By Delivering Cheney To The Hague-Instead

[kpete]

Either it's worth taking a side in the Syrian civil war, or it isn't. Either it's worth the blood and treasure to end the conflict and hold the war criminals to account, or it isn't. Bombing a country to prove a point about observing internationally sanctioned methods of killing seems unjustifiable. If the United States is less intent on saving lives in Syria than on proving to the United Nations how much we care about observing international war crimes law, we would do better to begin by delivering Dick Cheney to the Hague, instead.

the rest:
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2013/08/punishing-few-based-on-unknown-to.html

[jsr]

1. No truer words.

[newfie11]

2. Damn right

[leftstreet]

3. DURec

[Scuba]

4. Bingo. And I'll chip in for air fare.

[malaise]

5. And Blair

Fall down funny hearing these governments discuss war crimes.
These imperial hypocrites have no sense of decency - they are already morally naked.

[JayhawkSD]

6. Fine in theory, except...

...that we are not members of the Internationa Criminal Court, and so delivering anyone to that court would be a meaningless gesture.

[Demeter]

33. We'll call it extraordinary rendition--that will cover it

[truedelphi]

44. My laugh of the week - thank, Demeter.

Although we would have to make sure that Cheney was not set and ready for quail shooting when we went in to pick him up!

[HardTimes99]

48. It would have far more meaning, IMHO, if our own DoJ prosecuted Cheney and other

members of the Bush Junta. It would show that we truly honor the principle that no man (person) is above the law.

I've already gone round and round with some of the establisment types here as to what statutes Cheney and others could be charged under and have suggested 'Fraud against the People of the United States' for starters. (Of course, we have statutes on our federal books outlawing torture and crimes against humanity also.)

[City Lights]

7. Bravo!

[Faryn Balyncd]

8. long overdue

[AtomicKitten]

9. Yes indeed. nt

[PowerToThePeople]

10. War Tribunal Finds Bush, Cheney Guilty of War Crimes

Old but pertinent.

https://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/05/13

Former US President George W Bush, his Vice-President Dick Cheney and six other members of his administration have been found guilty of war crimes by a tribunal in Malaysia.

Bush, Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and five of their legal advisers were tried in their absence and convicted on Saturday.

................

The eight accused are Bush; former US Vice President Richard Cheney; former US Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld; former Counsel to Bush, Alberto Gonzales; former General Counsel to the Vice President, David Addington; former General Counsel to the Defense Secretary, William Haynes II; former Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee and former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo.

[brooklynite]

54. Old and not pertinent...

A tribunal in Malaysia? Seriously?

[G_j]

11. yes

[dionysus]

12. while everyone on DU knows bushco was guilty of war crimes and treason

it's a pipe dream to think they'll be handed over for life imprisonment or execution, which is the standard fare for those charges, or that you could get a majority of the nation behind it.

people who worry about another civil war would actually have reason to fear another one if that happened.

it's not right, it's just the way it is.

[treestar]

13. Has the Hague started a case?

How are cases normally begun there?

I think Cheney is mostly guilty of politically differing from us. If he were really guilty of "war crimes" (has specific meaning, not just being a Republicans, which sucks, but is not a crime) then the Hague would have started a case.

Or are they controlled by the corporatists, too?

[JoeyT]

15. Torture is a war crime.

You know, what he admitted to having ordered on national television.

Wars of aggression are also war crimes.

[treestar]

16. I don't know if our DU definitions are accepted by the Hague

Why haven't them started a case?

This just seems an unproductive waste of time sort of demand.

[JoeyT]

18. Because every time anyone starts agitating about war crimes

we bring pressure to bear to shut it down. e.g. Spain.

Waterboarding, beating a prisoner's feet with cable until they bleed, electrical shocks, and filling helmets with fire ants and forcing prisoners to wear them all pretty much fit the bill for torture, and that's just what I can remember off the top of my head. I'm not sure what other definition there could be.

[treestar]

22. I think this country recognized that as being wrong

And prosecuted wrongdoers.

It just seems useless constantly calling for Cheney to be prosecuted, because he will always be too far up the chain for any proof to stick.

Bush I think may have no idea what went on. Or if he did, has someone assuring him it was no problem.

[truedelphi]

45. Bush was just the happy, goofy, pretzel choking,

Puppet, er, spokesman for the Big Corporations.

Americans got tired of Dubya's schtick, and now have a soft spoken, intelligent guy to do the Corporate Spokesperson speechmaking, war inflicting rhetoric etc.

And in order for the USA to have political sway over Africa, it works out much better to have someone more ethnic than McCain or Hillary Clinton. This week, Bruce Dixon, over at the Black Agenda Report, has an excellent OP on this - and it details how the USA military has so many African nations in our pocket. The head political figure of the Congo is responsible with our help for the deaths of six million people, but hey - if a few million get killed and it is in our interests, so what? But now that guy in Syria is allegedly taking out less than a hundred, BAD! BAD! BAD!

[treestar]

49. The Hague does have cases against Africans

Including the current President of Kenya:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/19/world/europe/uhuru-kenyattas-lawyers-ask-hague-court-to-drop-charges.html?_r=0

http://www.icc-cpi.int/en_menus/icc/situations%20and%20cases/Pages/situations%20and%20cases.aspx

[truedelphi]

66. Interestng tht the indictment against the current President of Kenya

Last edited Fri Aug 30, 2013, 11:42 PM - Edit history (1)

Is Concerned with the deaths of 1,300 people.

Somehow it seems - kill a whole lot of people, like the head of the Congo has (Six million!) and no worries, be happy.

Kill a mere hundred to two thousand, and you could be in trouble.

Here is a good summary of what The USA polcies in Kenya were like up to 2008:

http://concernedafricascholars.org/african-security-research-project/?p=3

Note how cheap it is for our military to control a small African country. For under 600K, we got control of Kenya's military.

[PowerToThePeople]

17. It was a war of aggression.

It was Illegal by International Law. ICC likely will never prosecute (per wiki).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court_and_the_2003_invasion_of_Iraq

[treestar]

19. thanks for that

real information.

[Rex]

35. Sadly the apologists don't care you can show them real data

and they will just dismiss it and keep carrying the BFEEs water for them.

[Maedhros]

24. Wow.

You're defending Cheney now?

[Ocelot]

25. It's not surprising

Birds of a feather, etc.

[Rex]

34. Nothing new.

That one is ALWAYS calling for people to wait a few years or decades, for any real change. I ignore them now, because that is all that one does...diminish a story and move on...

[treestar]

50. Typical

I have to be "defending" Cheney to state that it may be difficult to get evidence of a "war crime" against him.

This type of argument brings you ill will.

[Maedhros]

55. I would be concerned, if I had any respect for your flimsy arguments. [n/t]

[treestar]

56. At least I try to make one

Rather than mischaracterize others' positions.

[Maedhros]

57. Meh. [n/t]

[Rex]

32. Why would the Hague start a case if no one has brought one before them?

So you have no idea how it works, but at the end of your reply know how it works....right...

[treestar]

51. If you know how it works, explain

Ocampo got 240 letters, looked into it, found he could not have a case. Turns out the US is not even in the ICC jurisdiction.

So the demands for "war crime" prosecution will have to be limited to US statutory law.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

47. .

.

[gvstn]

14. Exactly!

12 years ago, I would have been for taking actions against Syria to enforce international law against using chemical weapons. It would seem to be the moral thing to do.

But after we broke international laws against torture and had our wartime prisoners renditioned, to of all places Syria, to be tortured rather than adhering to the Geneva Conventions we have absolutely no standing. When ( and I do believe it is when ) we take some action, I hope every country in the world calls us on our hypocrisy. It is time for Americans to see this country for what it has become not what we are told it still is. We can still correct out course but we must first admit what we have done wrong. Bush/Cheney destroyed our moral compass and Obama hasn't done enough to set it right.

[grahamhgreen]

20. Amen

[DirkGently]

21. Our International Morality Police credit is at 0.

All countries are hypocrites, but we're at some kind of critical mass at this point. We are the country that very recently fabricated a case for war in Iraq, decimated that country, plunged it into civil war and chaos, and kidnapped and tortured hundreds (thousands?) illegally in the process. Then we set up an indefinite detention center in which we have held people even we don't claim are guilty of anything for years, which remains to this day, and THEN shrugged and said nothing was to be done about any of it.

"We'll stop torturing, probably," was our great epiphany / apology to the world.

It's not just weak, but actually grotesque, that we now propose that we, not the U.N., our allies, or anyone else, will be the arbiters of whether yet another ME country we transparently wish to control for the same reason we wish to control the rest of the region, has "crossed the line," thereby entitling our righteous wrath.

This is not the way back to international pre-eminence.

This is the stuff of crumbling empire.

[FSogol]

31. And yet, the entire world (except for Russia and China) expect us to doing something

because we can. I wonder why?

[DirkGently]

41. "Expect" us to, or "want us to?"

No question we are expected to intervene, because that has been our pattern in the Middle East.

I do not think the world is clamoring for us to do, not on any basis of humanitarianism, anyway. Certainly there are those who share our selfish interests, or have their own motives, that simply want war, or simply want Assad taken down.

[toby jo]

40. 'Crumbling empire', Dirk. You nailed it.

[DirkGently]

42. It's sad. But if endless violent machinations are all we have

to offer the world anymore: guns and drones and greed, then the Bush / Cheney / PNAC vision has won, and we are simply winding down our preeminence, one failure at a time.

We can do better.

But CAN we?

[sabrina 1]

23. For using Chemical Weapons in Fallujah alone. The number of babies being born

blind, and with other deformities in recent reports, is heartbreaking and absolutely shocking that NO ONE has been held accountable. And we have the absolute gall to point fingers elsewhere before taking care of our own 'backyard'.

[libodem]

26. .

[Maedhros]

27. One can use the same arguments vis-a-vis Bush/Cheney war crimes and Assad's alleged use of CW

Many are saying that if we don't punish Assad for allegedly using chemical weapons, then we will encourage him and other dictators to use them again in the future.

That same logic holds with respect to the illegal war prosecuted by the Bush Administration. By not holding the Bush Administration accountable for its war crimes, the Democratic Congress ("impeachment is off the table&quot and the Obama Administration ("we have to look forward&quot are encouraging future Administrations to engage in the same behavior.

It's hypocritical to wave the bloody shirt over Assad while we let our own mass murderers walk free. The American military juggernaut is capable of inflicting, and in the recent past has indeed inflicted, orders of magnitude more casualties than Assad could aspire to in his most fervent dreams.

[Arctic Dave]

28. Absolutely!

The hypocrisy is vomit inducing.

Obama was actually having his DOJ argue last week to give war criminals absolute immunity.

Talk about looking like a fool.

[CherokeeDem]

29. This ...

and a few more of those warmongers along with him.

[Uncle Joe]

30. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, kpete.

[iamthebandfanman]

36. Obama doesnt go after war criminals because

hes been complicit..

hence why the DOJ is trying to give immunity to Bush :p

[truedelphi]

46. Yes he is. He is Commander in Chief of a military that has propped up Congo

Political henchman whose regime has killed close to six million people. But hey - it is all for America's top inner circle's best interest, so why even worry about the Congo?

[walkerbait41]

37. Yes

[wildbilln864]

38. k & r that! n/t

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

39. We need to join the World Court

and bring the knuckle dragger's into the 21st century.
It's way past time.

[indepat]

43. But the decider of all things gets to practice dichotomous behavior in a most holy and

righteous manner as the situation unfolds.

[Mnemosyne]

52. Hear, hear! nt

[Cleita]

53. Double here, here and the rest of his cabal with him. n/t

[Mnemosyne]

60. Amen, Cleita, amen. nt

[emsimon33]

58. Ditto bingo!

Along with Cheney, I can think of a few others.

[Jesus Malverde]

59. Bump... nt

[randr]

61. Amen

[Enthusiast]

62. This should have more recommendations.

Why doesn't it?

[Hotler]

63. K & R n/t

[damnedifIknow]

64. Think outside the box

Next time bush visits Illinois just plant a few cigarette butts at his feet. Hey, gets him a year and that's better than nothing.

[Chan790]

65. Can't we do both?