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HuffPostPost24Apr09.
And so do I. What is needed is an energetic, entrepreneurial Grand Jury and an aggressive, law-trumps-man-every-time prosecutor.
Just sent a note to Peggy Noonan after reading her "Political Grace" hard-bound essay--and seeing her "just walk on by" comments as excerpted by Jon Stewart's gang. The two don't square, I'm afraid; If she wants to make the country strong again, she's (and we're) going to have to decide wether to be a nation of laws or of hominids. I'd prefer to stick with the laws.
Also just finished reading Ratner's Guantánamo: What the World Should Know, which has, in its appendices, a nice set of memos, contracts, etc., that he's gathered in defending US POWs held there without benefit of law, due process, etc. The 1902-3 treaty that says the US is "sovereign" over the base there--that is, it's not a "legal black hole," it falls under US jurisdiction, and so on. (Did you know we're supposed to be paying Cuba $2,000 rent a year in GOLD COIN?! Man, if we knew what our M-3 was, we could figure out whether Cuba could just plain BUY the entire US. Or did we shift the lease to fiat-money payment somewhere along the line? And of course "The Fed" no longer tells us what our M-3 is--we might just figure out how bad inflation is already, and how bad it's going to be. Another blow for transparency and against the thieving bankers has NOT been struck. I'm hearing more O, Ma, Oh Ma, than BAM, BAM, BAM at the structures of secrecy, opacity and malfeasance that have choked this country well nigh unto death.
I digress: The best bit in the memos, though, is the one from Alberto Gonzales to Bush noting the plusses and minuses of "determining" (unilaterally, of course) that the Geneva Conventions on POWs (GPW) don't apply to our POWs.
Here's the lingo:
(more)
Picking up from "here's the lingo...."
Gonzales: 1/25/2002, 3:30 p.m. Memo For the President:
Under the rubric Ramifications of Determination that GPW Does Not Apply is this, the second “positive” bullet:
A few years ago, people told me I was batty to think this statute had any bearing on the conduct of the Cheney/Bush administration, but Gonzales apparently thought it relevant. And so do I, still. And so too do the Spaniards, with the help of a British barrister, who also helped in the Pinochet prosecution.
And now that Cheney & Bush & co. are once again "ordinary citizens," they are subject to perhaps one of the best "special commissions" and "special investigators" we have going for us. They're called, respectively, the Grand Jury and the District Attorney (or US Attorney/Federal Prosecutor--of course, this is still a somewhat troubled job title, given the prior administration's apparently successful attempts to politicize the department of Justice).
So, what is needed is the impaneling of a grand jury, the subpoenaing of witnesses, the gathering of evidence, the bringing of an indictment, and the commencement of prosecution -- the whole 16 yards (concrete/aggregate trucks' capacity has increased over the years from the whole 9 yards to the whole 16 cubic yards). Our War Crimes statute, 18 USC §2441, is quite clear.
It's also quite clear that there is probable cause to arrest Bush, Cheney and the rest of the gang for violating that law. The Spanish courts are apparently going ahead on this matter, as well, but under international and Spanish war crimes theories of the case. They were fairly successful in prosecuting Augusto Pinochet, as I recall.
• Substantially reduces the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act (18 USC 2441). That statute, enacted in 1996 prohibits the commission of a “war crime” by or against a U.S. person, including U.S. officials. “War crime” for these purposes is defined to include any grave breach of GPW or any violation of common Article 3 thereof (such as “outrages against personal dignity”). Some of these provisions apply (if the GPW applies) regardless of whether the individual being detained qualifies as a POW. Punishments for violations of Section 2441 include the death penalty.
A few years ago, people told me I was batty to think this statute had any bearing on the conduct of the Cheney/Bush administration, but Gonzales apparently thought it relevant. And so do I, still. And so too do the Spaniards, with the help of a British barrister, who also helped in the Pinochet prosecution.
And now that Cheney & Bush & co. are once again "ordinary citizens," they are subject to perhaps one of the best "special commissions" and "special investigators" we have going for us. They're called, respectively, the Grand Jury and the District Attorney (or US Attorney/Federal Prosecutor--of course, this is still a somewhat troubled job title, given the prior administration's apparently successful attempts to politicize the department of Justice).
So, what is needed is the impaneling of a grand jury, the subpoenaing of witnesses, the gathering of evidence, the bringing of an indictment, and the commencement of prosecution -- the whole 16 yards (concrete/aggregate trucks' capacity has increased over the years from the whole 9 yards to the whole 16 cubic yards). Our War Crimes statute, 18 USC §2441, is quite clear.
It's also quite clear that there is probable cause to arrest Bush, Cheney and the rest of the gang for violating that law. The Spanish courts are apparently going ahead on this matter, as well, but under international and Spanish war crimes theories of the case. They were fairly successful in prosecuting Augusto Pinochet, as I recall.
(The Italians I think tried 20-odd CIA folks in absentia for kidnapping, so the agents probably aren't going to be taking in the horse races in Sienna or the Ferrari factory in Firenze, or wherever it is (ah, Via Abetone Inferiore 4
41053 Maranello (MO) Italia), any time soon.
We also don't need a "truth commission," as Senator Leahy, a former Vermont District Attorney/Prosecutor himself, should well know. We need to have a grand jury impanelled and go on from there. Leahy even knew enough to make certain that John McCain was "blessed," by Senate resolution, as a "natural born American Citizen," even though he'd been born in the Panama Canal Zone, definitely not "US soil". (Civil rights eminence Dr. Kenneth B. Clark was also born in the Canal Zone, but he had to become a citizen via the naturalization route. He would be INeligible to serve as President of the US. Funny, those little phrases in the US Constitution: "natural-born," 14 years a resident, attained 35 years of age. Only three real qualifications and both Obama and McCain were squishy on the same one--place of birth.)
While I'm against the death penalty on several grounds, I can think of no more salutary thing for the soul of the United States than to have the ex president and vice president, whose actions and inactions caused the deaths of thousands of Iraqis, Afghanis, Americans, now Pakistanis, and the maiming, wounding and traumatizing of hundreds of thousands more, be tried for war crimes under the laws of the United States. And if the prosecutors can make the links between the 100 or 200 individuals who died while being tortured by US agents and officials, and the jury agrees, it would certainly be fitting if Bush, who's such a strong supporter of the death penalty, were himself subjected to it.
And it would be fair to say that, to quote Cheney, 'for me, it's a "no brainer" ' that we should waterboard Dick Cheney to find out just what it was he was up to on 9/11/2001 in that back-and-forth with the military aide (anyone know who he was?) that Norm Mineta testified, under oath, to Hamilton and Kean. "Sir, the plane's 50 miles out, sir the plane's 40 miles out, sir the plane's 10 miles out--does the order still stand?" And I want access to the contents of Cheney's three Mosler stand-up safes--I guess he threw his back out Jan 19th moving all of our (US Citizens') property out of the White House. So toxic that he didn't dare to have anyone else handle it, perhaps? Even though he has a bad back and a bum ticker, he had to do it himself?!
But back to 9/11/01, the casus belli of the whole party: just what order of Cheney's was the trooper talking about? Why was Cheney annoyed that the trooper kept asking? Whatever it was about, the order certainly didn't seem to square with the trooper's training and instincts.
And the fact that a large passenger jet, or whatever it was, was able to fly into the wall of the military headquarters of the strongest, most well-armed nation in the world has to make the entire world wonder, "Just what kind of military might are the Americans getting for all their billions and billions and billions of dollars spent on "defense"? And why were the surveillance tapes from, what, 80 or more video cameras that surveyed the Pentagon confiscated and why are they not being revealed to We the People, the folks who, nominally, in theory, according to the Constitution, actually have the power run this representative Republic.
A grand jury--particularly an independent, entrepreneurial "runaway" grand jury, could do the nation a great service in getting to the bottom of all these unanswered questions, high crimes, low and middle misdemeanors.
And, hey, maybe even remove all those signal splitter rooms the NSA put into every major phone network's main trunk lines, so they get a feed on every call, cell call, e-mail, google search, Amazon purchase, youtube upload, view, etc., that's made in the USA, to and from anywhere.
You do know that the illegal wiretaps are still in place, don't you? I thought it particularly amusing when I went in to my favorite VA hospital this week to see a whole "campaign" on VA patient records privacy, on logging off when you leave a terminal, on changing passwords frequently and often -- when virtually every bit, byte and word of digital data is flowing through the fingers of the NSA and all the data-mining subcontractors clustered around the CIA, NSA, etc., etc., sifting through our bank records, medical records, toll-both "FastLane" records, grocery store purchases,
And we still don't know how it was that explosives brought down #7 World Trade Center, #2 World Trade Center, and #1 World Trade Center on 9/11/2001. Independent evidence has made it crystalline-clear (and micro-sphere-clear) that massive and coordinated explosives were employed. But that's not the "official conspiracy hypothesis."
And yet, upon that completely unresolved foundation, all the mischief (or crimes) in the PATRIOT Act, the Iraq invasion, torture, probably even the financial meltdown and subsequent raid on the federal treasury--for generations to come--have been launched, justified, passed.
Sphere: Related Content
We also don't need a "truth commission," as Senator Leahy, a former Vermont District Attorney/Prosecutor himself, should well know. We need to have a grand jury impanelled and go on from there. Leahy even knew enough to make certain that John McCain was "blessed," by Senate resolution, as a "natural born American Citizen," even though he'd been born in the Panama Canal Zone, definitely not "US soil". (Civil rights eminence Dr. Kenneth B. Clark was also born in the Canal Zone, but he had to become a citizen via the naturalization route. He would be INeligible to serve as President of the US. Funny, those little phrases in the US Constitution: "natural-born," 14 years a resident, attained 35 years of age. Only three real qualifications and both Obama and McCain were squishy on the same one--place of birth.)
While I'm against the death penalty on several grounds, I can think of no more salutary thing for the soul of the United States than to have the ex president and vice president, whose actions and inactions caused the deaths of thousands of Iraqis, Afghanis, Americans, now Pakistanis, and the maiming, wounding and traumatizing of hundreds of thousands more, be tried for war crimes under the laws of the United States. And if the prosecutors can make the links between the 100 or 200 individuals who died while being tortured by US agents and officials, and the jury agrees, it would certainly be fitting if Bush, who's such a strong supporter of the death penalty, were himself subjected to it.
And it would be fair to say that, to quote Cheney, 'for me, it's a "no brainer" ' that we should waterboard Dick Cheney to find out just what it was he was up to on 9/11/2001 in that back-and-forth with the military aide (anyone know who he was?) that Norm Mineta testified, under oath, to Hamilton and Kean. "Sir, the plane's 50 miles out, sir the plane's 40 miles out, sir the plane's 10 miles out--does the order still stand?" And I want access to the contents of Cheney's three Mosler stand-up safes--I guess he threw his back out Jan 19th moving all of our (US Citizens') property out of the White House. So toxic that he didn't dare to have anyone else handle it, perhaps? Even though he has a bad back and a bum ticker, he had to do it himself?!
But back to 9/11/01, the casus belli of the whole party: just what order of Cheney's was the trooper talking about? Why was Cheney annoyed that the trooper kept asking? Whatever it was about, the order certainly didn't seem to square with the trooper's training and instincts.
And the fact that a large passenger jet, or whatever it was, was able to fly into the wall of the military headquarters of the strongest, most well-armed nation in the world has to make the entire world wonder, "Just what kind of military might are the Americans getting for all their billions and billions and billions of dollars spent on "defense"? And why were the surveillance tapes from, what, 80 or more video cameras that surveyed the Pentagon confiscated and why are they not being revealed to We the People, the folks who, nominally, in theory, according to the Constitution, actually have the power run this representative Republic.
A grand jury--particularly an independent, entrepreneurial "runaway" grand jury, could do the nation a great service in getting to the bottom of all these unanswered questions, high crimes, low and middle misdemeanors.
And, hey, maybe even remove all those signal splitter rooms the NSA put into every major phone network's main trunk lines, so they get a feed on every call, cell call, e-mail, google search, Amazon purchase, youtube upload, view, etc., that's made in the USA, to and from anywhere.
You do know that the illegal wiretaps are still in place, don't you? I thought it particularly amusing when I went in to my favorite VA hospital this week to see a whole "campaign" on VA patient records privacy, on logging off when you leave a terminal, on changing passwords frequently and often -- when virtually every bit, byte and word of digital data is flowing through the fingers of the NSA and all the data-mining subcontractors clustered around the CIA, NSA, etc., etc., sifting through our bank records, medical records, toll-both "FastLane" records, grocery store purchases,
And we still don't know how it was that explosives brought down #7 World Trade Center, #2 World Trade Center, and #1 World Trade Center on 9/11/2001. Independent evidence has made it crystalline-clear (and micro-sphere-clear) that massive and coordinated explosives were employed. But that's not the "official conspiracy hypothesis."
And yet, upon that completely unresolved foundation, all the mischief (or crimes) in the PATRIOT Act, the Iraq invasion, torture, probably even the financial meltdown and subsequent raid on the federal treasury--for generations to come--have been launched, justified, passed.
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