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Local News & Opinion
Ref. : Local Newsbriefs Travel
Letters
Ref. : Letters to the editor Open Letters:
03.05 Open Letter to Congressman Bart Stupak Health & Environment
Video National Health Care Systems In Other Countries 03.12 Slick Barry and the $100-Billion Medicaid/Medicare Fraud Claim 03.09 Kill Bill: Death to Obamacare! 03.09 Obama’s Rhetoric May Be “Fiery,” But His Health Care Reform Is Still Lukewarm 02.24 Obama’s New Plan 02.21 Time to Pass the Health Insurance Industry Antitrust Enforcement Act of 2009 Media Watching
03.16 WPost Blames Obama First, on Israel 03.16 Letter to the New York Times' Editor: Stovepiping To Persia 03.12 Cud and Complicity: Burying the Alternatives to Empire's Dominion 03.11 NYT and the ACORN Hoax 03.05 Sorry, Rove, Bush Did Lie About Iraq 03.03 It's Snow News 03.03 The Woeful Washington Post 02.28 The NYT Veers Neocon 02.18 US Media Replays Iraq Fiasco on Iran Ref. : The Daily Howler Legal Matters
02.26 America's Supremes: Court Over Constitution US Politics, Policy & Culture
03.11 Power Rangers: Policing the System With the "Fightin' Progressives" 03.09 Thinking About Countings 03.07 Unnatural Acts: Breaking the Fever of Militarism 02.25 Future Shock: A Better World Beyond the Imperium 02.24 The Last Flight of Joe Stack 02.22 Thinking About Sadie 02.18 All Systems Go: No Dysfunction in Profitable Afghan Enterprise High Crimes?
03.16 America's Secret Prisons 03.13 Palestinian Dispossession in East Jerusalem 03.12 Israeli Settlement Expansions Continue 03.11 Brutalizing Palestinian Children 03.08 The Russell Tribunal on Palestine: Barcelona Session 03.05 Targeting Israeli Apartheid 03.01 America's Permanent War Agenda 02.25 Global Sweatshop Wage Slavery 02.23 Israeli Unaccountability and Denial: Suppressing the Practice of Torture 02.22 American Genocides: is Haiti Next? 02.18 Israeli Abusive Administrative Detentions 02.16 MK-ULTRA: The CIA's Mind Control Program Economics & Business Non/Mis/Malfeasance
03.14 The Crisis in America's Telecommunications Network 03.09 The Business of Water: Privatizing An Essential Resource 03.05 Is the Recovery Real? 03.04 IMF-Style Austerity Measures come to America: What “Fiscal Responsibility” Means To You 03.04 Barry C. Lynn's "Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and Economics of Destruction" 03.01 Thinking About Fees 02.22 Campaigning for State-Owned Banks 02.22 Social Security Will Fall To Obama Before The Taliban Do 02.19 Obama’s Stealth Entitlement Commission 02.19 Selling Out America to Wall Street International
03.15 Peace Process Hypocrisy: Stillborn from Inception 03.03 Muslim Disunity 03.02 Funding Israeli Militarism, Belligerence and Occupation 02.26 Iran Captures a 'Good' Terrorist 02.24 The Dubai Hit 02.22 Holland Has Had Enough: Killing of Innocent Civilians Goes On Apace in Afghanistan 02.19 The Placeman Cometh: New IAEA Chief Stokes Iran War Fever for the Bush-Obama Regime We are a non-profit Internet-only newspaper publication founded in 1973. Your donation is essential to our survival.
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REPORT:Bush Turns His Terror War on the HomelandRetroactive Legislation Being Rushed to Protect Administration Officials from War Crimes ProsecutionThe Republican controlled House and Senate are working to pass Bush's changes prior to the mid-term elections in the event the Republicans fail to steal three elections in a row and Democrats win control of the House or Senate.
When I was a kid John Wayne war movies gave us the message that America was the good guy, the white hat that fought the villain.Alas, today the US and its last remaining non-coerced ally, Israel, are almost universally regarded as the bad guys over whom John Wayne would triumph. Today the US and Israel are seen throughout the world as war criminal states. On August 23 the BBC reported that Amnesty International has brought war crimes charges against Israel for deliberately targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure as an "integral part" of Israel's strategy in its recent invasion of Lebanon.
United Nations spokesman Jean Fabre reported that Israel's attack on civilian infrastructure annihilated Lebanon's development: "Fifteen years of work have been wiped out in a month." Israel maintains that this massive destruction was unintended "collateral damage." President Bush maintains that Israel has "a right to protect itself" by destroying Lebanon. Bush blocked the attempt to stop Israel's aggression and is, thereby, equally responsible for the war crimes. Indeed, a number of reports claim that Bush instigated the Israeli aggression against Lebanon. Bush has other war crime problems. Benjamin Ferenccz, a chief prosecutor of Nazi war crimes at Nuremberg, recently said that President Bush should be tried as a war criminal side by side with Saddam Hussein for starting aggressive wars, Hussein for his 1990 invasion of Kuwait and Bush for his 2003 invasion of Iraq. Under the Nuremberg standard, Bush is definitely a war criminal. The US Supreme Court also exposed Bush to war crime charges under both the US War Crimes Act of 1996 and the Geneva Conventions when the Court ruled in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld against the Bush administration's military tribunals and inhumane treatment of detainees.
To make his war crimes legal after the fact, Bush has instructed the Justice (sic) Department to draft changes to the War Crimes Act and to US treaty obligations under the Geneva Conventions.
President Bush and his Attorney General agree that under existing laws and treaties Bush is a war criminal together with many members of his government. To make his war crimes legal after the fact, Bush has instructed the Justice (sic) Department to draft changes to the War Crimes Act and to US treaty obligations under the Geneva Conventions.One of Bush's changes would deny protection of the Geneva Conventions to anyone in any American court. Bush's other change would protect from prosecution any US government official or military personnel guilty of violating Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. Article 3 prohibits "at any time and in any place whatsoever outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment." As civil libertarian Nat Hentoff observes, this change would also undo Senator John McCain's amendment against torture. Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice says that Bush's changes "immunize past crimes."
Under the US Constitution and US legal tradition, retroactive law is impermissible.
Under the US Constitution and US legal tradition, retroactive law is impermissible. What do Americans think of their President's attempts to immunize himself, his government, CIA operatives, military personnel and civilian contractors from war crimes?Apparently, the self-righteous morally superior American "Christian" public could care less. The Republican controlled House and Senate, which long ago traded integrity for power, are working to pass Bush's changes prior to the mid-term elections in the event the Republicans fail to steal three elections in a row and Democrats win control of the House or Senate. Meanwhile, the illegal war in Iraq, based entirely on Bush administration lies, grinds on, murdering and maiming ever more people. According to the latest administration estimate, the pointless killing will go on for another 10-15 years. Trouble is, there are no US troops to carry on the war. The lack of cannon fodder forces the Bush administration to resort to ever more desperate measures. The latest is the involuntary recall of thousands of Marines from the inactive reserves to active duty. Many attentive people regard this desperate measure as a sign that the military draft will be reinstated. According to President Bush, the US will lose the "war on terror" unless the US succeeds in defeating "the Iraqi terrorists" by establishing "democracy in Iraq." Of course, insurgents resisting occupation are not terrorists, and there were no insurgents or terrorists in Iraq until Bush invaded.
The longer Bush occupies Iraq and the more he tries to extend US/Israeli hegemony in the Middle East, the more terrorism the world will suffer.
Bush's unjustified invasion of Iraq and his support for Israeli aggression have done more to create terrorism in the Muslim world than Osama bin Laden could hope for. The longer Bush occupies Iraq and the more he tries to extend US/Israeli hegemony in the Middle East, the more terrorism the world will suffer.Bush and the Zionist/neocon ideology that holds him captive are the greatest 21st century threats to peace and stability. The neoconized Bush regime invented the war on terror, lost it, and now is bringing terror home to the American people.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com. This article is republished in the Baltimore Chronicle with permission of the author.
Copyright © 2006 The Baltimore Chronicle. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent. This story was published on August 29, 2006. |
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