Tag: war crimes

Mayer on Rahm

By: emptywheel Friday February 5, 2010 5:13 pm

I first teased out Rahm Emanuel’s role in reversing Obama’s early efforts to reclaim our country from torture last July. In August, my comments at Netroots Nation focused on Rahm’s role in preventing accountability for torture. I kept tracking Rahm’s campaign to prevent accountability here, here, and here.

Today, Jane Mayer has an extended profile of Eric Holder that fleshes out what we’ve all known: Rahm’s the guy who killed accountability for torture.

…

All along Rahm’s campaign against Greg Craig and Holder he left complaint after complaint that they had ruined the relationship with Congress. This, I suppose, is what Rahm means: doing anything-even those actions dictated by international law-that offend poor Lindsey’s sensibilities is a mistake, tantamount to ruining the President’s relationship with Congress. And I guess Rahm is okay with that-ceding the President’s authority on national security and legal issues to Lindsey Graham.

And look what you get out of that: Lindsey in a snit, pouting that the Attorney General of the United States determined to try criminals in a civilian court. And in response, refusing to close Gitmo.

In other words, we can’t close Gitmo because Obama’s “crack” Chief of Staff has willingly ceded the authority of the Attorney General of the United States to one Senator from the opposing party, and that single Senator is pouting because the Attorney General might choose law over Kangaroo Courts.

These people are War Criminals.

They are Torturers.

They are Murderers.

All the way up the Chain of Command.

Yes, that includes George W. Bush and Barack Hussein Obama.

Just as guilty as the grunts who at their command raped children with chemical lightsticks in front of their family and sliced up Binyam Mohamed’s penis.

And anyone who doesn’t support their prosecution to the full extent of the law is no better than a Good German.

“If certain acts of violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.” Robert H. Jackson

International Criminal Court – The Hague

As they say, “just one individual CAN make a difference.”

“Prof. Francis A. Boyle, Professor of International Law, University of Illinois College of Law, of Champaign, Illinois, U.S.A., has filed a Complaint with the Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (I.C.C.), in The Hague, against U.S. citizens George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, Condoleeza Rice, and Alberto Gonzales (the Accused).”  The Complaint is based on the “criminal policy and practice of ‘extraordinary renditions’ perpetrated upon about 100 human beings,” which practice represents “Crimes against Humanity” and are “in violation of the Rome Statute establishing the I.C.C.” * (emphasis mine)

The Honorable Luis Moreno-Ocampo

Office of the Prosecutor

International Criminal Court

Post Office Box 19519

2500 CM, The Hague

The Netherlands

Fax No.: 31-70-515-8555

Email: [email protected]

January 19, 2010

Dear Sir:

Please accept my personal compliments. I have the honor hereby to file with you and the International Criminal Court this Complaint against U.S. citizens George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, Condoleezza Rice , and Alberto Gonzales (hereinafter referred to as the “Accused”) for their criminal policy and practice of “extraordinary rendition.”  This term is really a euphemism for the enforced disappearances of persons, their torture, severe deprivation of their liberty, their violent sexual abuse, and other inhumane acts perpetrated upon these Victims. The Accused have inflicted this criminal policy and practice of “extraordinary rendition” upon about one hundred (100) human beings, almost all of whom are Muslims/Arabs/Asians and People of Color. I doubt very seriously that the Accused would have inflicted these criminal practices upon 100 White Judeo-Christian men.  .  .  .  .

[Note:  A reading of the entirety of the Complaint can be found here.

Is President Obama sanctioning the assassinations of American citizens without due process just as George W, Bush did? It would appear that is exactly what he is doing.

President Obama has now extended Bush’s “War on Terror” to Yemen. In today’s Washington Post there is an article by Dana Priest where she writes:

U.S. military teams and intelligence agencies are deeply involved in secret joint operations with Yemeni troops who in the past six weeks have killed scores of people, among them six of 15 top leaders of a regional al-Qaeda affiliate, according to senior administration officials.

snip

As part of the operations, Obama approved a Dec. 24 strike against a compound where a U.S. citizen, Anwar al-Aulaqi, was thought to be meeting with other regional al-Qaeda leaders. Although he was not the focus of the strike and was not killed, he has since been added to a shortlist of U.S. citizens specifically targeted for killing or capture by the JSOC, military officials said. The officials, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the operations.

(emphasis mine)

What follows is a tale of international intrigue with spies, murder and a conspiracy to cover up the run up to an illegal war by two leaders of government, Tony Blair and George W. Bush.

Conspiracy Theory or War crime? You be the judge.

h/t to emptywheel at FDL

Crossposted at Daily Kos

    If accountability is off the table, so is Democracy.

    In an age when the rich and powerful have more control over the creation of the law than ever we face the greatest threat to our Democracy we have ever known. We have met the enemy, and he is us.

    If the rich and powerful can bribe lawmakers to do their bidding AND those lawmakers are not subject to the same laws they are supposed to uphold than there is no freedom, there is no equality, there is no justice. The biggest threat to our democracy is not a man with a bomb in his pants or a hijacker flying a plane, it is a man with unlimited power and no one that he must answer to. If that man is an American he is capable of doing more damage to America than any terrorist could ever dream of.

   If you love freedom and Democracy please join me below the fold.

Iraq inquiry: we have every right to know why we went to war

The Iraq inquiry has resumed this week, promising crucial witnesses – Tony Blair, Jack Straw, Lord Goldsmith and possibly Gordon Brown.

And so it begins again, will we see some more little tidbits of information on this Countries, the once United States, as we did before the Holiday break.

CHEMICAL ALI IRAQ INQUIRY OFFER

Ali Hassan al-Majid, also known as Chemical Ali, will give evidence at the inquiry into the Iraq War

THREE of Saddam Hussein’s most hated henchmen have volunteered to give evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War.

A lawyer acting for Saddam’s former deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz, his ex-interior minister Ali Hassan al-Majid, also known as Chemical Ali ,and his private secretary Humad Humadi wrote to Sir John Chilcot last week.

Giovanni di Stefano said his clients were all prepared to testify and be cross-examined via video link from their prison cells in Iraq….>>>>>

How many people in America are at all aware of this?

Afghans burn Obama effigy over civilian deaths

By Samoon Miakhail (AFP) – 3 days ago

JALALABAD, Afghanistan – Protesters took to the streets in Afghanistan on Wednesday, burning an effigy of the US president and shouting “death to Obama” to slam civilian deaths during Western military operations.

Hundreds of university students blocked main roads in Jalalabad, capital of eastern Nangahar province, to protest the alleged deaths of 10 civilians, mostly school children, in a Western military operation on Saturday.

“The government must prevent such unilateral operations otherwise we will take guns instead of pens and fight against them (foreign forces),” students from the University of Nangahar’s education faculty said in a statement.

Marching through the main street of Jalalabad, the students chanted “death to Obama” and “death to foreign forces”, witnesses said.

The protesters torched a US flag and an effigy of US President Barack Obama in a public square in central Jalalabad, before dispersing.

“Our demonstration is against those foreigners who have come to our country,” Safiullah Aminzai, a student organiser, told AFP.

“They have not brought democracy to Afghanistan but they are killing our religious scholars and children,” he added.

Man, these people have no appreciation whatsoever.  We come to their country, spend trillions of dollars doing it, just trying to help them.   If only these people would change, dude!

I really don’t see what they’ve got to be angry about.

US forces ‘kill 8 children’ in night raid on village in Afghanistan

UNITED States troops have been accused of dragging innocent Afghan civilians from their beds and shooting them at close range, in a night raid that left ten people dead.

Government investigators said eight schoolchildren had been killed and all but one of the victims was from the same family. Locals said some had been handcuffed before they were killed.

But western military sources insisted the dead were all part of an Afghan terrorist cell responsible for manufacturing improvised explosive devices (IEDs), which have claimed countless soldiers’ and civilians’ lives.

I am outraged, OUTRAGED, that the CIA should have to put up with a few deaths in their ranks, when they have recently been planning raids that kill Afghan children.  

We kill eight of their children, they kill eight of our CIA guys.  

And the CIA just can’t believe it happened.  

Yes, how DARE they.  

Meanwhile, Americans have absolutely no idea that any of this happened.   Except for the CIA guys actually getting whacked.   Just like in Iraq, when the Iraqis dragged those Blackwater guys from their car and burned them and hung their bodies from a bridge, Americans had NO IDEA that that was in response to Abu Ghraib.   None.  And they still don’t.

Meanwhile, CNN continues with its round the clock “TERRORGASM”.  

Yeah, who’s the terrorist again?   We are.  

Happy New Year.    

Sure hope it’s an improvement over 2009.