Henry Kissinger (A War Criminal) Was In Town Again

Hey, did you know that Henry Kissinger was in town on Wednesday?

He spoke at the Pittsburgh Middle East Institute and according to the press coverage, there were protests.

Mike Wereschagin of the Trib:

Fifteen protesters, most of them carrying signs accusing Kissinger of war crimes for, among other things, his role in advising Nixon during the Vietnam War, lined the sidewalk outside the museum. Kissinger called Vietnam "a painful subject" and said "nobody could have had a greater incentive to end the war" than Nixon's incoming administration. Nixon decided the United States could not abandon a government that a previous administration had committed to.

"Serious people on both sides were arguing a question that really depended on an assessment of the role of America in the world," Kissinger said. "That was the underlying issue, and it is often the underlying issue now."

One protester interrupted Kissinger, yelling down from the balcony that he was a murderer and saying he "doesn't deserve a voice."

Once security escorted the protester out, Kissinger said, "I certainly don't leave them indifferent."

Taryn Luna of the P-G:

Local activists protested Henry Kissinger's keynote lecture of the Pittsburgh Middle East Institute's Fourth Annual Conference at the Carnegie Music Hall in Oakland on Wednesday night.

The protesters, about 20 members of Pittsburghers for World Peace and the Thomas Merton Center Anti-War Committee, say the 88-year-old former secretary of state and 1973 Nobel Peace Prize recipient is responsible for "heinous war crimes," including but not limited to the extension of the Vietnam War, the 1969 bombings of Laos and Cambodia and arming Indonesian dictator Suharto when he invaded East Timor in 1975.

About those protestors,

Simin Curtis, founder and president of the Pittsburgh Middle East Institute, said the fact that Mr. Kissinger drew a packed crowd to the 2,000 capacity Carnegie Music Hall proves that the protesters and their beliefs are not strongly represented in Pittsburgh.

"I think that Americans know very little about their history, and I think it's important for them to hear of great men from history whether they agree with them or not," said Ms. Curtis, 51, of Shadyside. "We learn about history from different points of view. So get out of your comfort zone."

Ms. Curtis -- whose institute was formed four years ago with the aim to foster educational, business and cultural ties between the Middle East and the United States -- said Mr. Kissinger was selected to speak on Wednesday night because he is "a brilliant man and an icon of foreign policy of the last century."

Ms Curtis, this is not about a simple disagreement, it's about war crimes.  However brilliant Kissinger is, he is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of human beings.  It's not a matter of a "comfort zone" or whether the protesters agree with him or disagree.  There's blood on his hands.  Lots of it.

And you (or at least the institute for which you speak) invited him to Pittsburgh.

What are the crimes Dr Kissinger's been accused of?

Glad you asked.  I wrote about it here.  It was almost exactly 2 years ago and Mike Wereschagin covered the visit for the Trib, then too!  Small world.  In that blog post, I linked to this 2002 piece by Christopher Hitchens.  In it he writes:

Here are some snapshots from the recent career of Henry Kissinger. In May last year, during a stay at the Ritz Hotel in Paris, he is visited by the criminal brigade of the French police, and served with a summons. This requests that he attend the Palais de Justice the following day to answer questions from Judge Roger Le Loire.

The judge is investigating the death and disappearance of five French citizens during the rule of General Pinochet in Chile. Kissinger declines the invitation and leaves Paris at once.

In the same week, Judge Rodolfo Corrall of Argentina invites Kissinger's testimony in the matter of "Operation Condor" - codename for a state-run death squad, operated by the secret police of six countries - Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay and Ecuador - during the 1970s and '80s.

Its central co-ordination was run through a US base in Panama when Kissinger was the national security adviser and secretary of state (and chairman of the committee overseeing all US covert operations). Again, Kissinger declines to answer written requests for information.

Later in the year, Judge Guzman in Santiago, Chile, sends a written summons to the State Department requesting Kissinger's testimony about the death and disappearance of an American citizen, Charles Horman, in the early days of the Pinochet dictatorship..

And that's just this brilliant and foreign policy icon's involvement with the Pinochet regime.  Then there's the massacre of East Timor.  In 1975, East Timor was invaded by Indonesia in December of 1975. Hitchens, writing in The Nation in 2002:

Kissinger, who does not find room to mention East Timor even in the index of his three-volume memoir, has more than once stated that the invasion came to him as a surprise, and that he barely knew of the existence of the Timorese question. He was obviously lying. But the breathtaking extent of his mendacity has only just become fully apparent, with the declassification of a secret State Department telegram. The document, which has been made public by the National Security Archive at George Washington University, contains a verbatim record of the conversation among Suharto, Ford and Kissinger. "We want your understanding if we deem it necessary to take rapid or drastic action," Suharto opened bluntly. "We will understand and will not press you on the issue," Ford responded. "We understand the problem you have and the intentions you have." Kissinger was even more emphatic, but had an awareness of the possible "spin" problems back home. "It is important that whatever you do succeeds quickly," he instructed the despot. "We would be able to influence the reaction if whatever happens, happens after we return.... If you have made plans, we will do our best to keep everyone quiet until the President returns home." Micromanaging things for Suharto, he added: "The President will be back on Monday at 2 pm Jakarta time. We understand your problem and the need to move quickly but I am only saying that it would be better if it were done after we returned." As ever, deniability supersedes accountability.

Long Hitchens short, Kissinger gave Indonesia the OK to invade East Timor.

And then what happened?:

An even more sinister note was struck later in the conversation, when Kissinger asked Suharto if he expected "a long guerrilla war." The dictator replied that there "will probably be a small guerrilla war," while making no promise about its duration. Bear in mind that Kissinger has already urged speed and dispatch upon Suharto. Adam Malik, Indonesia's foreign minister at the time, later conceded in public that between 50,000 and 80,000 Timorese civilians were killed in the first eighteen months of the occupation. These civilians were killed with American weapons, which Kissinger contrived to supply over Congressional protests, and their murders were covered up by American diplomacy, and the rapid rate of their murder was something that had been urged in so many words by an American Secretary of State.

Do you understand now, Ms Curtis?

As If We Needed More Convincing

From the Atlantic Wire:

One of the most vocal human rights groups in the U.S. is calling on foreign governments to prosecute President George W. Bush and his former cabinet for war crimes, given that the Obama administration has avoided the issue. In a report published today, New York-based Human Rights Watch says Bush, former vice president Dick Cheney, former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and former CIA director George Tenet could be prosecuted under the 1996 War Crimes Act, among other laws. "There is enough strong evidence from the information made public over the past five years to not only suggest these officials authorized and oversaw widespread and serious violations of US and international law, but that they failed to act to stop mistreatment, or punish those responsible after they became aware of serious abuses," read the report. It accused the Bush administration of approving waterboarding, authorizing the CIA's detention program and carrying out illegal abductions involving torture, saying an investigation is necessary "if the US hopes to wipe away the stain of Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo and reaffirm the primacy of the rule of law." The author of the report, Reed Brody, says he's calling on an investigation now because "[i]t's become abundantly clear that there is no longer any movement on the part of the Obama administration to live up to its responsibilities to investigate these cases." As the BBC notes, President Bush has "defended some of the techniques, saying they prevented attacks and saved lives." [emphasis added]

I realize that President Obama has a great deal to deal with right now, what with the GOP holding the economy hostage in order to guarantee their millionaire and billionaire base pay as little tax as possible, but war crimes are war crimes.

And war crimes were committed. Failing to prosecute (or at least investigate) them is covering them up. Obama is letting Bush get away with torture. And that's indefensible.

Here's the report.

From the Summary:

For example, the Bush administration authorized coercive interrogation practices by the CIA and the military that amounted to torture, and instituted an illegal secret CIA detention program in which detainees were held in undisclosed locations without notifying their families, allowing access to the International Committee of the Red Cross, or providing for oversight of their treatment. Detainees were also unlawfully rendered (transferred) to countries such as Syria, Egypt, and Jordan, where they were likely to be tortured. Indeed, many were, including Canadian national Maher Arar who described repeated beatings with cables and electrical cords during the 10 months he was held in Syria, where the US sent him in 2002. Evidence suggests that torture in such cases was not a regrettable consequence of rendition; it may have been the purpose.

At the same time, politically appointed administration lawyers drafted legal memoranda that sought to provide legal cover for administration policies on detention and interrogation.

The report gives a handy outline of the US laws violated. From the section titled Individual Criminal Responsibility:

The acts and abuses discussed in this report violate various provisions of US federal law, including the Crimes and Criminal Procedure Statute, Chapter 18 of the US Code (U.S.C.), which prohibits: torture (section 2340A(a)); assault (section 113); sexual abuse (sections 2241-2246); kidnapping (section 1201); homicide (sections 1111-1112 and section 2332); acts against rights (for example, sections 241-242, prohibiting conspiracies to deprive persons of their legal rights); war crimes (section 2441); conspiracy and solicitation of violent crimes (sections 371 and 373); and conspiracy to commit torture (section 2340A(c)).

The War Crimes Act of 1996 provides criminal punishment for whomever, inside or outside the United States, commits a war crime, if either the perpetrator or the victim is a member of the US Armed Forces or a national of the United States. A “war crime” is defined as any “grave breach” of the 1949 Geneva Conventions or acts that violate Common Article 3 of the four Geneva Conventions. “Grave breaches” include “willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment” of prisoners of war and of civilians qualified as “protected persons.” Common Article 3 prohibits murder, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture, and “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment.”

In a section titled "Duty to Investigate and Provide Redress" we read:

Under international law, states are obligated to investigate credible allegations of war crimes and serious violations of human rights committed by their nationals and members of their armed forces, or over which they have jurisdiction, and appropriately prosecute those responsible.

War crimes are serious violations of international humanitarian law committed willfully—that is, deliberately or recklessly—and give rise to individual criminal responsibility. Individuals may be held criminally responsible for directly committing war crimes or for war crimes committed pursuant to their orders. They may also be held criminally liable for attempting to commit war crimes, as well as planning, instigating, assisting, facilitating, and aiding or abetting them.

The US also has a duty to investigate serious violations of international human rights law and punish the perpetrators. As a state party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the US has an obligation to ensure that any person whose rights are violated “shall have an effective remedy” when the violation has been committed by government officials or agents. Those seeking a remedy shall have this right determined by competent judicial, administrative, or legislative authorities. And when granted, these remedies shall be enforced by competent authorities.

But if investigations/prosecutions won't be happening here in the land of the brave, home of the free, perhaps they can occur else where.

From the section on Foreign State Proceedings:

The US failure to conduct criminal investigations into the role and responsibility of high-ranking civilian and military officials for alleged crimes against detainees has opened the door for national judicial systems in foreign states to pursue investigations and, if warranted, prosecutions under the doctrines of “universal jurisdiction” and “passive personality” jurisdiction.

Among my many disappointments with the Obama administration, this has to be the disappoint-iest.

Disappointments based on policy or political realities are one thing, but letting someone get away with a war crime is something completely different.

Prosecute the war crimes. It's the only right thing to do.

In Case You Missed This

From the AP:

Former chief U.N. nuclear inspector Mohamed ElBaradei suggests in a new memoir that Bush administration officials should face an international criminal investigation for the "shame of a needless war" in Iraq.

And:

ElBaradei cites examples, including the conclusion by his inspectors inside Iraq that certain aluminum tubes were designed for artillery rockets, not for uranium enrichment equipment to build nuclear bombs, as Washington asserted.

The IAEA chief reported this conclusion to the U.N. Security Council on Jan. 27, 2003, and yet on the next day Bush — in a "remarkable" response — delivered a State of the Union address in which he repeated the unfounded claim about aluminum tubes, ElBaradei notes.

Similar contradictions of expert findings occurred with the claim, based on a forgery, that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger, and an Iraqi exile's fabrication that "mobile labs" were producing biological weapons.

"I was aghast at what I was witnessing," ElBaradei writes of the official U.S. attitude before the March 2003 invasion, which he calls "aggression where there was no imminent threat," a war in which he accepts estimates that hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians were killed.

In such a case, he suggests, the World Court should be asked to rule on whether the war was illegal. And, if so, "should not the International Criminal Court investigate whether this constitutes a `war crime' and determine who is accountable?"

No immanent threat. Hundreds of thousands dead. An illegal war based on lies (and at least one forgery). War Crimes.

The book, The Age of Deception, is to be published this week by MacMillan. Here's an excerpt:

In the years since, multiple sources have confirmed that the premise for the March 2003 invasion—the charge by the United States and the United Kingdom that Saddam Hussein's WMD programs represented an imminent threat—was groundless. The U.S.-appointed Iraq Survey Group would later spend billions of dollars to verify that the international inspectors were correct: Iraq had not revived its WMD programs. Nor, apparently, was the alleged WMD threat the real motivation for the U.S. and U.K. aggression. The famously leaked "Downing Street" memo from July 2002 was one of several sources indicating that the decision to go to war had been taken well before the inspections ever began.

To this day, I cannot read such accounts without reflecting on the thousands of soldiers who have died, the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians killed, the millions maimed or displaced, the families disrupted, the lives ruined—and I am astonished that there has not been more self-examination, more introspection on the part of the principal players. The shame of this needless war obliges us all to consider what went wrong in the case of Iraq and to reflect on how the lessons of this tragedy might be applied to future crises.

And while in 2008, candidate Obama said this:

What I would want to do is to have my Justice Department and my Attorney General immediately review the information that's already there and to find out are there inquiries that need to be pursued. I can't prejudge that because we don't have access to all the material right now. I think that you are right, if crimes have been committed, they should be investigated. You're also right that I would not want my first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of Republicans as a partisan witch hunt because I think we've got too many problems we've got to solve.

So this is an area where I would want to exercise judgment -- I would want to find out directly from my Attorney General -- having pursued, having looked at what's out there right now -- are there possibilities of genuine crimes as opposed to really bad policies. And I think it's important-- one of the things we've got to figure out in our political culture generally is distinguishing betyween really dumb policies and policies that rise to the level of criminal activity. You know, I often get questions about impeachment at town hall meetings and I've said that is not something I think would be fruitful to pursue because I think that impeachment is something that should be reserved for exceptional circumstances. Now, if I found out that there were high officials who knowingly, consciously broke existing laws, engaged in coverups of those crimes with knowledge forefront, then I think a basic principle of our Constitution is nobody above the law -- and I think that's roughly how I would look at it.

We've seen nothing from President Obama even remotely similar.

Happy Easter, my friends. Happy Easter.

SOMEONE Has The Right Idea At CPAC!

Listen at about 1:27.

Some brave soul screams out "War Criminal!" at the former Vice-President.

Even in the alternative universe that is the American conservative movement, someone sees clearly enough to speak the truth.

TPM has more:

Rumsfeld is being given CPAC's "Defender Of The Constitution" award, a concept that apparently rankled Paul supporters in the crowd. Many of them got up and walked out en masse at the mention of Rumsfeld, though some stayed behind in the conference hall to heckle the architects of the invasion of Iraq.

And:

"Uh, Defender of the Constitution?" Justin Bradfield of Maryland scoffed when I caught up with him after he walked out of Rumsfeld's speech. "Let's see: he expanded the Defense Department more than pretty much any other defense secretary and he enforced the Patriot Act."

"[Speaking] as a libertarian, that's not really the type of person who should be getting Defender of the Constitution," he added.

Gotta love those libertarians!

Two Views of Bush's War Crimes

View one, from Amnesty International:

Amnesty International today urged a criminal investigation into the role of former US President George W. Bush and other officials in the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” against detainees held in secret US custody after the former president admitted authorizing their use.

And:

“Under international law, the former President’s admission to having authorized acts that amount to torture are enough to trigger the USA’s obligations to investigate his admissions and if substantiated, to prosecute him,” said Claudio Cordone, Senior Director at Amnesty International.

Amnesty gives some background:

The USA ratified the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (UNCAT) in 1994. Under UNCAT, in every case where there is evidence against a person of their having committed or attempted to commit torture, or of having committed acts which constitute complicity or participation in torture, the case must be submitted to its competent authorities for the purpose of prosecution.

Failing to proceed with a prosecution on the basis that the accused held public office of any rank, or citing justifications based in “exceptional circumstances”, whether states of war or other public emergencies, is not permitted by UNCAT.

I know we've done this before, but let's do it again.

The United Nations Convention Against Torture was signed by Ronald Reagan and ratified by the Senate in 1994. And according to Article IV paragraph 2 of the US Constitution, which says:

This constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, any thing in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.

UNCAT is US Law. Torture is against US Law. Bush needs to be prosecuted.

Then there's the wingnuts who love love l-o-o-o-o-o-v-e the Constitution except when it gets in their way. Here's Peter King (R-NY):

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) on Wednesday defended the Bush administration’s use of waterboarding and said a Democratic colleague was “entirely wrong” to call for an investigation into the interrogation method sanctioned by the previous White House.

King, the presumptive next chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, pushed back against demands by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) for a probe into Bush-era waterboarding and asserted that President George W. Bush’s authorization of the practice “saved many, many lives.”

“Jerry and I are friends, but he’s entirely wrong on this,” King said in an interview with POLITICO’s Arena. “There would’ve been lives lost, and Bush deserves credit for what he did.”

Doesn't matter. Torture's still illegal. What part of that don't they get?

And then King further distinguishes himself:

King suggested Bush “should get a medal” for authorizing waterboarding. King said cases like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused mastermind behind Sept. 11 who is currently awaiting trial, proved practices such as waterboarding were effective.

“There was no harm done,” King said, referring to Mohammed. “In the big picture, to hold someone’s head underwater, the chance of permanent damage is minimal and the rewards are great.”

No harm done, except to the rule of law.

And our moral standing in the world.

No one is above the law. George W Bush is a war criminal. And Peter King is defending the indefensible.

More On Bush's Waterboarding War Crime

Of course the rightwing media (and it's enablers in the mainstream) are spreading a false justification.

From Mediamatters.org:

Following the release of former President George W. Bush's book Decision Points, right-wing media are promoting Bush's claim that waterboarding "saved lives." But this claim is disputed by intelligence experts, including former British officials who have "cast doubt" on Bush's waterboarding claims.

And here's one of the most idiotic things I have ever heard the idiotic Brian Kilmeade say (again, from Mediamatters):

"George W. Bush telling his critics who's boss." Later on Fox & Friends, Kilmeade called Bush's comments, "President George W. Bush telling his critics who's boss." After playing Bush's statement that waterboarding "saved lives," Kilmeade said, "That's one of the things he's most proud of."

Then there's the intelligence experts' skepticism. There's this from The Guardian in the UK:

No 10 dismisses George Bush's claim in his memoirs that interrogation technique is legal and helped foil attacks on Heathrow and Canary Wharf

The title of the piece, by the way, is:

Waterboarding is torture, Downing Street confirms

On to the British intelligence expert:

The former chair of the Commons intelligence and security committee, Kim Howells, cast doubt on Bush's claim that it had helped save British lives. "We are not convinced," said the Labour MP.

The piece ends with this from the former shadow Home Secretary David Davis:

Davis told Today that although security information provided from abroad would have to be used regardless of how it was obtained, torture did not work and should be discouraged.

"People under torture tell you what you want to hear," he said. "You'll get the wrong information and ... apart from being immoral, apart from destroying our standing in the world, and apart from undermining the way of life we're trying to defend, it actually doesn't deliver."

There's more from Davis (who's a member of the Conservative party over there in the UK) by way of the BBC:

He said a large part of the false intelligence on WMD that led to the war in Iraq came from torture and illegal rendition.

Which is interesting when the discussion of Iraq's WMD comes up later on in the BBC piece:

Mr Bush said he still had "a sickening feeling" about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

But he defended his decision to invade Iraq, saying Iraqi citizens were better off without the former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and the US was better off without Saddam pursuing biological or chemical weapons.

Mr Bush admits that he was shocked when no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq after the 2003 invasion.

But asked, in an interview with NBC, if he ever considered apologising to Americans for that failure to find WMD, he said: "Apologising would basically say the decision was a wrong decision.

"And I don't believe it was the wrong decision."

Having trouble getting through Dubya's logic here. He was shocked when no WMD were found - but he still thinks the decision (the one based on his mistake about the WMD) to send so many thousands of Americans into battle was incorrect.

Whatever he might believe, he was still wrong about the WMD and he was still wrong about the torture he ordered. And that's still a war crime.

George W. Bush is a war criminal.

George W. Bush, War Criminal

He admitted to giving the order:

In a memoir due out Tuesday, Bush makes clear that he personally approved the use of that coercive technique against alleged Sept. 11 plotter Khalid Sheik Mohammed, an admission the human rights experts say could one day have legal consequences for him.

In his book, titled "Decision Points," Bush recounts being asked by the CIA whether it could proceed with waterboarding Mohammed, who Bush said was suspected of knowing about still-pending terrorist plots against the United States. Bush writes that his reply was "Damn right" and states that he would make the same decision again to save lives, according to a someone close to Bush who has read the book.

There's some more:

The 26-year-old United Nations Convention Against Torture requires that all parties to it seek to enforce its provisions, even for acts committed elsewhere. That provision, known as universal jurisdiction, has been cited in the past by prosecutors in Spain and Belgium to justify investigations of acts by foreign officials. But no such trials have occurred in foreign courts.

Here's the United Nations Convention Against Torture. I know we've done this before but sometimes you just have to point out the obvious again and again. Here's how the Convention defines torture as:

Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

Then there's this, explaining if torture is ever allowable:

No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.

So Bush's about how it was to save lives, doesn't make it not torture.

And War Crimes? Take a look. The US Code defines "torture" as a war crime.

George W. Bush - War Criminal.

When can we see a prosecution from the Obama DOJ? An investigation by the Obama DOJ? A denunciation of the war crimes from Obama himself?

Bush Admits To War Crimes

While the Trib Editorial Board is huffing and puffing about a special prosecutor for a non-crime, the former president admits to committing one - a big one.

So big it's a war crime.

From CNN:

In some of his most candid comments since leaving the White House, former President George W. Bush said Wednesday he has no regrets about authorizing the controversial waterboarding technique to interrogate terrorist suspects and wouldn't hesitate to do so again.

"Yeah, we waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed," the former president said during an appearance at the Economic Club of Grand Rapids, Michigan, according to the Grand Rapids Press.

"I'd do it again to save lives," he added.

Too bad it didn't. Oh, did I mention that IT'S ILLEGAL?

From Dan Froomkin at the Huffingtonpost:

Waterboarding, a form of controlled drowning, is "unequivocably torture", said retired Brigadier General David R. Irvine, a former strategic intelligence officer who taught prisoner of war interrogation and military law for 18 years.

"As a nation, we have historically prosecuted it as such, going back to the time of the Spanish-American War," Irvine said. "Moreover, it cannot be demonstrated that any use of waterboarding by U.S. personnel in recent years has saved a single American life."

And then:

James P. Cullen, a retired brigadier general in the United States Army Reserve Judge Advocate General's Corps, told HuffPost that the net effect of Bush's remarks -- and former Vice President Cheney's before him -- is "to establish a precedent where it will be permissible to our enemies to use waterboarding on our servicemen in future wars.

Cheney famously once agreed with an interviewer that "a dunk in the water" was "no-brainer" if it saves lives.

"This is not the last war we're going to fight," Cullen said. "Americans not yet born are going to be prisoners of war in those conflicts. And our enemies are going to be able to point back to President Bush and Vice President Cheney saying that waterboarding is OK.

"It's just shocking to me how he can be so flip about something that is so serious," Cullen said.

So in the future, some kid who's now in high school and who'll tonight be doing nothing more dangerous than fumbling around trying to figure out how to unhook his girlfriend's bra, is going to be tortured. His torturers will defend themselves by simply saying, "Yea, we tortured him and we'd do it again to save lives."

And we can have Bush to thank for that. Heckuva job you did there, dubya.

When can we expect a special prosecutor for this?

More On Bush's War Crimes

From Truthout.org:

On January 25, 2002, then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales advised George W. Bush in a memo to deny al-Qaeda and Taliban prisoners protections under the Geneva Conventions because doing so would "substantially reduces the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act" and "provide a solid defense to any future prosecution."

Two weeks later, Bush signed an action memorandum dated February 7, 2002, addressed to Vice President Dick Cheney, which denied baseline protections to al-Qaeda and Taliban prisoners under the Third Geneva Convention. That memo, according to a recently released bipartisan report issued by the Senate Armed Services Committee, opened the door to "considering aggressive techniques," which were then developed with the complicity of then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Bush's National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and other senior Bush officials.

And we all know what happened after that.

By the way from the same article, a few paragraphs later:

The Supreme Court held in 2006, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, that the prisoners were entitled to protections under the Geneva Conventions.

So I guess AG Gonzales was...wrong?

Prosecute the war crimes.

George Bush on March 17, 2003

War crimes will be prosecuted, war criminals will be punished and it will be no defense to say, “I was just following orders.”

(h/t to Think Progress)

Jack Kelly Sunday

It was inevitable. In this week's column, Jack Kelly spins torture.

He starts, in all places, with the posthumous decapitation of Oliver Cromwell and the "bill of attainder" that led to it. Then he points out:

For obvious reasons, the American colonists were not fond of this aspect of the British legal system. Article 1, section 9, clause 3 of the Constitution declares: "No bill of attainder or ex post facto law shall be passed."

Do you know what else it says in Article 1, section 9 of the US Constitution? This is the sentence immediately above the one Jack patriotically parrots:

The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.

Funny how Jack Kelly never got around to writing a column defending Habeas Corpus when George W. Bush named Yaser Esam Hamdi an enemy combatant and effectively suspended his Habeas Corpus rights.

But I digress.

Back to Jack the flack and hack:

U.S. law forbids "torture," which is defined as "an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain and suffering."

First let me say kudos to Jack Kelly for recognizing that US Law forbids torture. Though it is somewhat unsettling to see that word in the quotation marks. Is there an issue to be resolved before he removes the ironical puncuation marks? His next paragraph explains things:

But what constitutes "severe physical or mental pain and suffering?" Most of us recognize as torture actions which maim or kill, such as the breaking of bones, pulling of fingernails, electrodes to the genitals, etc. But some on the left want to define as "torture" anything that makes a terror suspect temporarily uncomfortable, such as sleep deprivation, having to listen to heavy metal rock, exposure to cold or simulated drowning.

I like this part:

But some on the left want to define as "torture" anything that makes a terror suspect temporarily uncomfortable...

Who? Jack conveniently doesn't say. It could be someone famous or it could be someone babbling at Jack on the bus. He doesn't do us the courtesy of filling us in on who "some" are. He does, though, list some things he considers "temprarily uncomfortable" and obviously not "torture":

...sleep deprivation, having to listen to heavy metal rock, exposure to cold or simulated drowning.

Let's start with this from the BBC:

Sleep deprivation is not like torture - it is a form of torture, a tactic favoured by the KGB and the Japanese in PoW camps in World War Two.

So both the KGB and the Japanese in WWII? Huh.

There's more - to that list we can add Saddam Hussein.

Take a look: In this CRS report from 2004, we learn that The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia found that U.S. POWs during the First Gulf War were tortured in Iraq:

The torture inflicted included severe beatings, mock executions, threatened castration, and threatened dismemberment. The POWs were systematically starved, denied sleep, and exposed to freezing cold. [emphasis added.]

This is how we protect democracy, Jack? By emulating the KGB, Imperial Japan and Saddam Hussein's Iraq? What great company to be in.

And Jack's spinning a bit more by including the part about listening to "heavy metal rock." It's used in conjunction with sleep deprivation. From the BBC:

The US's Psychological Operations Company (Psy Ops) said the aim was to break a prisoner's resistance through sleep deprivation and playing music that was culturally offensive to them.

So it's not just popping in a Metallica CD. It's using Metallica to keep the detainees awake. And since we already know that sleep deprivation is torture, most anything can be utilized during that process:

Heavy metal music and popular American children's songs are being used by US interrogators to break the will of their captives in Iraq.

Uncooperative prisoners are being exposed for prolonged periods to tracks by rock group Metallica and music from children's TV programmes Sesame Street and Barney in the hope of making them talk.

Now that's just sad - Barney and Elmo being a part of torture. Sheesh, is NOTHING sacred?

What's left is the waterboarding. Here's John McCain from a campaign stop in 2007:

[F]ollowing World War II war crime trials were convened. The Japanese were tried and convicted and hung for war crimes committed against American POWs. Among those charges for which they were convicted was waterboarding.

From Politifact, McCain continues:

"If the United States is in another conflict ... and we have allowed that kind of torture to be inflicted upon people we hold captive, then there is nothing to prevent that enemy from also torturing American prisoners."

McCain is referencing the Tokyo Trials, officially known as the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. After World War II, an international coalition convened to prosecute Japanese soldiers charged with torture. At the top of the list of techniques was water-based interrogation, known variously then as "water cure," "water torture" and "waterboarding," according to the charging documents. It simulates drowning.

R. John Pritchard, a historian and lawyer who is a top scholar on the trials, said the Japanese felt the ends justified the means. "The rapid and effective collection of intelligence then, as now, was seen as vital to a successful struggle, and in addition, those who were engaged in torture often felt that whatever pain and anguish was suffered by the victims of torture was nothing less than the just deserts of the victims or people close to them," he said.

Can't be any plainer than that, Jack. Waterboarding (or "simulated drowning" as you euphemistically call it) is torture. The US executed Japanese war criminals for waterboarding and yet Jack wants us to think that it's just meant to be nothing more than something that's "temporarily uncomfortable."

Jack's next part is simply incredible:

The "enhanced interrogation techniques" used on a handful of al-Qaida bigwigs were derived from what U.S. pilots and special forces personnel undergo in SERE training (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape). Few in their right minds would describe the SERE course -- through which thousands have passed without ill effect -- as "torture." But in this country, everyone is entitled to his or her opinion. Many on the left, however, wish to criminalize policy differences.

The SERE training, once you actually look at it, was set up to aid servicemen and women in the event that they're tortured by waterboarding. Inherent in the idea is that waterboarding is torture. To use the training used to resist the torture as evidence that waterboarding isn't torture is truly tortured logic.

John Adams said, "Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."

Let's be clear. Torture is immoral. Advocating it is immoral. Covering it up is immoral. Giving it a pass is immoral.

These are not "policy differences." It's also illegal (as Jack rightly points out) and so these are criminal acts.

Prosecute the war crimes.

Torture Update

We are going to follow the evidence, follow the law and take that where it leads. No one is above the law. - Attorney General Eric Holder

Yesterday, via CNN.

Later in the piece there's this:

Holder also repeated assurances the Obama administration had given CIA interrogators who employed the controversial techniques that they would not be charged.

"The president's comments were consistent with what we've said all along. Those who, in good faith, followed legal guidance they were given will not be prosecuted or investigated," Holder said.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, who earlier in the day released a newly declassified timeline -- compiled when he was chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee -- of how the approval for the controversial interrogation techniques played out, said he agreed that CIA operatives shouldn't face prosecution.

Now about that timeline (an excerpt is here and the full list is here.)

The AP is reporting:

A new document indicates the CIA first proposed waterboarding alleged al-Qaeda terrorist Abu Zubaydah to top Bush administration officials in mid-May 2002, three months before the Justice Department approved the interrogation technique in a secret legal opinion.

Specifically (from the Washington Post):

July 17, 2002 "Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) met with the National Security Adviser, who advised that the CIA could proceed with its proposed interrogation of Abu Zubaida. This advice, which authorized CIA to proceed as a policy matter, was subject to a determination of legality by OLC."

July 24, 2002 "OLC orally advised the CIA that the Attorney General had concluded that certain proposed interrogation techniques were lawful and, on July 26, that the use of waterboarding was lawful."

Aug. 1, 2002 "OLC issued three documents analyzing U.S. obligations with respect to the treatment of detainees. Two of these three documents were unclassified: an unclassified opinion interpreting the federal criminal prohibition on torture, and a letter concerning U.S. obligations under the Convention Against Torture."

Before hearing from the OLC, then-National Security Director Condolezza Rice approved the waterboarding. A week after that, the OLC "orally advised" the CIA it was OK and then a week and a day after that, it was in writing.

More from the AP:

The new timeline shows that Rice played a greater role than she admitted last fall in written testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The narrative also shows that dissenting legal views about the severe interrogation methods were brushed aside repeatedly.

So she lied? Someone in the Bush Administration lied about the torture they approved?

What a shock.

McClatchy notes:

A newly declassified narrative of the Bush administration's advice to the CIA on harsh interrogations shows that the small group of Justice Department lawyers who wrote memos authorizing harsh interrogation techniques were operating not on their own but with direction from top administration officials, including then-Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.

At the same time, the narrative suggests that then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and then-Secretary of State Colin Powell were largely left out of the decision-making process.

Senator Rockefeller issued a statement with the release of the chronology. From the LATimes:

"The records of the CIA demonstrate that the lawyers at the Office of Legal Counsel did not operate in a vacuum," Rockefeller said in a statement. That office is the Justice Department entity that issued many of the key opinions endorsing the CIA's techniques. "The then-vice president and the national security advisor are at the center of these discussions."

Investigate and prosecute the torture. It's the law.

The Report

The Senate Armed-Services Committee issued a report today. It's title is "Inquiry to the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody" and it describes what was done in our name.

From the Executive Summary:

The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of "a few bad apples" acting on their own. The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees. Those efforts damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority. This report is a product of the Committee's inquiry into how those unfortunate results came about.

Senator Levin says of the report:

Today we're releasing the declassified report of the Senate Armed Services Committee's investigation into the treatment of detainees in U.S. custody. The report was approved by the Armed Services Committee on November 20, 2008 and has, in the intervening period, been under review at the Department of Defense for declassification.

In my judgment, the report represents a condemnation of both the Bush administration's interrogation policies and of senior administration officials who attempted to shift the blame for abuse - such as that seen at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and Afghanistan - to low ranking soldiers. Claims, such as that made by former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz that detainee abuses could be chalked up to the unauthorized acts of a "few bad apples," were simply false.

The truth is that, early on, it was senior civilian leaders who set the tone. On September 16, 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney suggested that the United States turn to the "dark side" in our response to 9/11. Not long after that, after White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales called parts of the Geneva Conventions "quaint," President Bush determined that provisions of the Geneva Conventions did not apply to certain detainees. Other senior officials followed the President and Vice President's lead, authorizing policies that included harsh and abusive interrogation techniques.

And from McClatchy:

The Bush administration applied relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a former Army psychiatrist.

And because there was no link, the interrogations got harsher.

Investigate torture. It's the law.

Torture Update

From the NYTimes:

Pressure mounted on President Obama on Monday for more thorough investigation into harsh interrogations of terrorism suspects under the Bush administration, even as he tried to reassure the Central Intelligence Agency that it would not be blamed for following legal advice.

The pressure?

...human rights activists, Congressional Democrats and international officials pressed for a fuller accounting of what happened. Senator Diane Feinstein, a California Democrat and chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, wrote Mr. Obama asking him not to rule out prosecutions until her panel completed an investigation over the next six to eight months.

And:

The Senate Armed Services Committee plans to release its own report after two years of looking at the military’s use of harsh interrogation methods. And the Democratic chairmen of the Senate and House Judiciary Committees are pushing for a commission to look into the matter. At the same time, the administration faces pressure from abroad. Manfred Nowak, the United Nations’ chief official on torture, told an Austrian newspaper that as a party to the international Convention against Torture, the United States was required to investigate credible accusations of torture.

Then there's:

Others pushing for more investigation included Philip D. Zelikow, the former State Department counselor in the Bush administration. On his blog for Foreign Policy magazine and in an interview, Mr. Zelikow said it was not up to a president to rule out an inquiry into possible criminal activity. “If a Republican president tried to do this, people would be apoplectic,” he said.

Frederick A. O. Schwarz Jr., who was chief counsel to the Church Committee, the Senate panel that investigated C.I.A. abuses in the 1970s, said Mr. Obama was “courageous” to rule out prosecutions for those who followed legal advice. But he said “it’s absolutely necessary” to investigate further, “not for the purpose of setting blame but to understand how it happened.”

Here's something else from Zelikow:

I am not eager to see any government officials prosecuted for crimes because of their zeal to protect their country. But crimes committed for worthy motives are still crimes, and we have institutions to sort this out.

So has anyone beside me found it troubling that President Obama is making announcements on who should be prosecuted for possible crimes? Whatever one's view of the matter, didn't the administration ardently announce its dedication to depoliticizing the Department of Justice? So why is it proper for the president to tell Attorney General Eric Holder what he should conclude?

He then posits 5 possibilities:

1. No unlawful conduct
2. Unlawful conduct but with a credible defense
3. Unlawful conduct with an inadequate defense
4. Unlawful conduct, no defense, but Obama pardons
5. No pardon, but Obama tells AG Holder what legal options he has.

His conclusion:

Can you imagine what folks would say if a Republican president exercised option #5? I wish President Obama would just play this straight. He also does no favor to suspects if he politicizes the question of their innocence.

Investigate. Prosecute. Do it publicly and fairly. It's the American way. It's also the law.

Torture. Waterboarding. Disgusting.

Emptywheel is reporting:

According to the May 30, 2005 Bradbury memo, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in March 2003 and Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in August 2002.

From page 37 of the memo:

The CIA used the waterboard "at least 83 times during August 2002" in the interrogation of Zubaydah. IG Report at 90, and 183 times during March 2003 in the interrogation of KSM, see id. at 91.

And sums it up:

The CIA wants you to believe waterboarding is effective. Yet somehow, it took them 183 applications of the waterboard in a one month period to get what they claimed was cooperation out of KSM.

That doesn't sound very effective to me.

It's been public knowledge for sometime that President Obama won't be prosecuting the CIA officials who did the waterboarding.

But as Richard Kim of The Nation points out:

However politically expedient, Obama's nearly carte blanche absolution of torture was morally wrong, and his justification of it, from a professor of constitutional law, is intellectually dishonest.

It's also, it seems, a violation of international law itself. From the BBC:

The UN special rapporteur on torture, Manfred Nowak, says the US is bound under the UN Convention against Torture to prosecute those who engage in it.

Nowak goes on:

The United States, like all other states that are part of the UN convention against torture, is committed to conducting criminal investigations of torture and to bringing all persons against whom there is sound evidence to court.

As Kim points out, Obama's explanation:

In releasing these memos, it is our intention to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution.

Just doesn't hold stand up to scrutiny:

Obama's argument here is gravely disturbing. He asserts, in essence, that because the OLC says it is right, it is--that CIA agents should have absolute confidence in anything and everything approved by the OLC and/or ordered by the executive branch.

Even if it's against the law - including UN Convention against Torture, where Article 2 states:

1. Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction.
2. No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.
3. An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.

(Signed by Ronald Reagan in 1988, ratified in the Senate, 1994 - so according to Article VI of the Constitution, it's the law.)

Kim goes on:

Of course, higher-ups who ordered and sanctioned torture should be prosecuted as well, including the authors of the OLC memos. But that does not mean that the actual interrogators should be let off the hook en masse. Whether or not CIA interrogators should have refused orders or should have known that such orders were legally or morally wrong is a matter to be determined in trial, a matter of justice. It is not a question that can be swept away by the claim that they were just doing their jobs, that they were just being obedient subjects.

From the New York Times editorial board:

After all, as far as Mr. Bush’s lawyers were concerned, it was not really torture unless it involved breaking bones, burning flesh or pulling teeth. That, Mr. Bybee kept noting, was what the Libyan secret police did to one prisoner. The standard for American behavior should be a lot higher than that of the Libyan secret police.

At least Mr. Obama is not following Mr. Bush’s example of showy trials for the small fry — like Lynndie England of Abu Ghraib notoriety. But he has an obligation to pursue what is clear evidence of a government policy sanctioning the torture and abuse of prisoners — in violation of international law and the Constitution.

Investigate and prosecute the war crimes, Mr President. It's the law.

And it's the right thing to do.

Keith Olbermann's Special Comment.

Thursday Night, April 16.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

The Text.

Prosecute the war crimes. Investigate and prosecute. The war crimes.

Maybe SOMEONE Will Prosecute

Someone in Spain:

Spanish prosecutors have decided to press forward with a criminal investigation targeting former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and five top associates over their role in the torture of five Spanish citizens held at Guantánamo, several reliable sources close to the investigation have told The Daily Beast. Their decision is expected to be announced on Tuesday before the Spanish central criminal court, the Audencia Nacional, in Madrid. But the decision is likely to raise concerns with the human-rights community on other points: They will seek to have the case referred to a different judge.

The six defendants—in addition to Gonzales, Federal Appeals Court Judge and former Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee, University of California law professor and former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo, former Defense Department general counsel and current Chevron lawyer William J. Haynes II, Vice President Cheney’s former chief of staff David Addington, and former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith—are accused of having given the green light to the torture and mistreatment of prisoners held in U.S. detention in “the war on terror.”

Prosecute the war crimes.

More On Bush's Torture

From Lawrence Wilkerson at The Washington Note. Wilkerson lists some things that we, the American public, might not be aware of, regarding the "enemy combatants" at Guantanamo Bay.

He first points out that the troops collecting said combatants were not as well trained as they should have been. But then he gets to a big nugget:

The second dimension that is largely unreported is that several in the U.S. leadership became aware of this lack of proper vetting very early on and, thus, of the reality that many of the detainees were innocent of any substantial wrongdoing, had little intelligence value, and should be immediately released.

But to have admitted this reality would have been a black mark on their leadership from virtually day one of the so-called Global War on Terror and these leaders already had black marks enough: the dead in a field in Pennsylvania, in the ashes of the Pentagon, and in the ruins of the World Trade Towers. They were not about to admit to their further errors at Guantanamo Bay. Better to claim that everyone there was a hardcore terrorist, was of enduring intelligence value, and would return to jihad if released. I am very sorry to say that I believe there were uniformed military who aided and abetted these falsehoods, even at the highest levels of our armed forces. [emphasis added]

I was curious about the reason why so many innocents were held for so long. Wilkerson explains:

The fourth unknown is the ad hoc intelligence philosophy that was developed to justify keeping many of these people, called the mosaic philosophy. Simply stated, this philosophy held that it did not matter if a detainee were innocent. Indeed, because he lived in Afghanistan and was captured on or near the battle area, he must know something of importance (this general philosophy, in an even cruder form, prevailed in Iraq as well, helping to produce the nightmare at Abu Ghraib). All that was necessary was to extract everything possible from him and others like him, assemble it all in a computer program, and then look for cross-connections and serendipitous incidentals--in short, to have sufficient information about a village, a region, or a group of individuals, that dots could be connected and terrorists or their plots could be identified.

Thus, as many people as possible had to be kept in detention for as long as possible to allow this philosophy of intelligence gathering to work. The detainees' innocence was inconsequential. After all, they were ignorant peasants for the most part and mostly Muslim to boot. [emphasis added]

After pointing out that at least 770 people were held at Guantanamo Bay and that Wilkerson said that at most two dozen of those "might well be hardened criminals", David Schuster summed it all up like this last night:

Twenty-four men. American principles sacrificed. America's image stained to hold twenty-four men. Meaning the United States kidnapped, detained and denied due process to at least seven hundred fifty six innocent people.

Prosecute the war crimes. It's the law.

Bush In Canada

A group called Lawyers Against The War (or LAW) has sent a letter to the RCMP (or Royal Canadian Mounted Police) requesting an investigation of George W. Bush for war crimes.

The letter they sent can be found here.

They charge that:

- George W. Bush, former President of the United States and Commander is Chief of the Armed Forces, is inadmissible to Canada under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA), section 35(1)(a) because of overwhelming evidence that he has ‘committed, outside Canada, torture and other offences referred to in sections 4 to 7 of the Crimes against Humanity and War Crimes Act (CAHWC); and,

- the George W. Bush Administration has engaged in “systematic or gross human rights violations, or a war crime or a crime against humanity within the meaning of subsections 6(3) to (5) of the CAHWC.

Here's that section of the IRPA. And this is how the CAHWC subsections 6(3) to (5) defines crimes against humanity:

...means murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, imprisonment, torture, sexual violence, persecution or any other inhumane act or omission that is committed against any civilian population or any identifiable group and that, at the time and in the place of its commission, constitutes a crime against humanity according to customary international law or conventional international law or by virtue of its being criminal according to the general principles of law recognized by the community of nations, whether or not it constitutes a contravention of the law in force at the time and in the place of its commission.

And they ask that the RCMP:

- begin an investigation of George W. Bush for aiding, abetting and counseling torture between November 13, 2001 and November 2008 at Guantánamo Bay prison in Cuba, Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, Bagram prison in Afghanistan and other places; and,

- advise the Prime Minister, Attorney General of Canada and Ministers of Immigration and Public Safety that the George W. Bush administration is a “ government that has engaged in torture and other war crimes and crimes against humanity and therefore G.W. Bush, as former President, is also inadmissible under section 35(1)(b) of the IRPA.

Here's the letter they sent to Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper in late February.

The only thing standing in the way of Canadian Justice?

The Canadian government:

Canadian government officials have chosen to ignore a request to bar George W. Bush from entering Canada, but the issue is not going to go away, according to the lawyers’ group that first raised it.

Lawyers Against the War’s (LAW) Gail Davidson said Sunday that Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Attorney General Rob Nicholson have been formally notified of their legal obligations under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

She told them in a March 11 letter there is “overwhelming evidence that (Bush) has committed, outside Canada, torture and other offences” referred to in Canada’s Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act, and said LAW can provide the evidence.

Harper and other government officials were also told that the act states “if there are reasonable grounds to believe a person has been complicit in any of these crimes, entry to Canada must be denied.”

However, neither Harper nor any other Ministers responded to last month’s request from the group.

It's not like they haven't banned other folks from entering Canada. If you're arrested in the US for protesting the war that's killed 4,000 American troops and countless Iraqis, you're banned from Canada.

But if you start that war (and commit war crimes, too boot) you're in.

O Canada!

From See Magazine:

As George W. Bush’s St. Patrick’s Day visit to Alberta draws near, the federal government is facing pressure from activists and human rights lawyers to bar the former U.S. president from the country or prosecute him for war crimes and crimes against humanity once he steps on Canadian soil.

Bush is scheduled to speak in Calgary March 17, but Vancouver lawyer Gail Davidson says that because Bush has been “credibly accused” of supporting torture in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Canada has a legal obligation to deny him entry under Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. The law says foreign nationals who have committed war crimes or crimes against humanity, including torture, are “inadmissible” to Canada. ”The test isn’t whether the person’s been convicted, but whether there’s reasonable grounds to think that they have been involved,” says Davidson, who’s with Lawyers Against the War (LAW). “…It’s now a matter of public record that Bush was in charge of setting up a regime of torture that spanned several parts of the globe and resulted in horrendous injuries and even death. Canada has a duty.”

Maybe it'll be up to our friends from the north to prosecute the war crimes.