President George H.W. Bush Found Guilty of War Crimes?

Did you know about the International Tribunal that found former President George H.W. Bush guilty of 19 war crimes in his Iraq war? Because of  his war's "destruction of Iraq, killing at least 125,000 persons directly by its bombing while proclaiming its own combat losses as 148, and because it destroyed the economic base of Iraq and because its acts are still inflicting consequential deaths that may reach hundreds of thousands."

It's true.  On February 29, 1992, at the Martin Luther King Jr. Auditorium in New York, a 22 member International War Crimes Tribunal representing 5 continents, before a public meeting of 1,500 people (completely blocked out by the media in America) headed by former United States Attorney General, Ramsey Clark, wrapped up 12 months of gathering and reviewing evidence of the the Initial Complaint of the Commission of Inquiry dated May 6, 1991 against President George H. W. Bush, Vice President J. Danforth Quayle, Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, and others named in the Complaint charging them with 19 separate crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity in violation of the Charter of the United Nations, the 1949 Geneva Conventions, the First Protocol thereto, and other international agreements and customary international law.

The Tribunal found George Bush and others in his administration guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

Okay, am I the only one who missed this historic event?

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When Will We Start to Hold the Power Elite Accountable?

While poorly paid, hard working Americans face relatively severe consequences should they engage in any type of misconduct no matter how small, government officials, bankers, CEOs, oil executives, in other words, the power elite, who are responsible for catastrophic damage, not only escape consequences of their misconduct, they often reap rewards for their egregious behavior.

Consider, for example, the bank teller, who is lucky to make $10/hour. If she inadvertently violates bank policy she can face relatively severe consequences. However, if she is a little more deliberate, and let's say adds a penny to balance out her cash drawer at the end of the day, she could possibly face jail time. That's right...jail time! For contributing her own money!

So, what are the latest reports of "misconduct" regarding the teflon coated, crème de la crème?

Well, it appears the Physicians For Human Rights author of "The Torture Papers" discovered evidence indicating that the Bush Administration conducted illegal and unethical human experimentation and research on detainees in CIA custody.  Experiments in Torture is the first report to reveal such information.

This evidence, of course,  could possibly open the door to potential additional legal liability for the CIA and Bush officials.  Nothing, as of yet, has materialized indicating that the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel determined that the alleged experimentation and research performed on detainees was lawful, as it did with the “enhanced” techniques themselves.

Escaping accountability for wrongdoing just because you're wealthy and powerful defies the rule of law. And it appears the current administration has no intention of preserving the equality of all its citizens before the law, as it is clear that those who reside at the lofty peak of American society are exempt.



Links:

Former President Bush said, while speaking to the Economic Club of Grand Rapids, Michigan that if he had it [deliberate undermining of the Geneva Conventions] to do over, he would.

"Yeah, we water-boarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed," Bush said of the terrorist who master-minded the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington. He said that event shaped his presidency and convinced him the nation was in a war against terror. "I'd do it again to save lives."

Interview with the lead medical author of the report, Dr. Scott Allen.

U.S. Intelligence Analyst Arrested in Wikileaks Video Probe

"Federal officials have arrested an Army intelligence analyst who boasted of giving classified U.S. combat video and hundreds of thousands of classified State Department records to whistleblower site Wikileaks, Wired.com has learned.

SPC Bradley Manning, 22, (left) of Potomac, Maryland, was stationed at Forward Operating Base Hammer, 40 miles east of Baghdad, where he was arrested nearly two weeks ago by the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division. A family member says he’s being held in custody in Kuwait, and has not been formally charged."

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We’ll Have to Work the Dark Side

“We’ll have to work the dark side.” – Dick Cheney, First Sunday after 9/11

And it appears that Dick Cheney meant every word considering all that has transpired between 9/11 and today. According to investigative journalist Jane Mayer, author of The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals the war on terrorism may have done as much political and social damage to the United States as terrorism itself.

In 1863 a general order issued by Abraham Lincoln prohibited the use of “physical or mental torture, threats, insults, or exposure to inhumane treatment as a means of or aid to interrogation.”

One-hundred and thirty-nine years later, a three-tiered method of interrogation that defines "humane treatment" with “outrages upon personal dignity” permitted, amongst many other modifications to the concept of "humane treatment" was insidiously legislated under the radar and signed into "law" or lawlessness, undermining any moral authority we, the people had. This process progresses from yelling and deception -----> humiliation and sensory deprivation -----> the use of scenarios designed to convince the detainee that death or severely painful consequences were imminent for him or his family.

In November of 2006, "Congress passes the Military Commissions Act, which makes illegal several broadly defined abuses of detainees, while leaving it to the president to establish specific permissible interrogation techniques."

Tortuous timeline

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Iraq Last in Child Survival Rates.

Killing Iraqi children -- “collateral damage” -- has long been acceptable to U.S. officials as part of their long-time foreign policy toward Iraq. From sanctions in the 1990s, responsible for the death of an estimated half-a-million Iraqi children, to the current war we're engaged in it is apparent that Iraqi children are expendable. It's no wonder the Pentagon has long had a policy of not keeping count of the number of Iraqi people, including children, it kills.

Recently doctors issued a plea to Tony Blair to end medical shortages -- of simple equipment costing very little -- in the war zone causing too many children to die in hospitals. International lawyers backed the doctors when they said the conditions in hospitals amount to a breach of the Geneva conventions that require Britain and the US as occupying forces to protect human life.

The Geneva Conventions require the US and UK to "maintain order and to look after the medical needs of the population" which they are clearly not doing. Many children are dying due to lack of oxygen masks; sterile needles; the right-sized needles; surgical gloves; inexpensive vitamins and other very ordinary things every hospital should be equipped with. There is no excuse.

The chance that an Iraqi child will live beyond age 5 has plummeted faster than anywhere else in the world since 1990, according to a report released Tuesday, which placed the country last in its child survival rankings.

One in eight Iraqi children died of disease or violence before reaching their fifth birthday in 2005, according to the report by Save the Children, which said Iraq ranked last because it had made the least progress toward improving child survival rates.

Iraq's mortality rate has soared by 150 percent since 1990. Even before the latest war, Iraq was plagued by electricity shortages, a lack of clean water and too few hospitals.

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