Home > Congress May be Prosecutable For Participating In Bush War Crimes

Congress May be Prosecutable For Participating In Bush War Crimes

by Open-Publishing - Friday 15 September 2006
4 comments

Wars and conflicts Justice USA

Members of Congress are thus on notice that minimum due process guarantees under customary international law must not be denied when Congress attempts to articulate what forms of procedure a military commission should adopt. If members participate in a plan to do so or are complicit in the deprivation of minimum due process guarantees under customary international law incorporated by reference in common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions or any other rights or protections under common Article 3 (e.g., concerning the right to humane treatment even at the hands of CIA interrogators), they would be participating in the denial of rights, protections, and duties under Geneva law. Such denials are war crimes.

Moreover, “wilfully depriving a protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial prescribed in the ... Convention” constitutes a more egregious “grave breach” of Geneva law. Denial of what the world knows are minimum due process requirements would also resonate against us like the crimes at Abu Ghraib and the Administration’s criminal torture memos and authorizations.

War crimes policies and authorizations are not merely a threat to constitutional government and our democracy. They threaten law and order more generally, violate our common dignity, degrade our military, place our soldiers and CIA personnel in harms way, thwart our mission, and deflate our authority and influence abroad. They can embolden an enemy, serve as a terrorist recruitment tool, lengthen social violence, and fulfill other terrorist ambitions.

Additionally, Congress should not attempt to provide domestic immunity for criminal violations of rights and protections contained in the Geneva Conventions. Tin-horn dictatorships attempt such forms of impunity, but the attempt would itself violate several treaties of the United States and (as Marcos, Milosevic, Noriega, Pinochet, various Argentinian generals, and others learned) have no legal effect abroad in foreign or international fora. Instead, Congress should protect the honor of the United States and maintain the rule of law.

http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forumy/2006/09/plea-to-congress-on-military.php

http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forumy/2006/09/plea-to-congress-on-military.php

Forum posts

  • This is a wonderful article. I’m so glad someone has the legal saavy to collect it and print it.

    THANK YOU.

  • How then do we actually hold congress and the Bush-Cheney Junta accountable? It seems they do whatever whenever and do not worry that they are going against the geneva convention.

    • as for how , one might pay attention to what happened south of us for 3 months after their election that was couped as well. take to the street. you get 5 million people to surround the white house and capitol, and not let them in or out, as per se what happened during the vietnam war and the johnson admin, they tend to start paying attention to what the people actually want.

    • Google this: War Crimes Act of 1996. This act by the US Congress literally makes the Geneva Convention US law. By reading this act, one will find that not only is the President vulnerable to charges, but Cheney, Rumsfeld and most especially Gonzales, the US Attorney General, the man who signed off on the military tribunals, are in danger of being charged for war crimes as well.
      I find it curious that this article does not mention this important piece of legislation at all.

      It would be an easy layup for any ambitious US special prosecutor to charge the ring masters of the Bush administration with breaking this federal law. There is a paper trial as long as the Nile to tie these goons together, charge them, lock them up and throw away the key.
      But where in the so-called ’Home of the Brave’ will you find any US attorney with the wherewithal and, most importantly, the balls to do this?
      Where is Frodo? Where is Samwise? Or does our country have no one in the Federal Government with any real moral courage?