Bush Crimes Against Humanity

[DdC]

International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity
Committed by the Bush Administration
Not In Our Name Statement of Conscience info@nion.us
Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2006 00:33:14 -0600

PRESS CONTACT: Larry Everest 510-472-8484
COMMISSION OFFICE: 212-941-8086
http://www.commission@nion.us
http://www.bushcommission.org

PRESS ADVISORY February 2, 2006

USH ADMINISTRATION GUILTY OF CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY
SAYS COMMISSION OF INQUIRY;
ACTIVIST CONFRONTS RUMSFELD WITH VERDICT, SAYS "STEP DOWN!"B

Today the Bush Administration was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity for invading Iraq, instituting torture and indefinite detention, attacking efforts to control global warming and for deliberately failing to prevent devastation and loss of life during Hurricane Katrina.

These findings were released at the National Press Club by the International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration. The full text of can be found at http://www.bushcommission.org.

Shortly after the findings were released, activist Heather Hurwitz confronted Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld with the Commission's verdict during his press luncheon. Hurwitz, of World Can't Wait--Drive Out the Bush Regime, declared Rumsfeld and The Bush Administration were guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity and that thousands were gathering Saturday, February 4th in Washington to demand that they step down. http://www.worldcantwait.net

Ms. Hurwitz was quickly removed by security personnel. After she was led away, Rumsfeld joked, "We'll count her as undecided." When informed of Rumsfeld's comment, Hurwitz said, "war crimes and crimes against humanity are not joking matters. Rumsfeld's attitude typifies this administration's brazen immorality and lawlessness, and this is why it must step down."

Earlier, at the Commission's press conference, Ajamu Sankofa, Executive Director of Physicians for Social Responsibility-NY and one of the panel of jurists, stated "The historical significance of this tribunal is that American citizens, civil society, is demonstrating courage to stand up and speak its definition of the truth against a wholly orchestrated system of deliberate deceptions."

"This commission is attempting to change the level of discourse," said Abdeen Jabara, another panelist and former President of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. "We want people to understand Iraq is not simply a war of choice but an actual war of aggression from which flow certain legal consequences. Torture is often reported as 'abuse' rather than torture. So we need to change the way these items are talked about for people to face the fact of what this government is doing."

"The Commission is incredibly important for the future of the United States and really the world, because it's the people of America that are speaking to these very serious indictments," said panel member Ann Wright, a former US diplomat and retired US Army Reserve Colonel. Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern added, "Our German fore-bearers in the 1930s sat around, blamed their rulers, said 'maybe everything's going to be alright.' That is something we cannot do. I do not want my grandchildren asking me years from now, 'why didn't you do something to stop all this?'"

Brig. General Janis Karpinski, former UK Ambassador Craig Murray, and former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, were among the 44 witnesses presenting testimony at the Commission's two sessions. The Commission will later issue detailed findings, accompanied by full documentation.

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GWB secrecy "Executive Order 13233" The Impeachable Offense
Sun, 9 Mar 2003 Planttrees

John Dean was Nixon's White House Counsel. He makes the case here that BOTH Republicans and Democrats in the Congress can support impeachment against an imperial president for the following offense:

"Ironically, if President Clinton " not President Bush " had been the one who issued this new Executive Order, Republicans in Congress would no doubt have called for his impeachment for failure to execute the laws (that is, failure to abide by the Presidential Records Act.)Just as Clinton's assertions of privilege in court were repeatedly questioned " and even argued by some to be abuse of process or even obstruction of justice " Clinton's extension of Presidential privileges through an Executive Order would have faced heavy criticism. But when Bush takes the same action " especially now, with his new popularity " the criticism is highly modulated in tone."

HIDING PAST AND PRESENT PRESIDENCIES:
The Problems With Bush's Executive Order Burying Presidential Records
By JOHN DEAN ---- Friday, Nov. 09, 2001

On November 1, President George W. Bush signed his latest effort to govern by secrecy " Executive Order 13233. For good reason this Order has a lot of historians, journalists, and Congresspersons (both Republican and Democratic) upset. The Order ends 27 years of Congressional and judicial efforts to make Presidential papers and records publicly available. In issuing the Order, the President has pushed his lawmaking powers beyond their limits.



The Secret Presidency

As President watchers know, we have a President who likes secrecy.He has hired only tested leak-proof and loyal staffers, effectively sealing the Bush White House. He has had his records as the Governor of Texas hidden, shipping them off to his father's Presidential library, where they are inaccessible. He has stiffed the Congressional requests for information about how hedeveloped his energy policy " refusing to respond.

No President can govern in a fishbowl. But not since Richard Nixon went to work in the Oval Office has there been as concentrated an effort to keep the real work of a President hidden, showing the public only a scripted President, as now. While this effort was evident before the September 11th terrorist attacks, the events of that day have become the justification for even greater secrecy.The mystical veil of "national security" has been cast over much of the Bush administration. There were the secret arrests of terror-related suspects (currently over 1000 publicly unknown people). There was the expansion of the wiretap granting powers of a secret federal court hidden within the Department of Justice.

There was, and continues to be, an apparent policy of precluding news organizations and congressional leaders from access to anything other than managed and generic news about the war in Afghanistan.With all these moves, President Bush is brushing aside one historical tradition of openness after another. It is in this context that the President's latest action must be viewed.The Executive Order suggests that President Bush not only does not want Americans to know what he is doing, but he also does not want to worry that historians and others will someday find out. Certainly that is the implicit message in his new effort to preclude public access to Presidential papers " his, and those of all Presidents since the Reagan-Bush administration. There is, however, no justification whatsoever for this latest effort to hide the work of past, present, and future Presidents.

What Bush's Executive Action Means

There has been some confusion about the meaning of the President's actions in addressing Presidential papers. He has not repealed the existing law, as some have asserted, because he does not have that power. But he has sought to significantly modify the law, and made its procedures far more complex, cumbersome and restrictive. In doing so, he has exceeded his executive powers under the Presidential Records Act of 1978.White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer has tried, unsuccessfully, to spin Executive Order 13233 as doing nothing more than implementing the existing law, but in fact, the Order does much more. Perhaps unsurprisingly, when pressed during his briefing, Mr. Fleischer dodged the tough questions, or said "that's a matter for the lawyers." Fleischer contention that the Order is innocuous would not hold up under close scrutiny, and so he avoided that scrutiny.

Attorney Scott Nelson's Testimony Against the Order

One lawyer who appreciates exactly what has been done is Washington attorney Scott L. Nelson, who represents Public Citizen, the public advocacy group that flushed out the Nixon papers during several decades of litigation. Mr. Nelson knows these laws well because Richard Nixon was his client for 15 years " ironically, much of that time fighting Public Citizen. Indeed, Scott Nelson has been involved in the litigation that has shaped the body of law that President Bush has ignored in issuing his Executive Order.On November 6, Nelson appeared before a subcommittee of the House Committee on Government Reform, chaired by Congressman Stephen Horn, to address the new Bush Order. He explained in detail its flaws " which I have only summarized below, by highlighting a few examples of how the Bush Order ignores, or seeks to change, the law.

The Presidential Records Act

Under the 1978 Presidential Records Act, virtually all of a former President's records are to be made publicly available by the Archivist twelve years after that President leaves office. There are narrow exceptions for papers that still must be withheld for national security reasons.But the 1978 statute specifically states that among the material to be released by the Archives twelve years after a President leaves office are his confidential and private communications with his advisers (White House staff and Cabinet Departments). The existing law does not provide an exception for withholding "attorney-client" or "attorney work product" materials.

The New Executive Order: Adding Presidential Privileges to Those in the Act

Through Executive Order 13233, President Bush has sought to re-interpret the 1978 law. To put it briefly, the Order adds and enumerates privileges upon which a former or incumbent President can block release of a former President's materials.In claiming that the Order does not contradict the Records Act, Bush relies on a clause in the Act that states that it does not "confirm, limit, or expand constitutionally-based privileges which may be available to an incumbent or former President."Bush's lawyers read this clause as bringing into play all of the privileges the law has precluded. They cite specifically the Supreme Court's 1977 holding in Nixon v. Administrator of General Services, which says that a former President can exert executive privilege.The 1978 law only recognizes the enumerated privileges set forth in the Freedom Of Information Act. Nevertheless, Bush's Executive Order makes clear that he reads the law as entitling a former or incumbent President to assert a laundry list of privileges: the state secretsor national security privilege; the communications with advisors privilege, the attorney-client and attorney work product privileges, and the deliberative process privilege.



Shifting the Burden, and Adding Extra Procedures

President Bush has also shifted the burden from the former President to the person seeking the material. Under the Executive Order, the person seeking material must show that he should be given it; it is no longer necessary for the former President to show why material must not be disclosed.Bush's Executive Order also takes the Archivist of the United States out of the role of deciding if a former President's invocation of privilege should or should not be honored. That role is now assigned to the incumbent President. And obviously, it is likely that Presidents " wanting successors to honor their own invocations of privilege " might tend to accept former President's claims.The new Executive Order also creates an elaborate procedure for an incumbent President to block his predecessor from releasing documents. In addition, under Bush's order, a former President can indefinitely block release of his material, which is not possible under existing law.Another added benefit for former Presidents is this: When the incumbent President agrees with the former President about his decision to not release records, the incumbent President (through the Department of Justice) will defend the privilege against attack. That saves the former President what can be significant legal expenses for attorney's fees to contest the case in court.

A New Power for Vice Presidents

While Scott Nelson did not mention it in his testimony, the most remarkable change the Executive Order effects is that it gives not just a President, but also a Vice President, the power to invoke executive privilege over his papers.The Presidential Records Act includes Vice Presidential records. But it does not give a former Vice President the right to invoke executive privilege " for Congress does not have the power to do so.Indeed, under the Constitution, the executive privilege is unique to the President. Bush's Order is nothing less than absurd in purporting to grant the power to invoke this privilege to the Vice President, (and may only feed suspicion that Dick Cheney's role is more Presidential than may be appropriate to his office).

The Effect of The New Executive Order

President Bush has not stated why he revoked the existing Executive Order (Number 12667) addressing Presidential Records. President Reagan issued the Order in 1989 after studying the law for almost eight years of his presidency. Many believed Reagan's Order went beyond the law. Yet President Clinton did not challenge or change it during his eight years in office.Ironically, if President Clinton " not President Bush " had been the one who issued this new Executive Order, Republicans in Congress would no doubt have called for his impeachment for failure to execute the laws (that is, failure to abide by the Presidential Records Act.)Just as Clinton's assertions of privilege in court were repeatedly questioned " and even argued by some to be abuse of process or even obstruction of justice " Clinton's extension of Presidential privileges through an Executive Order would have faced heavy criticism. But when Bush takes the same action " especially now, with his new popularity " the criticism is highly modulated in tone.

Why Bush Apparently Issued the New Executive Order

What appears to have provoked President Bush's action is the fact that some 68,000 documents from the Reagan presidency were waiting at the White House when Bush arrived, ready for release by the National Archives.These documents passed the twelve-year deadline for public release on January 12, 2001, but their release has been stalled by the Bush White House until now. The documents are believed to contain records that Papa Bush, as Reagan's Vice President, is not happy to have made public. They also contain papers of others now working for Bush, who might be embarrassed by their release.Look for either Papa Bush, or someone designated by former President Reagan, to object to any of these 68,000 documents' release pursuant to the new Executive Order. If that happens, it will confirm my guess as to why the Order was written at this time. The effect will be to tie the release of those records up for years.The most certain effect of this new Order will be litigation. The Order will be tested in court, if the President does not withdraw it as requested by both Republicans and Democrats in the Congress. And should the Order not be overturned by the courts, I believe Congress will act. In fact, Congress could act even before the courts resolve these matters.In short, the prospects for Bush's Executive Order 13233 remaining the law of the land is slim to none.

A Troubling Penchant For Secrecy

More troubling than the Order's throwing a monkey wrench into the process of releasing Presidential papers, however, is the President's penchant for secrecy. Secrecy provokes the question of what is being hidden and why.If President Bush continues with his Nixon-style secrecy, I suspect voters will give him a Nixon-style vote of no confidence come 2004. While secrecy is necessary to fight a war, it is not necessary to run the country. I can assure you from firsthand experience that a President acting secretly usually does not have the best interest of Americans in mind. It is his own personal interest that is on his mind instead.The Bush administration would do well to remember the admonition of former Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan in his report on government secrecy: "Behind closed doors, there is no guarantee that the most basic of individual freedoms will be preserved. And as we enter the 21st Century, the great fear we have for our democracy is the enveloping culture of government secrecy and the corresponding distrust of government that follows."What Do You Think? Message Boards John Dean, a FindLaw columnist, is a former Counsel to the President of the United States. His most recent book, The Rehnquist Choice: The Untold Story of the Nixon Appointment That Redefined the Supreme Court, was just published by the Free Press.

Former White House counsel John W. Dean III knows a little about the perils of presidential cover-ups. He was one of the key players in Nixon's downfall. For his role in the Watergate cover-up he was charged with obstruction of justice and spent four months in prison. Three decades later, Dean has some harsh words about Bush's Executive Order 13233 - a move that makes Nixon's attempts at secrecy look like child's play.
http://www.guerrillanews.com/newswire/doc237.html

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[The Wisco Sha'man]

For somereason I feel like puking

[DdC]

Johnathan V. Last, Wanker of the Day
Jonathan V. Last is the online editor of the Weekly Standard who rather famously described the torture at Abu Ghraib: Worse happens in frat houses across America ... bad pictures with some guys playing naked Twister. It's bad, but we don't want to get too crazy. In addition to his enjoyment of the innocent pleasures of torture, he's a big fan of the drug war, and the ONDCP in particular. Continued...salon.com.html#a1389

"All propaganda must be so popular
and on such an intellectual level,
that even the most stupid of those
towards whom it is directed will understand it.
Therefore, the intellectual level of the propaganda
must be lower
the larger the number of people who are to be influenced by it."

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[Don Quixote]

thank you brother Ddc

for all your intelligent posts!i love to read them , even though they scare the 'caca ' out of me.this much i know - hiding from the truth and living in a fantasie world is a good , working definition of insanity.

facing the truth , acknowleging the truth , embracing the truth , no matter how scary it is or how horrible it is , is the only way to stay sane.

sadly i am as mad as a box of frogs , but if it was not for intelligent , well-informed and decent people like yourself i would be a lot crazier.

many thanx to you Ddc.

PEACE PEACE PEACE.