Reply #2: They hand us another "smoking gun" every time they assert "unitary authoritarian power"

[pat_k]

We have at least a half dozen smoking guns -- have had them for years. Like squatters, Bush and Cheney are laying claim to unconstitutional power through openly hostile possession. They do something unequivocally forbidden under our Constitution, publicly declare it is not forbidden, and dare Members of Congress to stop them. By refusing to impeach, Members of Congress legitimize the fascist fantasy that the American presidency is vested with absolute and unlimited power.¹

By the beginning of 2002 Bush and Cheney were openly engaging DOD intelligence and interagency officials in a conspiracy to commit War Crimes. The case for impeachment was already a "slam dunk."

In February 2002, when they established the Army Intelligence Joint Task Force 170 (J.T.F-170) to "interrogate" (torture) the people who were being captured/abducted and held secretly and indefinitely in Guantanamo, Bush and Cheney publicly declared their intent to violate the Geneva conventions when they arbitrarily designated their prison camps to be a "Geneva-free zones."²

There was never any doubt that the conventions applied to all the abductees/detainees held by the USA, whether on or off shore. In Hamdan, even a Supreme Court stacked with their fascist minions couldn't escape that inescapable reality when they ruled that the conventions applied (and with that ruling, declared that three years of War Crimes had already been committed -- something that had been self-evident all along).

Under the Geneva conventions, Parties to the treaty must enact and enforce the conventions under domestic law. To this end we enacted U.S. Code Title 18 section 2441 (War Crimes). When the Office of the President asserted the power to arbitrarily dictate which groups are, and are not, subject to the Geneva conventions, they gutted our War Crimes statute, an act that is in itself a War Crime.

We know J.T.F-170 employs "harsh interrogatio techniques" that constitute torture under U.S. Code,^3,4 but there is no need to argue or prove the point. When Bush and Cheney willfully and openly guted the War Crimes statute they became outlaws and made the USA an outlaw nation.

"We believed our own lunacy" is not a defense. There is a reason that violators of Geneva are subject to the penalty of death -- to give those with the power to inflict torture or wage a criminal war of aggression a compelling motive not to step anywhere near "the line." And to give those with the power to stop the crimes a compelling motive to do everything in their power to do so.

Failure to stop war crimes when you have the power to do so, is itself a war crime.

Congress has the power to stop the War Crimes by impeaching and removing Bush and Cheney. If they refuse to take up the fight, collectively or individually, win or lose, they don't just become morally complicit, they give other parties to the Geneva conventions cause to consider them War Criminals. (Perhaps if they will not impeach to fulfill their oath to "support and defend," they will do it so they can travel to other countries free of fear that they'll be apprehended as shipped off to the Hague.)


==========================================

1. From http://journals.democraticunderground.com/pat_k/22
   
   

   Bush and Cheney. . . are saying:

   We claim Unconstitutional and Un-American unitary authoritarian executive power to violate any Federal law at will to 'protect the nation.' International law doesn't apply to our actions because we say it doesn't. To prove these claims:
   
   

   • Here we are, committing War Crimes under U.S. Code (Title 18 section 2441) and international law. If we follow the Geneva conventions, we can't "protect the nation" so we aren't following them.
   
   
   • Here we are, violating FISA (Title 50, Section 1805). If we get warrants from the FISA courts, we can't "protect the nation" so we aren't getting warrants.
   
   
   • He we are, nullifying McCain's anti-torture amendment with a signing statement. (An amendment that passed the Senate 90-9). We will torture as we see fit to "protect the nation."
   
   
   • He we are nullifying a few hundred other provisions with signing statements. We are nullifying these particular provisions, but of course, we claim unitary authoritarian power to violate any law, whether previously nullified by signing statement or not.

   
   and so on

   Each of the above violations constitutes an independent, simple, clear, and complete case for impeachment of both Bush and Cheney (Both of them because they both promote the fascist fantasy of a unitary authoritarian executive). By "complete" I mean that staffers will find all the materials needed to make the case in the public record and that there are plenty of witnesses like Alberto Mora *general counsel of the United States Navy thru Jan 2006), ready and willing to testify.



2. February 7, 2002, the Office of the President published Fact Sheet: Status of Detainees at Guantanamo, in which they declared "The President has determined that the Geneva Convention applies to the Taliban detainees, but not to the al-Qaida detainees."


3. The criminally insane fascist fantasies of John Yoo summarizes key points and players from Alberto Mora's July 2004 memo to Vice Admiral Albert Church. Alberto Mora was General Counsel of the U.S. Navy (the most senior civilian lawyer for the Navy) from July 2001 to January 2006.


4. Gitmo interrogations spark battle over tactics: The inside story of criminal investigators who tried to stop abuse (By Bill Dedman, MSNBC, 23-Oct-2006)