Reply #79: COUNTERPUNCH: The Posse Gathers - Bush War Crimes

[L. Coyote]

The Posse Gathers - Bush War Crimes
By JEREMY BRECHER and BRENDAN SMITH
http://www.counterpunch.org/brecher12062005.html

Diverse forces are assembling to bring Bush administration officials to account for war crimes. .....

American War Crimes in Iraq and Beyond

The charge that the U.S. attack on Iraq was a war crime was raised even before the war began. More than 1,000 law professors and U.S. legal institutions organized in opposition to the U.S. war crime of launching an "aggressive war in violation of the UN Charter" against Iraq. Violation of international law was also a central theme in worldwide demonstrations against the war. The attack on the illegality of the war has been revived by the leak of the Downing Street memo; 130 members of Congress joined Rep. John Conyers in demanding that the Bush administration come clean about the invasion-supported by a half million citizen signatures gathered in barely a week. "Scootergate" is fundamentally about the cover-up of White House lies justifying the war.

Illegal detention and torture are also war crimes. Starting with the exposure of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, cascading revelations have established that these cases exemplify a pattern of abuse authorized at the highest levels of government. Human rights groups like the Center for Constitutional Rights, the American Civil Liberties Union, and Human Rights First sued in U.S. and foreign courts against Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and others for breaching the U.S. Constitution and the Geneva Conventions. ......