Robert Switzer

When Bush is in trouble, he changes the law! Bush is proposing “amendments that would eliminate the risk of prosecution for political appointees, CIA officers and former military personnel for humiliating or degrading war prisoners.” The Supreme Court decided in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, that not honoring the Geneva Conventions was illegal.

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People have deep feelings and long memories when it comes to war crimes like torture, kidnapping, and extra-judicial execution. Pinochet may be 90-plus and drooling, but he will probably do time just the same. Last year the Kirchner government in Argentina revoked an amnesty that had been created to protect the perpetrators of The Dirty War from prosecution after they left power. And in June, prosecution began against a former Provincial Police Chief of Investigations who allegedly ran a secret detention and torture center during the military dictatorship there.

Former National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger is wanted for questioning in both Spain and France about a variety of issues relating to the former military dictatorships of both Chile and Argentina. In 2002, Judge Balthazar Garzon, of Spain, supported by other judges in France, asked Interpol to detain Kissinger for questioning during his visit to London.

If I were laying odds, I’d make it about even that Kissinger will at least be detained, and possibly do time sometime before he dies.

I think the Bush Administration sees the handwriting on the wall. The upcoming congressional elections will probably not go their way. I think they are laying the groundwork to protect themselves from prosecution. But even if they succeed, the success will only be temporary. Any immunities they construct for themselves will eventually be overturned. And if any of them, or their minions are guilty of war crimes they will be brought to justice and punished.

Why doesn’t this surprise me? In retrospect, invading Iraq seems to have been a very bad idea indeed. But at least this mis-conceived military adventure has been prosecuted with inefficiency, corruption, arrogance and incompetence.

God bless the young men and women who are charged with the conduct of this war on a day-to-day basis. Given the quality of the leadership they’ve been given, each day certainly has to be an uphill struggle. My heart goes out to them and nothing would make me happier than seeing each and every one of them come back home alive and intact.

A few months back, a career civil servant named Bunnatine Greenhouse appeared on the PBS News Magazine ‘Now’ to describe how she had been intimidated and demoted for calling attention to questionable practices surrounding no-bid contracts awarded to Halliburton-KBR for the reconstruction of Iraq.

More on Ms. Greenhouse from The Washington Post can be found here

So while an enormous amount of money was allocated and spent to date on Iraqi reconstruction, Iraq remains largely in shambles, with no infrastructure to speak of, and we taxpayers can be assured that a significant amount of the money allocated has disappeared down the rathole of waste and corruption created by the Bush Administration.

When it comes to warfare, some amount of waste and even fraud might be excused in the name of expediency. But the current campaign in Iraq is expensive, wasteful and ineffective.

The recent success of Hezbollah against the Israeli army, arguably the best conventional force in the world, is chilling and thought-provoking.

What we’re currently doing doesn’t work. Maybe we should try doing something else.

All US military detainees, including those at Guantanamo Bay, are to be treated in line with the minimum standards of the Geneva Conventions.

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A Congressional committee subpoenaed Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Friday at the request of U.S. Rep. Christopher Shays(R).

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“What rational person could oppose using birth control to prevent pregnancy?”

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“The real blockbuster in the Hamdan decision is the court’s holding that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention applies to the conflict with Al Qaeda â�� a holding that makes high-ranking Bush administration officials potentially subject to prosecution under the federal War Crimes Act.”

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I was glad to hear that the US Supreme Court has ruled that the Bush Administration cannot use Military Tribunals to try the detainees at Guantanamo.

Hopefully, this will lead to either trial or release for the people held there and reclassification as either Prisoners of War or defendants in criminal court.

I’ve never been comfortable with the idea of ‘unlawful combatants’, a designation that could arbitrarily be applied to anyone, completely outside of due process and the rule of law.

Creating a designation such as this and holding people without charge and due process is a step down the slippery slope that leads to extra-judicial detention, torture, and execution.

The CONADEP (National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons) report, written in 1984 by a commission investigating the ‘DirtyWar’ in Argentina after the military junta who were largely responsible had stepped down makes for some interesting reading, especially the section on the thought process and underlying ideology of the military government in this ‘war against subversion and terror’.

The US Supreme Court has ruled that the Bush administration does not have the authority to try terrorism suspects by military tribunal. In a landmark decision, the court upheld the challenge of Osama Bin Laden’s ex-driver against his trial at the US facility at Guantanamo.

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