Now What? Do we Prosecute?

Another American hero is born: Susan Crawford.

"We tortured Qahtani," Susan Crawford said in an interview with the Washington Post published on Wednesday. "His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that's why I did not refer the case" for prosecution.

Crawford, a retired judge who also worked in the Reagan administration, is the first senior Bush administration official responsible for reviewing practices at Guantanamo to publicly state that a detainee was tortured.

Go to Change.gov and send a note to Team Obama. They really need to hear our collective voices. If the Bush people have impunity, the fabric of civilization will unravel.

Psssst... Do Something

• Contact the Broadcast Media
  
• Contact the Newspapers
  
• Contact the US Senate
  
• Contact the House of Representatives

Sources:

U.S. official says Guantanamo detainee was tortured

The Fair Trial of George Bush

In an essay, "Why Bush and Cheney Should Get A Fair Trial," Nightprowlkitty at Docudharma poses the question, Why should they get a fair trial? Much of the piece presents variations on the theme:

One reason is because so many have not gotten a fair trial, both here in the USA and abroad.

Underlying that theme is a message that the legitimacy of the United States system of Justice depends on it.

If we do not hold those in power accountable for their crimes, then who will ever believe the average American has any chance of a fair trial? Why should our faith in our justice system continue?

This is a very powerful rationale for letting blind justice take its natural course, rather than having the natural flow dammed by the establishment. But there is another powerful reason.

Impunity of the elite from justice is a certain path to social breakdown. We know the crimes committed by George Bush and others. In the words of chief American prosecutor at Nuremberg, Robert H. Jackson:

To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.

The crimes are not in question. The only question is whether society will allow Bush to get away with these crimes. If it does, the rule-of-law will become illegitimate in the eyes of many more people and the thread of civil order will unravel further.

Put another way, do the elites want orderly Justice or disorderly Justice? I saw the dot-com bubble burst coming, I saw the Bush wars coming, I saw the housing bubble-burst coming, I see inflation coming and I see social breakdown coming if Bush and his associates are not prosecuted.

Psssst... Do Something

• Contact the Broadcast Media
  
• Contact the Newspapers
  
• Contact the US Senate
  
• Contact the House of Representatives

Prosecute Bush et al. Chapter 1

Below is my latest video (only 3 min). It builds upon commentary by Mike Papantonio and David Bender of the Ring of Fire radio show. Their point? Bill Clinton should have continued the Iran Contra investigations and prosecuted senior officials of the George H. W. Bush. Had Clinton done so, we would have avoided the disaster of George W. Bush.

Prosecute Bush et al. Chapter 1

Sources:

Audio and video from Air America radio, Ring of Fire program.