Prosecute Bush No Matter What the Political Cost

by Scott Creighton  (reposted from Nov. 28, 2008)

Barack Obama is never going to prosecute George W. Bush for authorizing the use of torture, or so says Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy and Robert Litt, a former top Clinton administration Justice Department prosecutor.

“These things are not going to happen,” said Leahy, D-Vt.

“Both for policy and political reasons, it would not be beneficial to spend a lot of time hauling people up before Congress or before grand juries and going over what went on…To as great of an extent we can say, the last eight years are over, now we can move forward — that would be beneficial both to the country and the president, politically.” Robert Litt

Torture? Water boarding? These are the crimes of the Bush era you want investigated? That’s like wanting to prosecute Al Capone for misdemeanor assault.

Water boarding? The act of “pretending” to kill someone? Make them think they are going to die?

Well, if the new administration is hesitant about prosecuting that, how about say…, blowing the legs off children for money?  How’s that one grab you? Think that’s “prosecutable” these days,  or is this country just completely devoid of conscious, morality, and the rule of law?

How about targeting civilian infrastructure to create civil and social collapse on an epic scale? How about killing innocent men, women, and children and doing so with malice of forethought? How about causing untold levels of human suffering the likes of which can only be compared to the worst atrocities in history, all for the economic gain of certain multinational corporations?

How about “Shock and Awe“? How about that, Barack?

Do you think the human condition would be better served if we prosecute these criminals for that? Or would that not be “politically beneficial” to you?

What do you say?  Is the Bush family “too big to fail” or are they just too big for you?

Shock and Awe. Why isn’t anyone talking about that? How about the act of actually killing 100,000 Iraqi civilians in a manner that, by its own definition, is designed to terrorize the population of a nation and doing it for reasons that Bush and his staff just… made-up?

Just made them all up, right out of thin air. You think maybe that would be a prosecution worth spending a little political capital on?

“The Doctrine of Rapid dominance (Shock and Awe) is defined by its authors, Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade, as attempting “to affect the will, perception, and understanding of the adversary to fit or respond to our strategic policy ends through imposing a regime of Shock and Awe.” Wiki.

George W. Bush didn’t invade Iraq by accident; they came into office with that one goal in mind. We know that now. We have testimony from people who were there that Bush tasked them with finding a reason to invade Iraq since day 1(Jan. 2001).

“From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go.” Saddam’s removal is the first item of Bush’s inaugural national security meeting. Then-Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill later tells journalist Ron Suskind, “It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying, ‘Go find me a way to do this.” Mother Jones

We also know that Colin Powell lied to the UN, that Bush lied in the State of the Union Address, and that he and his staff lied to us 935 separate times to get us to kill innocent Iraqi civilians (that’s men, women, and children by the way).

We know that President Bush went on national television and talked about his new battle strategy called “shock and awe” that was unlike anything we have done before. Bush said it. Right on television. He said they were using this plan which means, he is responsible for the plan. We haven’t got to ask “what did he know?” We haven’t got to trace it back to him; he said it on television. It’s his plan.

The plan, “Shock and Awe” says, right in the little booklet, that it is designed to inflict massive collateral damage that will “shock” the citizens of the enemy nation into submission.

“Wolf Blitzer reported that in his 30 years of experience, he had never seen anything on the scale of Friday’s attack on the Iraqi capital.” CNN

There is no doubt that this plan, at its core, is terrorism as defined by the international rule of law.

In fact, according to the Pentagon, they hit 0% of their targets in the first 50 bombing missions of the war in Iraq.

Let me ask you, what is a “target” based on when the reason to go to war in the first place is a lie?

Weapons of mass destruction? Yes, I guess they missed those, because there were none and they knew that going in. Terrorists? Yes, I guess they “missed” those as well, because at that point, there were none of those in Iraq either and they knew that then too.

“Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld held a news conference at about 1:40 p.m. EST. He announced that the air war had begun, and he listed some of the coalition objectives in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Those objectives included defending Americans against Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction…He added that the allies would work to search for, capture, and drive out terrorists who had found safe harbor in Iraq…” CNN

So what, pray-tell, did they miss?

What did the most advanced targeting systems ever devised miss 100% of the time, in the first 50 bombing attacks (otherwise known as “Shock and Awe”)?

They missed… the lies. That’s what they missed. Because they weren’t there. There were no WMDs and “terrorists” hiding in Iraq, so of course they missed them.

What they hit were civilians, and the story about missing targets was just another lie.

They intended to hit civilian areas in order to create “Shock and Awe”; in order to terrorize the civilian population into submission for the OCCUPATION that was to follow. The following quote proves that since the very beginning of this illegal war, the department of defense had every intention for this “Shock and Awe” to have an effect on the population of Iraq, not just it’s leaders.

“Rumsfeld said that the strike had taken place “on a scale that indicates to Iraqis” that Saddam and his leadership were finished.”  CNN

This is the crime that needs to be prosecuted.

“Shutting the country down would entail both the physical destruction of appropriate infrastructure and the shutdown and control of the flow of all vital information and associated commerce so rapidly as to achieve a level of national shock akin to the effect that dropping nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had on the Japanese.”  Wiki

Not whether or not we think we might be able to trace an authorization to use certain types of illegal (or not illegal) torture on a suspected terrorist all the way back up past Rumsfeld, Rice, and Cheney to the big man. Yeah sure, we might be able to do that, if they all turn against Bush or get religion real quick.

But I don’t see that happening. Especially when more and more democrats seem to be lining up to defend them for political reasons.

But the easiest prosecution is always the most obvious; Bush talked about using “Shock and Awe” before March of 2003, he told his staff to find a way to go after regime change in Iraq in Jan. 2001, and he proceeded to lie through his teeth over and over again to make that happen.  Bush’s ”Shock and Awe” plan deliberately targeted civilians and critical infrastructure.

Bush is guilty of crimes against humanity and of waging an illegal War of Aggression against a sovereign nation for the purpose of gaining access to it’s natural resources.

Whether or not congress authorised it is meaningless because Bush orchestrated a campaign of manufactured information on which congress based it’s resolution to authorise the use of force. Therefore, the resolution of 2002 is based on fraudulent intelligence and is therefore invalid.

Whether or not Bush authorized the use of torture pales in comparison to the fact that they manufactured a war for the purposes of producing capital gains for certain companies. We can no longer afford the luxury of allowing ourselves to ignore this fact lest the next profit margin may depend on actions conducted closer to home.  Much closer.

Regardless of the next target, we must decide whether or not we really stand for the things that we teach our children that we stand for. Are “freedom”, “justice”, and “humanity” just buzz-words in a marketing campaign like “Yes We Can”? Or do they mean something more.

If Barackand his team have decided not to “look backward” at the crimes committed in our name, I daresay that isn’t his choice to make. It’s ours. Kind of like Pelosi taking impeachment off the table; it’s a catastrophic over-reach of authority.

And I for one don’t equate justice with “political benefits”, at least not when it comes to greedy and corrupt administrations misusing our trust and killing kids for profit.

That kind of evil must never be ignored or forgotten, no matter what the political cost.