It's been a very busy week for war crimes and war criminals.  In some good news for the cause of justice and the upholding of international law, Bosnian Serb mass murder Radavan Karadzic was finally captured in Belgrade, just days after the International Criminal Court charged Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir with crimes against humanity in Darfur.  But for Americans, those positive developments were offset by news that the Bush administration's own war crimes trials - and potential pre-emptive pardons - put the United States in the same discussion with Sudan and the Republica Serbska.

I read a diary post a few hours ago, describing and praising Obama's 83 years old, great uncle, Charles Payne;
http://www.dailykos.com/...

....for his service in WWII, his listening, despite the language barrier, to a just liberated prisoner, from a Nazi work (death) camp. Much deserved praise for Mr. Payne and his WWII service, much posted condemnation of WWII Nazi...and all violent oppression of innocents....but...
...does it end there? Where is the follow up, the curiousity as to how it could happen, how can it be prevented from happening again.

My three most recent DKOS diary posts, tried to describe and address some parts of the "disconnect"...

The Dhammapada teaches

Conquer the angry man by love.
Conquer the ill-natured man by goodness.
Conquer the miser with generosity.
Conquer the liar with truth.

While most of us understand the logic of this approach in theory, it far too rarely spills over into practice.

According to a Reuters report, the former "President" of the breakaway Bosnian Serb entity known as Republika Srpska, Radovan Karadžić, has been arrested by Serbian authorities. Along with Bosnian Serb commander, Gen. Ratko Mladić, Karadžić was wanted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague. Indictments were issued over a decade ago for war crimes committed during the conflict in Bosnia between 1992 and 1996.

So, I was surfing the net today, and came across Julius Streicher, founder and publisher of Der Stürmer, and the Trial against Hate Media in Rwanda.

And I thought about the invasion of Iraq.  Acase that can be made that it was a war crime, so people who played a central role in selling it, which would include Colin "the most overrated man in America" Powell, too, would appear to me to have some level of liability.

So, do any lawyers out there know if the Hague is in Karl's future.

'Cos I move like THEY do...

On a day of victory for the Democrats, America suffered yet another setback against it's reputation, and November can not come soon enough.

Now even the UK, a stalwart American ally, can not trust what they are told when it comes to assurances on torture - and in my opinion, by extension of this, a great many other things as well.

"The committee's conclusions amount to saying that we can no longer rely on assurances from a US administration that purports to uphold the civil and political standards of behaviour, while in fact kidnapping people and taking them to places where they may be maltreated." - Andrew Tyrie MP

Eight days ago, I saw the video of the second meeting Veterans for Peace held with Congressman John Conyers and ran completely out of patience.

The wrongdoing of this administration is clear. We have been presented with lie after lie and excuse after excuse by this complicit Congress for a lack of movement on the impeachment issue. The Bush administration has been cited with NINE subpoenas by Congress that they have completely ignored.

Yesterday the excuse was that "they aren't getting enough calls". Are we not supposed to know due to the media blackout on the subject that Veterans for Peace presented 23,000 signature petition for impeachment on June 11th? Are we supposed to be unable to see the 1011478 signatures here or the 249184 signatures here?

As I've long suspected based on various reports coming forward, it appears that during the testimony of John Ashcroft before Congress that high profile detainees such as Abu Zubaydah were abused, tortured and waterboarded months before the Bybee and Yoo Memos offering legal justification for such actions were even written.

As reported by Salon via Thinkprogress.

   But during questioning, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., pointed out that the abuse of Zubaydah had reportedly begun weeks, if not months, earlier. "Did you offer legal approval of interrogation methods used at that time ... prior to August 2002?"

   "I have no recollection of doing that at all," Ashcroft responded. He added that he did not remember anyone else at the Justice Department doing so either. He said later in the hearing that Zubaydah’s interrogation "was done without the opinion that was issued on the first of August."

Continued...

I read once, "funny how people get peaceful once dead".

If our Congress' capitulation to Bush is supposed to somehow sate his thirst for total power over us, and if by surrendering or acquiescing to his demands we are to believe that by scrapping the 4th Amendment he will not make any more assaults against our Constitution, then we are truly dead. Surrender equates to the death of our republic-and us, just a surely and as quickly as standing in front of a firing squad.

And all the rationalizing away of the consequences of the FISA capitulation and saying, "we'll get him next year" when Obama takes office is a copout, and well, it's simply living in a dream world or alternate reality. It shows a total ignorance of the lessons of past history. Follow my rant under the fold...

[David Dreier style freakout deleted (Thanks, David!  You restored my full belief in the nut of wingnut and Wallnuts.  I was concerned something sane might come out of the Rite-Ouing.  Now, not so much.)]

Morning music: Switchblade Symphony, Serpentine Gallery

My attempt to describe staying awake for 50 days, so you can understand what it means to be tortured by the CIA, Military Intelligence, psychologists and doctors:  How much meth would it take?  Even a kilo of glass wouldn't do it.  The most suicidal of methamphetamine addicts couldn't make it past 30 days without completely going insane and falling into a coma.  That's just a drug, though.  We are talking about torture, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls style of torture.  Hold still, girl, we're just going to cut off your...

What's that world?  Don't write another depraved description of torture used by the Bush regime?  Okay, I won't (it was going to be horrific... [so much fun, right Feith? {k- "only assholes don't support torture"}])

The fun's just getting started here.
Sources tell me to make the diary longer.
You got it.
Presto, in full craziness, after the flip.

For a while now the media has been covering how the International Criminal Court had issued a Arrest Warrant and had Indicted Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese president for War Crimes. Today Mark Levine, a professor of Middle East history at the University of California, drew the parallel to Bush.

"Bashir was directly responsible [for the activities of the militias]. He is the president. He is the commander-in-chief. Those are not just formal words. He used the whole state apparatus. He used the army; he enrolled the militia/Janjaweed. They all report to him. They all obey him. His control is absolute."

In such context, Bush is also directly responsible for the horrific disaster in Iraq.

Bush's imperial presidency, with its "Unitary Executive" and arrogation of the right to declare war from the constitutionally-appointed Congress, has similarly "used the whole state apparatus" to wage the Iraq war. He "enrolled" our soldiers and his military commanders who "all report to him".

Appearing earlier today on C-Span, Representative Jerrold Nadler stated that in a "just system" that was not politically charged we would have already impeached President George W Bush for war crimes.

Nadler has overseen many hearings on the administration's torture policies and has concluded that the administration acted unlawfully and committed "impeachable offenses". While this may not come as a hugely controversial finding to the KOS community, it is no doubt interesting to hear a U.S. Representative not named Dennis Kucinich making this argument on a platform like C-Span.

Watch the clip below and weigh in with your own feelings:

Once again McClatchy shows that it is the only print media on the ball for stories of actual significance.  In their Sunday edition, in a piece called Suspect Soldiers: Did Crimes in US Foretell Violence in Iraq? (via Common Dreams) Russell Carollo pens an in depth piece studying the links between waivers issued by the military to applicants whose background would "otherwise prevent them from serving."

follow me through the jump for the details...

The first time the term "war crimes" was used was during the trial of Capt. Henry Wirz, the former commandant of the notorius Confederate prison camp at Andersonville, Georgia. This how the New York Times described him on August 4, 1865...

"AN INCARNATE FIEND.; How Capt. Henry Wirz Murdered Our Prisoners. Vivid Picture of the Great Torture Pen. THE BLACK HOLE OF CALCUTTA OUTDONE. Fiendishness, Profanity and Obscenity of "Our Southern Brother." Infamy Never Equaled in the History of Man. Gen. Winder and His Son on Rotting Yankees. The Testimony of a Loyal Georgia Planter."

(Cross posted from Docudharma)

The likely outcome of the Bush-led Republican raid on America astonishes me.  As America’s national nightmare approaches the eight-year mark, the Bush administration is apparently going to escape unpunished.  They are going to skate scot-free.  They have brazenly committed major crimes against the people of the United States, not to mention the terrible things they have done to much of the rest of the world...and these bastards are going to skate scot-free.  

What Johnathan Turley says, with heavy heart and disbelief we've gone this far as a Country, should be brought into public discussion and possible implementation, as our Representatives seem to be hell bent on going along with the administrations shredding of the Constitution and the Laws of this Country!

According to an article by Scott Shane in today's New York Times, a new book by New Yorker counterterrorism reporter Jane Mayer contains references to a secret report by the Red Cross that warned that the abuse of high value detainees such as Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah "constituted war crimes, placing the highest officials in the U.S. government in jeopardy of being prosecuted."

According to Shane, Mayer's book, "The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals," contains new details on the CIA's detention program, as well as interrogation methods and other tactics in the "War on Terror".