Tuesday, May 21st, 2013

International Justice Group Takes Aim at Bush Officials

By
Monday, November 16, 2009 at 10:53 am

The International Center for Transitional Justice usually focuses on bringing to light and holding perpetrators accountable for such heinous crimes as genocide, mass murder and systematic torture, often in far-off war-torn countries with dismal human rights records.

So it’s significant that today they’ve released a report calling on the United States to follow its legal obligation to prosecute the leaders in the U.S. government responsible for the “torture, cruel and inhuman treatment” of detainees during its own “war on terror.”

“Investigations and prosecutions should focus on the engineers of official policies that were the basis of illegal abuses, to send a clear signal that the absolute prohibition of torture and the ban on cruel and inhuman treatment will be respected by the United States,” the report said, adding that if the U.S. government fails to initiate prosecutions, then other countries will take up the cause. Italy, for example, recently convicted 23 Americans for their involvement in “extraordinary renditions.”

“Failing to hold accountable the architects and overseers of a policy of abuse undermines the U.S. justice system and the fundamental idea that law provides a check on power,” Alex Boraine, acting president of ICTJ, said in a statement today. “As we have seen in countless examples around the world, abuse of power by allowing torture and cruel treatment can tear down what the law and democracy have built.”

While there’s support among many Democrats for some sort of accountability, whether through criminal prosecutions or an independent truth commission, Republicans vehemently resist any suggestion that the Bush administration even did anything wrong.

Since Attorney General Eric Holder announced on Friday that the Justice Department would try the alleged 9/11 co-conspirators in a U.S. federal court in New York, some Republicans have denounced the move as an illegitimate attempt to put the Bush administration, rather than the terrorists, on trial.

“The government is going to try to put Khalid Sheik Mohammed on trial. Defense lawyers will try and put the government on trial,” former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani told Fox News.

Tom Ridge, head of the Department of Homeland Security during the Bush administration, added that any effort to use the 9/11 trial to “delve into a fishing expedition” to go after Bush officials is “wrong and unconscionable.”

Meanwhile, in The Wall Street Journal today, former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo — a potential target of any future criminal prosecution of Bush officials — attacked the decision to try the 9/11 detainees in federal court as a dangerous mistake. “The treatment of the 9/11 attacks as a criminal matter rather than as an act of war will cripple American efforts to fight terrorism,” Yoo wrote. “It is in effect a declaration that this nation is no longer at war.”

Categories & Tags: Civil Rights| National Security| Torture| U.S.| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

Comments

24 Comments

Tweets that mention International Justice Group Takes Aim at Bush Officials « The Washington Independent -- Topsy.com
Pingback posted November 16, 2009 @ 11:00 am

[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by GarCasey and WashIndependent, Star Struck. Star Struck said: RT @GarCasey RT @TWI_news: International Justice Group Takes Aim at Bush Officials http://bit.ly/4zvM5n [...]

uberVU - social comments
Trackback posted November 16, 2009 @ 11:19 am

Social comments and analytics for this post…

This post was mentioned on Twitter by TWI_news: International Justice Group Takes Aim at Bush Officials http://bit.ly/4zvM5n...

ostrom808
Comment posted November 16, 2009 @ 11:19 am

To paraphrase: The wheels of justice grind slowly, yet they grind exceedingly small.

These criminals will receive justice. In time. The collective conscience of the world will find a way.

monkey99
Comment posted November 16, 2009 @ 11:58 am

Great! The rest of the world does what WE should have done. Justice in this age ain't what it used to be.

Name
Comment posted November 16, 2009 @ 12:20 pm

When, then, do they prosecute the Domestic Internal Criminals that have provided entry of these Obvious Jihadic Terrorists into the borders of the U.S., and under the guise of a political manifesto that requires a numbered allotment of representative cultures from around the world be housed and quartered in these United States of America, blindly granting them all Constitutional Rights and Privileges, and requiring no allegiance from them other than they will take the employment, education, health care, social fundings of all natural born American citizens? For surely it is those who call themselves the Representatives and Senators of The People Who Have Invited These Terrorist Soldiers Into the Protected Refuge of This Nation, and These Jihadic Terrorists are Under the Direct Employ of Those Traitors, and Those Traitors Are To Be Held Equally or Primarily Responsible for the Heinous Attempt to Overthrow This Nation By Treacherous Force.

reyhinckley
Comment posted November 16, 2009 @ 4:36 pm

If we don't offer our enemies the same rights as our own citizens then we are just making a mockery of our constitution that was designed to treat all people with dignity. Do we need to declare independence from our “constitution” because all people are created equal, except that maybe the Right wing was created more equal?

monkey99
Comment posted November 16, 2009 @ 7:10 pm

reyhinckley,

Absolutely. The Constitution must apply to everyone, or it means nothing. Apparently, the Right NOW has a problem with it. Seems they are the ones being anti-American.

Remember, people, the “terrorists” are innocent until PROVEN guilty. That won't take much to prove, but leave it to our courts to decide.

ptrkL
Comment posted November 16, 2009 @ 7:31 pm

“Leaving it to our courts to decide” entails handing over another case paramount for justice to a justice system that has already been infiltrated and laid barren for justice. For 'today's justice system' does not meet constitutional requirement of 'time is of the essence” but it does meet 'justice delayed is justice denied.' Again, America's enemies are making the decisions and they are decisions that fall in weight of beneficence to the infidels that have conspired with heretofore unidentifed domestic co-conspirators, and they apparently respond to comments within journalistic endeavors with their usual anarchal dissertations as to how this justice system should be applied. YOU ARE THE ENEMY OF AMERICAN JURISPRUDENCE, AND IT IS YOU THAT SEEK TO BRING AMERICATO HER KNEES WITH YOUR JUDICIAL TAMPERING. Just consider the arguments of Venue alone. How many decades will that take, especially in t light of precedent? And now that you have allowed foreign dissidents to control your borders, your best advice is to house them within 150 miles of their American-based co-jihadists, what is now apparently a minimum securtiy prison, and we are asked to believe for the reason that it will create 3k jobs for those locally marginalized by American-based co-jihadists. And you are the educated that make national and international security decisions for United States of America. These majority opinions, so-called politically correct(if you are a jihadist perpetuator) Are exactly the reason we have experienced another slaughter at Ft. Hood, and in addition to all the other slaughters this Nation has experienced at your most accomplished treacherous hands.

ptrkL
Comment posted November 16, 2009 @ 7:33 pm

You Must be on the Sarah Palin campaign committe…

reyhinckley
Comment posted November 17, 2009 @ 5:06 am

No, I'm not a Repulican. I am not even a Democrat anymore even though that is the party that I am associated with.

monkey99
Comment posted November 17, 2009 @ 1:13 pm

Name,

Go back and read the Constitution. I mean REALLY read it. You have missed the entire meaning of the document. If you truly consider yourself an American, then prosecutions MUST take place, or we will have treated them as badly as they did us. And what would that say about us as a country?.

You inferred that someone here was a Repub. Are you Christian? It would seem so, what with the vitriol you display toward those who did nothing to you, personally. What's more is that the families of the 9-11 victims want prosecutions, too. Are you willing to tell THEM what you think?

Kevin Schmidt
Comment posted November 19, 2009 @ 6:01 am

John Yoo is right! We are still at war… with the upper 1% plutocracy and their multinational corporations, who do not manufacture anything in American anymore, yet literally own our politicians in D.C.

This is treason! We must take back our country! WE THE PEOPLE are the true sovereignty in America. Our politicians work for us and must do as we say! They are not the boss of us, we are the boss of them!

tom
Comment posted November 19, 2009 @ 9:25 am

The thing that people seem to be missing here is that KSM was not waterboarded to get him to confess. He was waterboarded to get him to tell us about possible future attacks. His treatment is not likely to be relavant to the issue of his guilt and thus is not likely to be an issue in court.

Kevin Schmidt
Comment posted November 19, 2009 @ 12:43 pm

And just how do you know they are our enemies without a fair trial? Your attitude is the same as the leaders of Communist China and other brutal regimes. It is a very dangerous attitude indeed.

The U.S. Constitution was written for everyone in the U.S., not just for U.S. citizens. If you ever get a chance to read it, you will see that this is true, and you will understand that your present attitude is what makes a mockery of our Constitution.

By the way, the correct way to spell Constitution is with a capital “C”, not a lower case “c”.

Kevin Schmidt
Comment posted November 19, 2009 @ 12:47 pm

You must mean “alleged criminals”, or more correctly, “suspects”.

They don't become “criminals” until after a conviction at a fair trial by jury. That is the law under the Constitution, which is the Supreme Law of the Land.

ostrom808
Comment posted November 19, 2009 @ 6:43 pm

Actually, those I believe to have participated in criminal behavior can be termed criminals. Merriam-Webster's backs me up.

danielgkelley
Comment posted November 19, 2009 @ 7:34 pm

AT LAST! Mr Yoo's comments exactly reveal the emperor's new clothes of deception since 9-11. That tragic event was a criminal act, legally identical to the Oklahoma City bombing a few years before. This nation (USA) is not now and has not been at war for two simple reasons; the state of war is a legally defined relationship between two governmental entities, not a government and anyone else it may choose; and secondly, no Constitutionally required procedures were followed by the United States in starting this abysmally immoral misadventure. The inescapable fact is that the regime that took power in defiance of the Constitution subsequently committed innumerable acts, put in place policies, and initiated programs that were and are in violation of long standing laws which reflect true American values and ideals. We the People of the United States are legally and morally required to demand that those perpetrators pay the penalties prescribed by law.

Max_1
Comment posted November 20, 2009 @ 2:33 am

Tough on terrorism means being able to exercise the mechanisms that are used to LEGALLY bring terrorists and criminals to some tough Justice. Skirting that legal is not only criminal but cowardly.

Hawaiianstyle
Comment posted December 14, 2009 @ 1:45 pm

I CERTAINLY would listen to all the critics that are afraid of trying terrorists in REAL US courts. They obviously have neutral, impartial and uninvolved reasons for their point of view.

One wonders how so many “intelligent” people can forget that someday they will be out of power and then a day of reckoning will come. Well I guess that is the same with all dictators, kings and the others who try to support them in their belief that they are infallible.

Reckoning comes, maybe not in the time of Lyndon Obama Johnson, but you can't forever hide history under a fig leaf of national security. Some day the truth will come out.

“The moving finger writes and having writ moves on, nor all your wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all your tears wash out a word of it…”

Hawaiianstyle
Comment posted December 14, 2009 @ 6:45 pm

I CERTAINLY would listen to all the critics that are afraid of trying terrorists in REAL US courts. They obviously have neutral, impartial and uninvolved reasons for their point of view.

One wonders how so many “intelligent” people can forget that someday they will be out of power and then a day of reckoning will come. Well I guess that is the same with all dictators, kings and the others who try to support them in their belief that they are infallible.

Reckoning comes, maybe not in the time of Lyndon Obama Johnson, but you can't forever hide history under a fig leaf of national security. Some day the truth will come out.

“The moving finger writes and having writ moves on, nor all your wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all your tears wash out a word of it…”

adidas online
Comment posted June 3, 2010 @ 1:02 am

Thanks for this interesting post,i like it.

Dora Vandervoort
Comment posted June 4, 2011 @ 2:14 am

There must be a lot of different opinions on this post,it is a well written article.
http://driver-assist.info

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.