The Noose Tightens

Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz & Co wil stand beside Stalin and Hitler and Mao and Gengis Khan & Co in history.

I would suggest that those nations interested in capturing torturers not publish that fact. Then those culprits would have to sweat out if the country they may want to travel to may be their last trip.
As far as waterboarding not being torture, our courts, both civilian and military have refuted that method for well over a century. The people we should have in prison now should be the top eschelon who claimed it is not torture even though our courts have sentenced others to death for the same procedure.

If our jurisprudence system after WWII sentenced Japanese users of waterboarding to death for that vile act, why should advocates in positions of power who sanctioned such action be exempt. Why are those at the low end of the totem pole now incarcerated and those who backed waterboarding walk free. I might suggest that any nation interested in punishing torturers not have their country listed as one that will punish the torturers, and bide their time until the culprits land on their soil. Then those brave cowards will never know if any travel they may undertake may be their last one.

The one thing seemingly overlooked from this blog whether pro or con is the rule of the law. All the ideological arguments on both sides amount to very little, what matters here is the rule of law. The Bush administration time and time again skirted and flagrantly abused both government and international laws and when they were outed on each account used a rubber stamp congress or worse yet a threatened congress to make whatever violation legal and non-retroactive.
So here we are after 8 years of tyranny and very little can be done to them,simply because they made it all legal or in some cases literally changed and re-defined the national term and or meaning in federal papers and documents.So what's left? You still have international laws and court cases but all that will be done with that is unless we extradite them to that country in question they will just never set foot in that country that wants to prosecute them legally.
And they will just wait it out for a future leader of said countries to pardon them sometime down the road.

The one thing seemingly overlooked from this blog whether pro or con is the rule of the law. All the ideological arguments on both sides amount to very little, what matters here is the rule of law. The Bush administration time and time again skirted and flagrantly abused both government and international laws and when they were outed on each account used a rubber stamp congress or worse yet a threatened congress to make whatever violation legal and non-retroactive.
So here we are after 8 years of tyranny and very little can be done to them,simply because they made it all legal or in some cases literally changed and re-defined the national term and or meaning in federal papers and documents.So what's left? You still have international laws and court cases but all that will be done with that is unless we extradite them to that country in question they will just never set foot in that country that wants to prosecute them legally.
And they will just wait it out for a future leader of said countries to pardon them sometime down the road.

It is astonishing that we could, in good conscience, even imagine letting these war criminals off the hook by constitutional interpretation or by media complicity. What makes America so special that we can reconcile a fraudulently elected administration flout international law and our own laws with little more than a shoulder shrug? What would we do, and indeed what HAVE we done, when despots in other countries (Saddam comes to mind) behave so brazenly? On the other hand, we have been more than willing to give a pass to torturerist regimes in Central and South America, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, China, Indonesia, among many more. Our day as a beacon of democracy, freedom, and moral authority is over. We no longer deserve the respect of other nations or for that matter, our own people. Because we are such a narcissistic and hedonistic culture, it seems we do not even see the irony. That is a sure sign of impending decline. That we would, as a nation founded on justice, allow our leaders to escape the very accountability they have demanded of everyone from the poor and downtrodden to the dictators of the world is as unfathomable as it is unconscionable. As Thomas Jefferson said, "Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just." God help us, .

Bush is no more eligible to pardon his administration's- and his own- offenses against humanity than Augustus Pinochet, Adolph Hitler, or even Saddam Hussein. He is guilty of prosecuting an illegal war, abridging human rights without so much as a whisper of conscience, suspending habeas corpus and posse commitatus, the essential protections we US citizens have against criminals like himself, and committing high crimes and misdemeanors against our own Constitution. These things are not only the essential definition of Treason, but also universally recognised Crimes Against Humanity. The United States has been led by the people in this administration [and the PNAC crew] from being The Light of Liberty to becoming a corporatist/fascist state guilty of international criminal acts.

We have become the very thing our grandparents fought against in "the Good War".

The corporate media continues to try to apply veneer to thoroughly rotten wood, and then wonders why they can no longer sell their "news products" to people who want actual information.

If there is to be real change, then there has to be a total repudiation of what went on the past eight years. What that means is holding those in charge accountable. Other countries have the means (under universal juridiction laws) to indict these criminals, but we don't? They should not be allowed to "slither" away without paying their dues. They committed crimes, atrocities and in order for us to heal and put this past us they have to be held accountable. Apparently, our members of Congress only were thinking about election and re-election, and forgot the oath they swore when they took office, "to protect and defend the Consitution". Well, they didn't. It might have been politically expedient, but it was not in the interest of our nation.

Along with prosecutions and executions, the families of the Bush Administration need to be stripped of all their material wealth which needs to be returned to the United States Treasury. Nothing less than complete disenfranchisement of these non-human murderers and their associates is to be tolerated. Americans must drive a stake through the hearts of the cruel murderous maurauders. A lesson needs to be deeply cut into their legacy so as to discourage those who would take their path to filth. Banishment of everyone associated with the Administration of George W. Bush to the desert jails of Joe Arpaio. Hell on earth for these scumbags, crawling on their bellies in pink underwear in hot desert sand eating slop. Their misery needs to be televised to remind those who would follow in their footsteps that there are indeed consequences for extreme criminality while holding high office. No more slack!

A pardon won't protect them. According to the Nuremberg Principles:

Principle II

The fact that internal law does not impose a penalty for an act which constitutes a crime under international law does not relieve the person who committed the act from responsibility under international law.

Thier much bigger crime was their fraudulent case for the war, which has left thousands of Americans dead or maimed for life and cost at least a trillion in taxpayer money.

Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld should be in prison awaiting execution for war crimes,
treason, torture, violations of international law, and violations of the U. S. Constitution.