Bushite War Criminals Should be Concerned About Travel Plans After Next January
While Bush and company correctly expect no trials for war crimes in the US, they shouldn't be too complacent about traveling across the Pond after January 20, 2009.
Scott Horton writes at The New Republic: "Tuesday's Senate Armed Services Committee hearing provided the latest evidence that top Bush administration officials directed the use of torture techniques on detained suspected terrorists...And in April, ABC News reported that officials including Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, and Donald Rumsfeld had held a series of meetings to discuss the use of specific torture techniques on detained suspect terrorists...
"At the same time, Philippe Sands's new book The Torture Team reveals the falsity of White House claims that the push to introduce torture techniques came from interrogators in the field. Sands demonstrates that the decision to use techniques like waterboarding came from the top, and tracks the elaborate scheme to make it appear that the practices began with a request from Guantánamo.
"These disclosures and others have put the issue of war crimes on the front burner...
",,,there are ample theoretical grounds for a war-crimes prosecution. But the action requires political will, which makes it quite unlikely to happen in the United States. First, the Bush administration has, under the legal stewardship of Addington, Alberto Gonzales, and John Ashcroft, taken a number of clever steps designed to make it difficult for any future prosecutor to charge them for war crimes. In fact, the administration's legal architects recognized from the outset that their dismissive attitude toward the law of war was not widely shared. Some of the earliest legal policy documents crafted by the administration were focused on avoiding or obstructing just such action by future prosecutors. The entire controversy surrounding the Office of Legal Counsel and the Jay Bybee-John Yoo opinions turns on just this point.
"...leading figures in the Bush administration will loudly decry any effort to enforce the law of war against policymakers as an act of partisan political retribution. Still, it is quite possible that the key administration figures will have their records scoured very closely. Did they engage in acts that constitute a criminal violation of the public trust? Did they lie to Congress as it attempted to probe the detainee abuse issue?
"But the focus of prosecutorial efforts will most likely be beyond America's frontiers. War crimes are subject to a principle of universal jurisdiction--that is, they may be enforced by any nation. Moreover, when one nation takes legal steps to create immunity for its political leaders, one widely recognized principle of international law holds that other nations should then take action. So the Bush administration's efforts to immunize its own may work in the U.S., but they will have a boomerang effect, creating criminal jurisdiction in other countries.
"Is it likely that prosecutions will be brought overseas? Yes. It is reasonably likely. Sands's book contains an interview with an investigating magistrate in a European nation, which he describes as a NATO nation with a solidly pro-American orientation which supported U.S. engagement in Iraq with its own soldiers. The magistrate makes clear that he is already assembling a case, and is focused on American policymakers. I read these remarks and they seemed very familiar to me. In the past two years, I have spoken with two investigating magistrates in two different European nations, both pro-Iraq war NATO allies. Both were assembling war crimes charges against a small group of Bush administration officials. 'You can rest assured that no charges will be brought before January 20, 2009,' one told me. And after that? 'It depends. We don't expect extradition. But if one of the targets lands on our territory or on the territory of one of our cooperating jurisdictions, then we'll be prepared to act.' "
The Bush administration officials who pushed torture will need to be careful about their travel plans.
That justice would eventually be served and these Bush administration war criminals would be prosecuted offers some hope. Too bad it's not as simple as Captain Jean-Luc Picard of Star Trek: The Next Generation, by way of the Hornblower novels of CS Forester, saying: "Make it so."
Scott Horton writes at The New Republic: "Tuesday's Senate Armed Services Committee hearing provided the latest evidence that top Bush administration officials directed the use of torture techniques on detained suspected terrorists...And in April, ABC News reported that officials including Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, and Donald Rumsfeld had held a series of meetings to discuss the use of specific torture techniques on detained suspect terrorists...
"At the same time, Philippe Sands's new book The Torture Team reveals the falsity of White House claims that the push to introduce torture techniques came from interrogators in the field. Sands demonstrates that the decision to use techniques like waterboarding came from the top, and tracks the elaborate scheme to make it appear that the practices began with a request from Guantánamo.
"These disclosures and others have put the issue of war crimes on the front burner...
",,,there are ample theoretical grounds for a war-crimes prosecution. But the action requires political will, which makes it quite unlikely to happen in the United States. First, the Bush administration has, under the legal stewardship of Addington, Alberto Gonzales, and John Ashcroft, taken a number of clever steps designed to make it difficult for any future prosecutor to charge them for war crimes. In fact, the administration's legal architects recognized from the outset that their dismissive attitude toward the law of war was not widely shared. Some of the earliest legal policy documents crafted by the administration were focused on avoiding or obstructing just such action by future prosecutors. The entire controversy surrounding the Office of Legal Counsel and the Jay Bybee-John Yoo opinions turns on just this point.
"...leading figures in the Bush administration will loudly decry any effort to enforce the law of war against policymakers as an act of partisan political retribution. Still, it is quite possible that the key administration figures will have their records scoured very closely. Did they engage in acts that constitute a criminal violation of the public trust? Did they lie to Congress as it attempted to probe the detainee abuse issue?
"But the focus of prosecutorial efforts will most likely be beyond America's frontiers. War crimes are subject to a principle of universal jurisdiction--that is, they may be enforced by any nation. Moreover, when one nation takes legal steps to create immunity for its political leaders, one widely recognized principle of international law holds that other nations should then take action. So the Bush administration's efforts to immunize its own may work in the U.S., but they will have a boomerang effect, creating criminal jurisdiction in other countries.
"Is it likely that prosecutions will be brought overseas? Yes. It is reasonably likely. Sands's book contains an interview with an investigating magistrate in a European nation, which he describes as a NATO nation with a solidly pro-American orientation which supported U.S. engagement in Iraq with its own soldiers. The magistrate makes clear that he is already assembling a case, and is focused on American policymakers. I read these remarks and they seemed very familiar to me. In the past two years, I have spoken with two investigating magistrates in two different European nations, both pro-Iraq war NATO allies. Both were assembling war crimes charges against a small group of Bush administration officials. 'You can rest assured that no charges will be brought before January 20, 2009,' one told me. And after that? 'It depends. We don't expect extradition. But if one of the targets lands on our territory or on the territory of one of our cooperating jurisdictions, then we'll be prepared to act.' "
The Bush administration officials who pushed torture will need to be careful about their travel plans.
That justice would eventually be served and these Bush administration war criminals would be prosecuted offers some hope. Too bad it's not as simple as Captain Jean-Luc Picard of Star Trek: The Next Generation, by way of the Hornblower novels of CS Forester, saying: "Make it so."
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