But its not a war crime...

because we say its so, ...pptthhtt!

The US military is looking into whether an American marine in Falluja shot dead a severely wounded Iraqi insurgent at point-blank range. The images were taken by an NBC reporter embedded with the US troops in the Sunni city under assault. BBC >

Alberto Gonzales, the oh-so-not moderate nominee for Attorney General wrote this:

“We further conclude that certain acts may be cruel, inhuman, or degrading, but still not produce pain and suffering of the requisite intensity to fall within Section 2340A’s proscription against torture. ... Physical pain amounting to torture must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death.

But it doesn’t matter what the Geneva Convention or the US War Crimes Act is, because the administration played fancy legal games.

Hey, what’s all this about Tort Reform about anyway, when Bush has no problem whatsoever having his legal council torture the law so Bush and any other administration figure can be protected from prosection.

The legal trick? Simply call the enemy by a different name and then you can get away with anything.

In the memo, the White House lawyer focused on a little known 1996 law passed by Congress, known as the War Crimes Act, that banned any Americans from committing war crimes—defined in part as “grave breaches” of the Geneva Conventions. Noting that the law applies to “U.S. officials” and that punishments for violators “include the death penalty,” Gonzales told Bush that “it was difficult to predict with confidence” how Justice Department prosecutors might apply the law in the future. This was especially the case given that some of the language in the Geneva Conventions—such as that outlawing “outrages upon personal dignity” and “inhuman treatment” of prisoners—was “undefined.”

The best way to guard against such “unwarranted charges,” the White House lawyer concluded, would be for President Bush to stick to his decision—then being strongly challenged by Secretary of State Powell— to exempt the treatment of captured Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters from Geneva convention provisions.

“Your determination would create a reasonable basis in law that (the War Crimes Act) does not apply which would provide a solid defense to any future prosecution,” Gonzales wrote. MSN

Original Gonzales memo (PDF)
Original Powell Response (PDF)

Where Powell said:

[the Bush/Gonzales opinion] will reverse over a century of U.S. policy and practice in supporting the Geneva conventions and undermine the protections of the law of war for our troops, both in this specific conflict and in general.

If you read the two memos it becomes quite clear what is going on – Gonzales/Bush are in serious “cover my ass” posture (why do so when a cause is “just” one might ask); while Powell is the only one actually proposing to conduct a war based on historical conventions, with a view toward preserving international support, U.S. legitimacy, and the rule of law.

Sadly the only moderate, sane, voice of reason who has the public confidence is gone.

The 9/11 Secret in the CIA's Back Pocket

Needs to be posted in full: The 9/11 Secret in the CIA‘s Back Pocket
The agency is withholding a damning report that points at senior officials.

By Robert Scheer
Columnist
The Los Angeles Times
October 19, 2004

It is shocking: The Bush administration is suppressing a CIA report on 9/11 until after the election, and this one names names. Although the report by the inspector general’s office of the CIA was completed in June, it has not been made available to the congressional intelligence committees that mandated the study almost two years ago.

“It is infuriating that a report which shows that high-level people were not doing their jobs in a satisfactory manner before 9/11 is being suppressed,” an intelligence official who has read the report told me, adding that “the report is potentially very embarrassing for the administration, because it makes it look like they weren’t interested in terrorism before 9/11, or in holding people in the government responsible afterward.”

When I asked about the report, Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice), ranking Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee, said she and committee Chairman Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) sent a letter 14 days ago asking for it to be delivered. “We believe that the CIA has been told not to distribute the report,” she said. “We are very concerned.”

According to the intelligence official, who spoke to me on condition of anonymity, release of the report, which represents an exhaustive 17-month investigation by an 11-member team within the agency, has been “stalled.” First by acting CIA Director John McLaughlin and now by Porter J. Goss, the former Republican House member (and chairman of the Intelligence Committee) who recently was appointed CIA chief by President Bush.

The official stressed that the report was more blunt and more specific than the earlier bipartisan reports produced by the Bush-appointed Sept. 11 commission and Congress.

“What all the other reports on 9/11 did not do is point the finger at individuals, and give the how and what of their responsibility. This report does that,” said the intelligence official. “The report found very senior-level officials responsible.”

By law, the only legitimate reason the CIA director has for holding back such a report is national security. Yet neither Goss nor McLaughlin has invoked national security as an explanation for not delivering the report to Congress.

“It surely does not involve issues of national security,” said the intelligence official.

“The agency directorate is basically sitting on the report until after the election,” the official continued. “No previous director of CIA has ever tried to stop the inspector general from releasing a report to the Congress, in this case a report requested by Congress.”

None of this should surprise us given the Bush administration’s great determination since 9/11 to resist any serious investigation into how the security of this nation was so easily breached. In Bush’s much ballyhooed war on terror, ignorance has been bliss.

The president fought against the creation of the Sept. 11 commission, for example, agreeing only after enormous political pressure was applied by a grass-roots movement led by the families of those slain.

And then Bush refused to testify to the commission under oath, or on the record. Instead he deigned only to chat with the commission members, with Vice President Dick Cheney present, in a White House meeting in which commission members were not allowed to take notes. All in all, strange behavior for a man who seeks reelection to the top office in the land based on his handling of the so-called war on terror.

In September, the New York Times reported that several family members met with Goss privately to demand the release of the CIA inspector general’s report. “Three thousand people were killed on 9/11, and no one has been held accountable,” 9/11 widow Kristen Breitweiser told the paper.

The failure to furnish the report to Congress, said Harman, “fuels the perception that no one is being held accountable. It is unacceptable that we don’t have [the report]; it not only disrespects Congress but it disrespects the American people.”

The stonewalling by the Bush administration and the failure of Congress to gain release of the report have, said the intelligence source, “led the management of the CIA to believe it can engage in a cover-up with impunity. Unless the public demands an accounting, the administration and CIA‘s leadership will have won and the nation will have lost.”

Only a big push by the people can bring this report to light quickly…

Vancouver votes No to Wards

Residents speak out, turnout convincing:

VANCOUVER (CP) – Vancouver residents took to the polls in record numbers Saturday and voted not to adopt a ward system used by every other major Canadian city to elect its municipal politicians.

In the city-wide plebiscite, 54 per cent of voters said no to a ward system on their ballots. Fourty-six per cent were in favour according to unofficial results released late Saturday.

A visibly shocked Sam Sullivan, head of the No Wards campaign, had to revise his pre-planned loser speech. “I believe that a no vote was not for the status quo,” said the Vancouver city councillor. “It is a vote for cautious, deliberate, progressive change.”

I’d agree with that last comment. I spoke with quite a few people on this issue – even among those who had made their mind up one way or the other, there seemed a consistant level of indecision. Quite a few did not buy the arguments pro and con that either side put forward—democracy is alive and well.

A partial introduction of ward-like responsibility might have flown with the public, however hard it might be to implement. Idea: half of council ward-based, half at large?