US War Criminals To Walk Away Scot-Free
Er… isn’t not upholding the laws and constitution an impeachable offence?
WaPo reports that Bush’s attorney general Alberto Gonzalez is seeking to have retroactive legislation passed that will exempt US citizens from prossecution under the War Crimes Act of 1996 for past illegal acts, even when those acts were ordered by Bush or his minions :
[…]
An obscure law approved by a Republican-controlled Congress a decade ago has made the Bush administration nervous that officials and troops involved in handling detainee matters might be accused of committing war crimes, and prosecuted at some point in U.S. courts.
Senior officials have responded by drafting legislation that would grant U.S. personnel involved in the terrorism fight new protections against prosecution for past violations of the War Crimes Act of 1996. That law criminalizes violations of the Geneva Conventions governing conduct in war and threatens the death penalty if U.S.-held detainees die in custody from abusive treatment.
In light of a recent Supreme Court ruling that the international Conventions apply to the treatment of detainees in the terrorism fight, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales has spoken privately with Republican lawmakers about the need for such “protections,” according to someone who heard his remarks last week.
Gonzales told the lawmakers that a shield is needed for actions taken by U.S. personnel under a 2002 presidential order, which the Supreme Court declared illegal, and under Justice Department legal opinions that have been withdrawn under fire, the source said. A spokeswoman for Gonzales, Tasia Scolinos, declined to comment on Gonzales’s remarks.
What’s this with the ‘obscure’? Is WaPo trying to frame this law (which has been on the statute books for ten years, through Bosnia and Somalia) as some little, unimportant bit of text not worth arguing over, let alone applying as actual law? The statute in question doesn’t look particularly obscure to me:
War Crimes Act of 1996 (as amended)18 U.S.C. ? 2441.
(a) Offense.–Whoever, whether inside or outside the United States, commits a war crime, in any of the circumstances described in subsection (b), shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both, and if death results to the victim, shall also be subject to the penalty of death.
(b) Circumstances.–The circumstances referred to in subsection (a) are that the person committing such breach or the victim of such war crime is a member of the Armed Forces of the United States or a national of the United States (as defined in section 101 of the Immigration and Nationality Act).
(c) Definition.–As used in this section the term ?war crime? means any conduct–
(1) defined as a grave breach in any of the international conventions signed at Geneva 12 August 1949, or any protocol to such convention to which the United States is a party;
(2) prohibited by Article 23, 25, 27, or 28 of the Annex to the Hague Convention IV, Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land, signed 18 October 1907;
(3) which constitutes a violation of common Article 3 of the international conventions signed at Geneva, 12 August 1949, or any protocol to such convention to which the United States is a party and which deals with non- international armed conflict; or
(4) of a person who, in relation to an armed conflict and contrary to the provisions of the Protocol on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Mines, Booby-Traps and Other Devices as amended at Geneva on 3 May 1996 (Protocol II as amended on 3 May 1996), when the United States is a party to such Protocol, willfully kills or causes serious injury to civilians.
That looks pretty clear and unequivocal to me. I have a horrible feeling this is another one of those utterly immoral Gonzalez legal manoeuvres that will be ignored by the general public and the media, The torturers and rapists of Abu Ghraib, the military murderers of innocent women and childfren and the officers and politicians who ordered them to do it, all the way from Rumsfeld to the White House and Bush himself, can carry on doing whatever sadistic cruelties they like, secure in the knowledge there will be no consequences.
Untruth and injustice, it’s the American way.
