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George W. Bush and Dick Cheney Found Guilty of War Crimes

Upchurch said:
Off topic: I've kept an open mind about wether drone strikes are war crimes, as has been suggested. Not that I'm fully versed, but I haven't seen a precedent that would suggest that it is. I'd listen to the argument, but perhaps in another thread.
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again, note that I said I would not argue against the charges, that doesn't mean that I've made up my mind about guilt, merely that I agree there seem to be enough grounds for a court to look at the evidence and a panel/jury weigh those evidences to determine guilt or not. - agreed that it is OT to this thread.
 
Trakar said:
I would not object to that nor offer any mitigating defense of Obama on those charges.
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Upchurch said:
Off topic: I've kept an open mind about wether drone strikes are war crimes, as has been suggested. Not that I'm fully versed, but I haven't seen a precedent that would suggest that it is. I'd listen to the argument, but perhaps in another thread.
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I think it fair that there be some degree of plausible justification for the actions.

I don't know of many presidents that I would not feel are possibly if not likely guilty of war crimes.
 
sunmaster14 said:
Hey, if you've been able to dig up more details about the evidence that the "court" considered, as well as the legal reasoning it used to come to its decision, then please post it. I'd love to discuss it. For the record, consider this me "ask"ing, as you suggested.
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This is the website of the organization: http://criminalisewar.org/

And this should find all relevant documents:
https://www.google.com/webhp?#q=torture+site:http://criminalisewar.org/


Given that nothing so far presented in this thread establishes that the evidence presented to the "court" was a product of the enhanced interrogation program, such knowledge is irrelevant. One man claims that he had his fingernails pulled out with pliers; another claims that he was given electric shocks. None of these were techniques used in the CIA interrogation program, which was the only one authorized by the Bush administration. In fact, none of the evidence so far presented establishes that the witnesses who testified to the "court" were tortured by Americans, or anybody acting on orders from Americans, at all. It's quite a leap to go from "some guy claims he was tortured in Iraq" to "the President is culpable under the doctrine of command responsibility."
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It is the normal procedure that a war crime tribunal will hear the ordinary victims. A real court undoubtedly would have heard many, many more.

A lot more information needs to be provided, and in the absence of that information, the best we can do is look to the credibility of the people claiming that such information exists.
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Indeed. But, of course, a lot more information is available. You could probably just look this up on wikipedia. EG
It is public knowledge that the Bush administration condoned torture. They may say that they didn't know that the acts they ordered were torture but ignorance of the law is not a defense.

Remember that command responsibility means that you are responsible for the persons under your command. If you fail to supervise them properly you become culpable.
Given that the Bush administration encouraged some torture techniques, it is hard to believe that they should not share some guilt for other methods that lower officers developed.

No, I don't think you do get where I'm coming from. First, one does not have to be too ignorant, or too young, or too disinterested [sic]* to believe that the OP lacks sufficient evidence. Those of us who are knowledgeable and old enough (whether or not we are disinterested) can see quite clearly there is virtually no evidence at all to go on. Second, to the extent that you are relying on exogenous knowledge of the facts and the law to make a determination about Bush et al.'s culpability, your defense of the "court's" verdict is a tautology. You're essentially saying that you know Bush is guilty and that because the "court" thinks so too, the "court" must be credible. And I suppose the conclusion you and RandFan would like us to draw is that since the "court" is credible (since it correctly determined that Bush was guilty), the argument in favor of Bush's guilt is now even stronger.
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You misunderstand. What I explicitly said was that I consider it a waste of time to check their reasoning.
That they came to the correct conclusion does not mean that their reasoning is correct. It means that I don't care. When I see people protesting for some good cause, I'll give them a thumbs up (in whatever form).

Somehow I doubt you worry too much about coming off as rude.
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If it was a problem to me, I would not participate in such discussions.

* An embarrassing malapropism to find in such a haughty post, by the way.
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Well, you never quite leave behind your mother tongue.
 
Bush and Cheney have both addmitted to torturing people and yet we have people claiming they are not war criminals. :rolleyes:
 
Tony Stark said:
Bush and Cheney have both addmitted to torturing people and yet we have people claiming they are not war criminals. :rolleyes:
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Careful there. Sunmaster14 is just saying that he doesn't have the full information yet. No one else has suggested anything that could be seen as claiming they are not war criminals.
Gives you hope for humanity ;)
 
RandFan said:
I think it fair that there be some degree of plausible justification for the actions.

I don't know of many presidents that I would not feel are possibly if not likely guilty of war crimes.
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I don't think there were any wars during Carter's administration. The only military operation I can remember was the botched hostage rescue. Were there any other Administrations where there were no wars and no major military operations? Maybe Hoover?
 
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Trakar said:
I don't think there were any wars during Carter's administration. The only military operation I can remember was the botched hostage rescue. Were there any other Administrations where there were no wars and no major military operations? Maybe Hoover?
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I agree. Unfortunately the govt does a lot of stuff off of the books so to speak. I will say Carter strikes me as least likely. I don't know enough about Hoover to say.
 
RandFan said:
I agree. Unfortunately the govt does a lot of stuff off of the books so to speak. I will say Carter strikes me as least likely. I don't know enough about Hoover to say.
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Yeah, I didn't do any in-depth research, just tried scanning memory for a time when we really weren't projecting much in the way of global military objectives. In the Carter years, we were still reeling from VN and a mess internally and just trying to keep foreign issues on a low simmer, but it was the middle of the cold war, not to mention a lot of small quiet stuff going on in south and central America and the Caribbean. Maybe he was actually just better able to keep the messy little things out of the Press.
 
Beerina said:
Some squeedunk village in Italy tried to issue an arrest warrant for Bush before he left office, when he was visiting.
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Beerina, I'd like to congratulate them but I'm not able to find any reference. Instead, Brattleboro and Marlboro seemed to intend to; Beerina, you sure know that Vermont is NOT in Italy, don't you? ;)
 
A Decade Late But I'll Take It

Donald Rumsfeld: George W. Bush was wrong about Iraq

President George W. Bush was wrong to try to build democracy in Iraq, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in a recent interview, marking a striking admission from a key player behind the 2003 U.S. invasion.



In an interview with British newspaper The Times, Rumsfeld said that efforts to oust Saddam Hussein and replace his tyrannical regime with democracy were unworkable, and that he had concerns about the plan from the beginning.
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Upchurch said:
Looks like someone is worried about his place in the history books. Shame he didn't feel that way when he could have done something about it.
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My thoughts also. It demonstrates that the writing is on the wall. Other than ridding the world of a tyrant the invasion was a very costly failure.
 
RandFan said:
My thoughts also. It demonstrates that the writing is on the wall. Other than ridding the world of a tyrant the invasion was a very costly failure.
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Yeah, we traded one secular tyrant for a tyrannical group of religious zealots.

Yippee.
 
Upchurch said:
Yeah, we traded one secular tyrant for a tyrannical group of religious zealots.

Yippee.
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If I'm not mistaken there were ample warnings beforehand that this was indeed the most likely outcome of such an invasion.
 
Trakar said:
If I'm not mistaken there were ample warnings beforehand that this was indeed the most likely outcome of such an invasion.
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Surely you aren't suggesting that the leader of the free world cherry-picked intelligence to support his political agenda? :jaw-dropp
 
Upchurch said:
Surely you aren't suggesting that the leader of the free world cherry-picked intelligence to support his political agenda? :jaw-dropp
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Nah, I'm sure it was just written with too many multisyllabic words and the actual meaning was simply lost in translation,...oh, and don't call me "Shirley."

:D
 
Upchurch said:
Surely you aren't suggesting that the leader of the free world cherry-picked intelligence to support his political agenda? :jaw-dropp
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No. I think Cheney did the cherry-picking. I think Bush's job was to stand at the lectern and read the teleprompter.
 
Upchurch said:
Shame he didn't feel that way when he could have done something about it.
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Judging what Randfan quoted, from the beginning Rumsfeld felt democracy was unworkable. Or so he says now. I don't trust him one bit. Everyone's to some extent like my mother in a car ride. After we get lost she "knew" we made a wrong turn back in Albuquerque.
 
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