Ex-President Bush is arrested and charged with war crimes. How do you react?

Great Debates
141

Sure…back out now that I am finding my stride and answering your questions with proof. :wink:

Well, I do not know. How does a formal investigation get initiated on the President of the US? The AG works for him so there is a non-starter. Post Ken Starr whatever law that allowed that to happen was let to lapse (I think) because clearly that was a clusterfuck. Both democrats and republicans (if for different reasons) didn’t like it.

This is a complaint I brought earlier and was a motivation for my notion of sending such things to the Supreme Court as an alternative. Politics is trumping justice. It is not just me on the SDMB after Bush on all this. The ACLU among others have laid out their cases. Maybe we have to wait for Bush to be out of office. I don’t know. That Congress will let this slide is hideous because it is not lack of evidence but lack of political will. I do not think a matter of justice should be beholden to politicians more worried about re-election than right-and-wrong.

I think I have provided ample evidence for laws that were broken and evidence that implicates Bush & Co. in that through this thread. How much smoke do you need before you think someone should investigate if there is a fire? Seriously. There is LOADS of evidence here. Not even nitpicky evidence but a matter of public record evidence. And these are for crimes that are as about as bad as you get in the US. This is not, “I lied about $5000 on my taxes” or “Yeah, I hired an illegal immigrant as a nanny” sort of thing. These are MAJOR crimes!

The government saw fit to spend $40+ million to chase Clinton for a $300,000 issue private issue. Do you not think the alleged crimes here merit any LESS attention? Honest question.

The ACLU among others have done their level best to get a formal investigation going. Are you suggesting the only reason it has not happened is because there is nothing there? Or could it be that it is politics? That people in power have other people beholden to them and those people, out of self interest, won’t go there?

I opt for the latter and it is bullshit. How you can defend such a state of affairs is beyond me.

Again. Politics.

There is no justice here because people in power see to it that they are not answerable for their crimes. It is an old state of affairs going back through the ages. Presumably our government was setup to avoid that. But these are smart people and they find the cracks in the system. Hell…how does Rove avoid a Congressional subpoena and not get arrested? Yeah, wholly different subject but illustrates the point. I’d bet everything I have if you or I did that we’d be arrested.

Amen brother. Who starts this?

Again…who starts the investigation? Who has the authority? Who do those people work for?

And Congress? I think (pretty sure) we are in agreement they are a spineless lot more interested in their own welfare than anything else. Democrats would love to get Bush but it is an election year and it is too complex an issue and looks like sour grapes so they won’t go there. I do not believe Republicans, at this point, are thrilled with Bush but it does not pay to undercut your presumed leader. Have to march to the beat that he is infallible. So that lot is a non-starter.

You are ok with that?

I think, as I have cited over and over in this thread, there is more than ample evidence to merit an investigation. If nothing comes of it or if Bush’s defense to the allegations is sufficient so be it. But if a crime is perceived (and good god is it ever perceived here) then I would think justice demands it is looked at. Particularly for crimes of this caliber and scope.

This sums up the rant most of us who would like to see Bush brought to justice are on. We are not content to sit back and just think, “Ahh…rich and powerful people can get away with this stuff, no reason to fuss about it.” I do not accept that. Indeed, I would argue this lot should be held to an even higher standard than you our I am. They hold the public trust and affect a vast array of people in these decisions. They should be cognizant of that and act accordingly.

I have done my level best to meet Bricker’s steep requirements for a LEGAL perspective. See above for my links to the Kucinich analysis of actual laws that relate to the impeachment Articles or the ACLU’s ten point letter to Congress on this.

Yet when I do this those opposed to all this will latch on to the ONE weak link and use that to suggest it is all bogus. Seems to me, to definitely call bullshit on my arguments, that you need to debunk ALL of those claims. Every…single…one. These are not minor issues. Just one could send someone to jail for a long time…even the death sentence is in there for Geneva Convention violations. How is it fair to cherry pick one issue and ignore the raft of others? You could not do that in court.

142

Nice cherry picking. The list is long and you picked the first one. I grant there is no law against what you pointed out. They just want an impeachment which we know can be done for any reason whatsoever. Keep reading for more specific actual crimes. The front page is a summary so not asking much.

Additionally, my first link was not the ACLU. Not sure who is behind it. But they lay out the complaints and provide specifics and cites for their issues. So, while I think it obvious they have an axe to grind they aren’t just ranting and providing such evidence as you (justifiably) would demand.

Cherry picking again. I provided a link above that spelled out the laws presumed to be broken in all of Kucinich’s Articles of Impeachment. Feel free to debunk each one. I only want one to stick to send the prick to prison and I am guessing of that lot one could be managed.

Can one really violate the Constitution and there be NO penalty whatsoever? The highest law of the land but go ahead…flaunt it because nothing can be done?

If so seems a serious flaw in the system to me. You’re ok with that? Stomp on the US Constitution and the penalty for it is…nothing?

Even so I think, as noted above, there is plenty more to get Bush on that are clearly laws for which there are penalties in the US. I’d like to bust him for the lot but like Al Capone I can settle for a lesser issue that still locks him away forever (assuming he is found guilty in a proper trial).

Read this link (PDF). Admittedly I am not sure how to look up the claims made on the right column but I suspect you will.

If you don’t like Kucinich try the ACLU’s ten point document (PDF) which still does not cover all of Bush’s alleged crimes.

Yeah. Politics. Not justice. So our Congresscritters are spineless pieces of shit. Not news.

Give me an independent investigator whose mandate and livelihood is about ferreting out the truth with the power to dig out evidence and bring charges (if merited). Yeah I remember Ken Starr and believe he was off the rails big time. So don’t know if such a thing is actually possible but I think it should be the goal.

143

True. Now does that mean I want him to be punished anyway if I’m wrong?

Damned if I know. Obviously there hasn’t been any sort of standing body to enforce the GC until recently, which is a real problem. If the Nazis are the only war criminals we’re going to try, but we’re going to keep hauling them in over the decades as we find them, they become a bit too much of a special case. Though I guess now we’ve got a few Serbs to keep them company.

At any rate, my lack of detailed knowledge here still doesn’t mean that I want the ICC to apply standards to Bush that it wouldn’t apply to anyone else.

Well, that’s just it: so do I. However, I believe that there’s far more than enough evidence, on a number of fronts, to warrant comprehensive investigations. Obviously, U.S. officials in a number of places went too far in the use of what we used to call torture. There was unquestionably a decision by what you might call the ‘war cabinet’ for lack of a better term - IIRC, they called it the ‘national security principals’ or some such - that approved quite an array of interrogation techniques, that in other times and places have been regarded as torture. Even if one regards these techniques as falling short of torture, it also doesn’t seem that there was much oversight to make sure their application didn’t cross the line, nor is there any indication so far that deaths that took place under torture acted as a wake-up call in this regard.

That alone, IMHO, deserves a comprehensive investigation into who did what, who knew what, who authorized and (and in the case of oversight) failed to authorize what.

Does such an investigation need to target Bush? No. It just needs to regard as a real possibility that the trail might lead to the top, and that the investigation of what happened ‘in the field’ and at the middle levels shouldn’t be done in such a way that the investigation of higher-ups is compromised - just the same as if we were investigating a Mafia crime ring. If crimes were committed, people should be charged. If not, we should still know what was done, and by whom, in our names.

Similarly with the politicization of the Department of Justice. We don’t know if Bush had anything to do with it. And even though the statutory crimes are probably small potatoes - Hatch Act violations don’t carry big penalties - it is most certainly a ‘high crime’ in the sense that if prosecutors are going to investigate, indict, and try people of the other party, and stifle investigations of people in their own party, that’s banana-republic stuff, and it undermines the legitimacy of the legal authority of the government.

Again, a thorough investigation is unquestionably warranted. It doesn’t need to be targeted at Bush, nor should it. But it needs to find out who did what, who knew what, who authorized what, and it should follow the leads upward as far as they go. Here, the proper remedy may be impeachment, during Bush’s ex-Presidency: impeachment isn’t a criminal proceeding, but those who are impeached and convicted (which can include lower officials as well as the President and Veep) are barred from holding offices in the U.S. government in the future. That’s a marker worth laying down.

None of this, AFAICT, conflicts with a desire to see the protections of due process of law heeded and followed. And that’s the underlying issue here.

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And not one of those threads has ever identified a specific US law and enough of an allegation of its violation to reach any kind of acceptable threshold. (One possible exception, as I’ve already conceded, is the FISA wiretap/privacy business, and even there Bush has an almost unbeatable defense… but at least it counts as (a) a law, which (b) someone can credible allege that was violated, (c) by actions which expose Bush to personal criminal liability.)

It’s hilarious to me that you’re screaming about how this isn’t a court of law, and you shouldn’t be expected to come up with all this technical stuff… in a thread where the very subject under discussion is whether or not Bush violated the law.

I’m going to try this technique in a global warming thread:

ME: Anthropomorphic global warming doesn’t exist.

KNOWLEDGEABLE POSTERS: Yes, it does. Here are all the reasons it has been shown to be valid, with multiple peer-reviewed studies showing better than a 90% chance that human activities are responsible for the warming trend.

ME: Wait a second.
The SDMB isn’t a science laboratory. Put down your PhD’s, Mr. Smarty-pants! All your “science” may be appropriate in some future discussion, but today, we’re just talking about whether people think global warming exists, not what some eggheads are doing.

Yeah, that should win the day for me.

Right?

145

I thought the government’s efforts in Clinton’s case were shameful. I don’t believe we should point to that case as a guideline for how we conduct future cases.

Your question now, as I said in another thread, boils down to: there is enough evidence here to start an investigation. This is a different claim than “there is enough evidence to convict him” or even “there is enough evidence to go to trial.”

Both the latter have legal standards, and are objectively answered. (“No.”)

But “Is there enough evidence to start an investigation?” has no legal threshold. A police officer may legally investigate you because your hair is too long, and he believes that long-haired people listen to that rock music and therefore smoke weed. On that basis alone, he’s entitled to investigate you. He may walk up to you and ask you questions or set up surveillance. The only limits are his own bosses rules, driven by things like department resources and public policy.

Here, too. Is there enough evidence to start an investigation? I say, given the political reality that no criminal conviction will ever be obtained, the answer is no. You feel differently. That’s fine. Reasonable people may disagree.

146

Well, that explains the confusion. Damned if I know why it persists, though.

I’ve stated repeatedly that what I was contesting was your claim that a desire to see Bush punished by the ICC implied a willingness to gut due process in Bush’s case.

That is not a question of whether Bush in fact violated a law. It is, as I said a few posts up, a question of motivation: whether one would want Bush punished for his real or imagined sins, regardless of whether there was a specific law that he’d violated, or whether one believes that there are laws that he’s violated, wants him punished for that reason, but would (grudgingly, perhaps) acknowledge that if no statute could be found to charge Bush with, he should not be charged or tried in a criminal court, and if such a statute could be found but Bush could not be proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, he should not be punished.

Knowledge of the law doesn’t factor into this question. At all. You’re saying, if I read you right, that posters here who want to see Bush tried in The Hague are in the first group. I’m saying that you have no basis for that claim.

But if you’re going to argue the law, you should at least get your jurisdiction right. This thread’s about people’s reactions if Bush was tried by the ICC.

147

Cart before the horse again. I bet a lot of mafia bosses seemed untouchable at first till investigators worked to find the evidence they needed. If at the start they just threw up their hands in defeat would be a travesty for law enforcement.

I am also surprised at your acceptance of “political reality” being an acceptable barrier to justice. That is ok to you? As long as someone is powerful enough or has friends in the right places they should be immune to any prosecution? It is this that partly pushes people to hope the ICC would do what the US ought to do on its own.

I have detailed specific allegations in this thread many times including actual laws broken. I accept from having this discussion that we cannot just march Bush into a courtroom today and have at it. I do however believe, along with the ACLU and many others, that a formal investigation is merited. Your attempt to characterize any investigation as somehow valueless does not hold water. The allegations are real, the crimes serious, the available evidence compelling. This is nothing like a fishing expedition.

I feel confident that a credible and thorough investigation will easily find its way to the top.

148

I’m suggesting that if you answer “Yes,” to the question, “Should Bush be punished by the ICC?” then you’re willing to gut due process when he’s the target, because you’re willing to see him punished without being aware of any legally sufficient evidence against him.

If, on the other hand, you’re simply saying, “With all the evidence I now know, I want Bush investigated to see if a case can be made for trial and punishment by the ICC,” then you have done no violence to the ideals of due process.

How’s that?

149

Do you believe such an investigation will happen?

150

No. Do you believe that it should?

151

Depends.

I expect nothing to happen until after the elections. It does not behoove democrats in an election year to go there.

After the election maybe but doubtful. Once the election is over Republicans can be even more obstructionist if they want. Certainly the current administration will not start one to essentially try to prosecute themselves.

After the next administration takes office maybe. If it is McCain forget it. If republicans maintain or gain congressional seats forget it. However if Obama gets in and Democrats gain seats then possibly, maybe even probably.

In the end however this all reinforces my indictment that this is all subject to a political process. That justice can be thwarted in such a fashion is appalling and anathema to some of the principles this nation was founded on (in particular that no one is above the law).

152

Just saw this. Seems I am not alone in thinking no one should be above the law. Maybe one small step closer to the investigations I hope for.

153

What you’re saying, in effect, is that anyone who ever desires a particular outcome to a case at law is willing to gut due process, unless they know the law and the facts well enough to be sure that that will be the outcome.

I guess I wanted due process gutted in the OJ Simpson case, then. Who knew? I sure didn’t.

IOW, that’s a total crock.

Besides, as I pointed out somewhere upthread, I’ve got a counterexample: me.

154

Would you have wanted OJ to be convicted even if nobody could point to any law in particular that he broke?

Regards,
Shodan

155

No.

Of course, that’s a poor example because it was pretty obvious what law had been broken (murder); the only question was whether OJ was the killer.

A better question is, do I want him to be in prison, despite his acquittal? The answer to that one is also ‘no.’ I simply wish he hadn’t been acquitted, which would have resulted in his being in prison, which is where I believe he belongs. But I don’t want the justice system to be overriden to place him there. To paraphrase Cochran, if they acquit, then that’s it.

156

So what would your reaction be now to the following conversation:

JOE: I think they should put OJ in prison!

STEVE: Yeah, but they can’t. Sure, he’s probably a killer, but he’s been acquitted.

JOE: That’s just legalese bullshit. He killed them, he should be in jail.

STEVE: But in our system, an acquittal–

JOE: Don’t care. He deserves to be in prison, and that’s where he should be.

157

Damn, I’m good. I posted my answer two hours before you posted your question. :cool:

158

No, I guess I can’t say that I do (see them as defensive). This one feels qualitatively different, though. Certainly I see it as more egregiously violative of American ideals than Grenada, Panama, and Bosnia were. I guess Vietnam was a slippery slope, after all.

159

In regards to the OP:

1, 2 or 3 I’d react the same way. I’d expect our govt to demand his immediate release, like within 24 hours or less. If not we send whatever military forces necessary to said country and use whatever means necessary to achieve his removal.

If the country is particularly unfriendly and he is executed in response to military action, I would expect the Congress to declare that country’s govt belligerent and Bush’s execution a direct provocation for a declaration of war. In which case we take the capitol, destroying any armed resistance until their surrender is declared.

We then try and execute their leaders for war crimes.

Do not kid yourselves rabid Bush-haters, McCain or Obama, an outrageous act like that would be nothing sort of a declaration of war and would require nothing less in response.

“Its good to be the King…”

160

Vincent Bugliosi has a book out “The Prosecution of George Bush for Murder”. It is no 12 on best seller list even though he has not been on any TV shows to push it. He said he expected to go on the usual book tours and got no requests. The only show he was on was Democracy Now.He has written a couple big sellers . he is a lawyer/prosecutor, most famous for the Manson prosecution.