Well, we have methods to insure he’s not the only guy in the loop. If his attack is successful, it’s because other people looked at the evidence enough to assure them they weren’t following the orders of a madman. And if that evidence exists, then, yeah, that’s what his job is.
If the DA commits a crime (which withholding evidence would be) then he can be charged. But if the evidence could go either way, or even if it slants one way but could be interpreted a second way… then, no, the DA doesn’t get charged.
And no other explanation fits… like, for example, the prospective WMD sites were clearly NOT, and no securing was necessary; no examination by “specialized teams” was necessary because it was immediately clear they were not dangerous.
I’m sorry, but I don’t accept that conclusion, and your continual repetitionof it as though it were established fact does you no good.
No. Where in the world did “my logic” compel that result?
What I said, above, was that if his intention in your example was simply to murder residents of Rio, then he’s criminally guilty of murder. That’s a clear statement of the way criminal law works. How do you jump from that to some vague theory of moral culpability and then triumphantly assign it to me?
No, really: when the President asks for the ‘football’ and punches in the codes, who verifies that there’s been a rigorous analysis of the threat?
Exactly. Thanks.
We’ve already gone over this ground. We’re talking about infantry who weren’t meant to do this checking. And no, they didn’t do a check, because they weren’t trained to do so. And the sites left unprotected (and subsequently looted) included most or all of the short list of, what, the 19 most critical (supposed) WMD sites.
Then you must accept one of the alternatives: that either Bush attempted to betray this country by deliberately leaving WMD sites open for looting, or Rummy did it but Bush wasn’t bothered by it, or the whole lot of them were such morons that they had no idea that their war plan had nothing to do with their justification for war.
Maybe there’s another I haven’t thought of, but that seems to cover the waterfront.
Yeah, I got a problem with that reasoning to. Friend Bricker claims that only an explicitly illegal act can justify impeachment.
And then
Perhaps I misread, because I cannot take that seriously. It is simply impossible to view the intentional destruction of innocent people as anything but moral turpitude, if not complete moral rotteness. And yet, you assure us that this is not, in and of itself, illegal. And then tell me that “…anything that rises to the level of moral turpetitude sufficient to warrant impeachment will already be illegal…”
You see my problem? About the only way out I can see is if you define deliberate provocation of massacre as something other than “moral turpitude”. Which absurdity you are not about to suggest. Right?
Bricker, what about ‘known or should have known’?
If it is clear that the sheriff ‘knew, or should have known’ that Joe Bob would have been raped, as he put him in the same jail cell as Bubba McLargus, who was in for raping Jim Bob and had been heard to say Joe Bob got a purty mouth, would the sheriff be criminally liable?
Would he be criminally liable if he arranged things so that all the deputies took vacation time at the same time he did, leaving Bubba and Joe alone in the jail, together?
That would seem to fit the deliberate indifference standard, at a minimum. A jury could infer that he had the intention of causing the rape, which would place the act in criminal territory.
The key here is intent.
That certainly sounds like intent to have the rape happen. But of course, if he has other evidence to suggest that the vacation scheduling was a legitimate, if tragic, accident, then that would show he’s not in criminal territory.
I admit to having little expertise in this area. But based on Cecil’s classic column discussing Nixon’s last days (unfortunately not yet available on-line), Defense Secretary James Schlesinger was to be informed if any ‘extraordinary orders’ went out from the White House and military officials were to refrain from carrying out any orders which came from the White House outside the normal military channels. I infer from this that the President simply doesn’t press a big red button, with no action required from others.
Again, I don’t pretend to be an expert, but couldn’t a basic determination be made – if there’s nothing on-site except a disassembled transmisson for a '57 Chevy Bel Air, there’s really no need for an expert evaluation, is there?
And perhaps YOU have already gone over this ground, but unless you’re prepared to post a link to a discussion I participated in, then WE – you and I – have not.
Which did not, in fact, upon basic examination have any WMDs. So no expert eval was needed.
Elucidator, the tack taken in post #229 is a fruitless one. No need to refer to Gen. Yamashita if you recall Iran Contra. Ignorance claimed by the Executive, ignorance accepted.
Ah, the implication arrows go both ways: if no criminal culpability, then no moral culpability.
Seriously, what sort of moral universe is this that you’ve constructed? In the real world, things just aren’t as neat as you lay out. Bush and his henchmen, for instance, created a situation in Iraq where U.S. contractors could kill and rape, yet face no legal consequences. But they didn’t violate any criminal statutes in so doing, so apparently their moral culpability must be minor.
Guess the moral culpability of the killers and rapists is pretty minimal too, since they got to commit their acts in an environment where there were no statutes to rein them in.
At some point, you’ve got to admit that statutory culpability and moral culpability just don’t always match up neatly. You’d like them to, and you believe they do.
But that’s religion, not reality.
That was an ad hoc response to an unusual situation.
Maybe we haven’t. But it was discussed on this board in detail in May 2003 after Barton Gellman’s groundbreaking reporting was published, and a few times in the following year, and periodically after that. If you want me to link you to a for-instance or two, I’d be happy to. Or you can open a new thread about whether the Bush Administration really went to war over WMDs.
Cite?
Here’s Gellman:
No “they already checked them,” just “Get to Baghdad” as the overriding objective of the maneuver units, trumping the securing of WMD sites.
Anyway, this news is five years old. Whose heads rolled because the sites weren’t secured? If WMDs had been there, they would have been sold to terrorists, or used by Sunni insurgents, years ago. But Bush wasn’t even upset about this.
I think we should try to examine my point. At what point in the chain does ‘known or should have known’ become a factor? For Abu Ghraib, I suppose the general in charge is as high as you can reasonably go.
Assuming, and this is a big assumption, but for the sake of this argument, I’m going to make it…
Assuming that there were planned outrages on human beings that violated their rights at Gitmo, how far up the chain does ‘knew or should have known’ go? Considering the torture discussions were held in the public view, and the national outcry (Nation-wide, not entire nation opposed) in regards to civil rights at Gitmo, does it reach the President?
I think this is the simplest and most effective logical chain to follow. If there is any validity to this charge, this is how you’d apply it. Bricker?
Edit: And, if we can establish that the chain of responsibility can extend that far, we have to examine the Gitmo end, and see if there are any charges that can be applied along that chain. Right now, we’re assuming there are, and then after we see if it will reach to Bush, we’ll try to figure out how big they have to be before you can hook that chain down.
Col. Lawrence Wilkinson, Colin Powell’s chief of staff at the State Department during Bush’s first term, says that of the 100 or more detainee deaths, 25 were murders - the result of torture. (p.6 of testimony.)
Not worth an impeachment investigation, of course. :rolleyes:
If one finds Wilkerson (correct spelling this time) to be credible, then Bush and Cheney are, at a minimum, guilty of failure to properly oversee the program of torture that they set in motion - a failure that led to two dozen deaths of captives.
YMMV as to whether that’s an impeachable offense. But if someone says it isn’t worth taking up Congress’ time to debate that issue, then I’m afraid I don’t understand, nor do I want to, where that person is coming from. This is damned serious stuff.
They just … occur. That’s it? Even people rounded up and imprisoned and tortured, if they die, that’s just something that … occurs? Nobody’s responsible for that, not even those who *ordered * it?
And you talk about “moral turpitude”.
Oh, by the way, why the *hell * are you *still * sticking with this baseless (but self-excusing) notion that impeachment has any connection at all with the legal system? Haven’t you had the very words of the Constitution saying exactly the opposite, a text you yourself claim to respect highly, shoved in your face enough times to get it yet?
No. Insane is calling the President of the USA a criminal simply because you don’t like him, and you know that he hasn’t committed a crime. Well, maybe insane is a little harsh. Liar might be more accurate. Or a fool.
Well, sure, it would be if the only reason was because we don’t like him. But that isn’t the reason. Lot of us (myself most definitely not included) really did like him, and were dragged to a current dislike by the constant drubbing of fact after fact after fact.
And I thought it was about all the dead Iraqis, all the people tortured at Bagram and Gitmo and Abu Ghraib, all the illegal wiretapping of Americans, stuff like that.