The laws that they broke are actually not so much the problem as that I don’t believe any sort of penalties are listed. “We agree to not torture foreign nationals.” And if we do it anyways well…sorry!
Some of the laws they are alleged to have broken certainly do have criminal penalties. From the torture statute (18 USC 2340) to FISA (50 USC 1801) to obstructing Congress (18 USC 1505) to other ones, there are many laws they’ve allegedly broken that have criminal penalties.
If you’ve got more time than I have at the moment, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. has released a few different reports about the Bush administrations’ penchant for breaking the law. Here’s a brief article about one from 2006. And I noticed on the Congressional website that he has just released a “a nearly-500 page report documenting numerous abuses and excesses of the Bush administration. The report, titled “Reining in the Imperial Presidency: Lessons and Recommendations Relating to the presidency of George W. Bush,” contains 47 separate recommendations designed to restore the traditional checks and balances of our constitutional system.” Since I haven’t read it, I can’t tell you whether it is good, bad, or boring as hell. But it sounds like it would make a nice little light reading. Click here for link to report
I don’t wish to appear petty, but I have been asking that same question on these forums ever since people began screaming that Bush should be in prison.
You missed the point. The time was ripe for Congress to actually make a real difference, and they decided not to. Why would we suddenly expect them to grow a collective nutsack and order the investigations NOW?
You don’t think there’s any chance it could have anything to do with warmongering, torture, or wiretapping, for starters? No? Those are just “policy differences”, not crimes, huh?
Bush didn’t “vote” on any of this, btw. *Congress *votes. Bush was President. Sheesh.
Well, the Nuremberg tribunal seemed to find that torture, waging and aggressive war and similar things deserved the death penalty for the accused.
Where did they get that notion? Or are we now saying they had no authority to do what they did?
Whatever gave them the authority to try the Germans would be more than sufficient authority to try those who started a war of aggression and torture in Washington.
So there’s something of an embarrassment of riches in this post–huge amounts of information. I appreciate it, but will just digest a bit of it at a time.
There’s our definition. I think there’s an extremely strong (certainly an indictably strong) case that waterboarding is torture under this definition.
Now, the crime:
If CIA operatives outside of the United States committed torture, they’re covered by (a). If Administration officials conspired with these operatives, they should be covered by (c).
There appears to me to be enough evidence to warrant further investigation into whether Bush himself violated (c).
My ignorance of the law may apply here, although I don’t think it does. Obviously laws like kidnapping don’t apply to police who arrest a suspect and transport them to jail; I assume some statute grants the police the power to make such detentions without violating the law. I assume there’s no such statute granting the president the right to torture, is there?
Bricker, would you agree that CIA waterboarding, and the previous Administration’s apparent condoning of this technique, warrants further investigation as I suggest above? If not, what am I missing?
The relatively high standard we have for evidence for criminal offenses. Barring an order with Bush’s signature on it specifically ordering a subject to being tortured, all you’ve got is basically ‘Bad things happened under his watch, let’s get him!’
Let me repeat the question, with helpful formatting:
That deals with your implication that I’m talking about whether we currently have enough evidence for conviction.
There’s another faulty premise in your post: conspiracy convictions can occur with evidence shy of an order with the conspirator’s signature on it. You can have evidence of a conspiracy even without written orders.
Great. Lets start the witch hunt then. You go get the warrant, and I’ll get the stake out car. What’s that? The judge wanted probably cause? Well, what did you tell him?
I checked and I didn’t see anyone calling for a witch hunt. Or immediately getting search warrants. And the OP wasn’t strictly about Bush himself, but “Bush administration officials”. Did I miss something, or have you already made up your mind on the entire things? If so, please, by all means, do share your thoughts with the rest of the class.
