| Is Benjamin Ferenccz right to say that under rulings used to prosecute the Nazis, Bush should stand trial as a war criminal? Certainly Bush must think so because he's actually trying to retroactively change the law so he will protect himself from any war crime Prosecutions.
Benjamin Ferenccz is "a former chief prosecutor of the Nuremberg Trials who successfully convicted 22 Nazi officers for their work in orchestrating death squads that killed more than one million people in the famous Einsatzgruppen Case."
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By Paul Craig Roberts
08/29/06 "
Benjamin Ferenccz, a recently said of Nazi war crimes at Nuremberg, recently said that President Bush should be tried as a war criminal side by side with Saddam Hussein for starting aggressive wars, Hussein for his 1990 invasion of Kuwait and Bush for his 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Under the Nuremberg standard, Bush is definitely a war criminal. The US Supreme Court also exposed Bush to war crime charges under both the US War Crimes Act of 1996 and the Geneva Conventions when the Court ruled in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld against the Bush administration’s military tribunals and inhumane treatment of detainees.
President Bush and his Attorney General agree that under existing laws and treaties Bush is a war criminal together with many members of his government. To make his war crimes legal after the fact, Bush has instructed the Justice (sic) Department to draft changes to the War Crimes Act and to US treaty obligations under the Geneva Conventions.
One of Bush’s changes would deny protection of the Geneva Conventions to anyone in any American court.
Bush’s other change would protect from prosecution any US government official or military personnel guilty of violating Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. Article 3 prohibits "at any time and in any place whatsoever outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment." As civil libertarian Nat Hentoff observes, this change would also undo Senator John McCain’s amendment against torture.
Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice says that Bush’s changes "immunize past crimes."
Under the US Constitution and US legal tradition, retroactive law is impermissible. What do Americans think of their President’s attempts to immunize himself, his government, CIA operatives, military personnel and civilian contractors from war crimes?
Apparently, the self-righteous morally superior American "Christian" public could care less. The Republican-controlled House and Senate, which long ago traded integrity for power, are working to pass Bush’s changes prior to the mid-term elections in the event the Republicans fail to steal three elections in a row and Democrats win control of the House or Senate.
full article: http://www.informationclearinghouse...rticle14744.htm
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