Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld Are War Criminals

Yes, Duggan’s work is very important, Charles. A Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal has found the trio of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, plus several of their legal advisers, guilty of war crimes relating specifically to torture. The indictment could be vastly expanded to include instigating the Iraq War. This would include the subversive and illegal processes these men carried out that preceded it and the aggression itself. In America, no court or legislature has seen fit to do this via impeachment or any other procedure, official or unofficial. It is very difficult to hold the State and its officials to account when the State claims the highest judicial authority. The separation of powers designed by the Constitution has proven incapable of controlling these crimes. Ironically, the politics of the Soviet Union were such that Khrushchev found it in his interest to denounce Stalin in a major forum and to bring out the truth; but Obama and other current and former U.S. officials and politicians have not done the same regarding Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and others. The truth remains obscured, really buried.

Why the silence? Some don’t want to diminish the powers of the presidency. Some don’t have the courage and would lose personally. Some view such a denunciation as betrayal of their friends and the State. Some cannot shake the ideology enough to believe how this war happened. Some still rationalize that the decision was correct given the information. Some blame the CIA. Obama cannot raise the past without indicting himself.

Whatever the reasons or excuses, truth is the casualty. The lies are a bone in the throat of America, choking and suffocating everyone, and this will continue until they are removed. The public now knows part of the truth, namely, that the Iraq War was both a crime and a tremendous mistake. It doesn’t know yet why Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld brought about this aggression. It doesn’t yet know in what ways the defects of the system of State and government enabled this to happen. It doesn’t know how the system failed them. It doesn’t know how deeply justice has been wounded, how much more totalitarian the government has become, and how close the country is to much greater oppression.

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6:27 am on June 27, 2014