"Bush Confesses to War Crimes"

I didn't want to write about politics today.  The day should be reserved for the victims of 9/11.  But when the press continues to blast America and the President, how can anyone who is proud of the United States  and supports our President remain silent.

"Bush Confesesses to War Crimes" screams a headline placed in a rather prominent location on the Netscape homepage.  How disturbing.  I followed the link to an article at The Online Journal, whose tagline "Established 1998 to provide uncensored and accurate news, analysis and commentary" should be changed to "Established 1998 to provide partisan assertions which further divide the already split nation, disrespect the Presidency and protect terrorists' rights over the lives of Americans." 

The gist of the article is that President Bush is a liar who (personally?) tortures people in heinous war crimes.  Then he begs congress to change the rules and retroactively protect him. 

George W. Bush's speech on September 6 amounted to a public confession to criminal violations of the 1996 War Crimes Act. He implicitly admitted authorizing disappearances, extrajudicial imprisonment, torture, transporting prisoners between countries and denying the International Committee of the Red Cross access to prisoners.

These are all serious violations of the Geneva Conventions. The War Crimes Act makes grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions and all violations of Common Article 3 punishable by fines, imprisonment or, if death results to the victim, the death penalty.

Without a doubt, liberals would abandon their anti-death penalty stance and Howard Dean would be leading the angry mob, rope in hand, ready to lynch Rummy, Cheney, Bush et. al.

At the same time, Bush asked Congress to amend the War Crimes Act in order to retroactively protect him and other U.S. officials from prosecution for these crimes, and from civil lawsuits arising from them. He justified this on the basis that "our military and intelligence personnel involved in capturing and questioning terrorists could now be at risk of prosecution under the War Crimes Act . . . ," and insisted that ?passing this legislation ought to be the top priority? for Congress between now and the election in November.

His profession of concern for military and intelligence personnel was utterly misleading.  Military personnel charged with war crimes have always been, and continue to be, prosecuted under the Universal Code of Military Justice rather than the War Crimes Act; and the likelihood of CIA interrogators being identified and prosecuted under the act is remote -- they are protected by the secrecy that surrounds all CIA operations.

This would probably be a fairly plausible statement.  However, it seems likely, if not probable, that some certain members of the liberal persuasion would personally identify CIA interrogators and front the money to prosecute them.

The only real beneficiaries of such amendments to the War Crimes Act would be Bush himself and other civilian officials who have assisted him in these crimes -- Rumsfeld, Cheney, Gonzales, Rice, Cambone, Tenet, Goss, Negroponte and an unfortunately long list of their deputies and advisors.

[...]

One prong of the U.S. government's attack on the Geneva Conventions has been the assertion that they do not provide a laundry list of what techniques of treatment and interrogation are permitted or prohibited. This is, of course, because the Geneva Conventions instead contain blanket prohibitions on torture, cruelty and humiliation. It has only been the efforts of U.S. officials to encroach on these prohibitions that may have raised doubt among U.S. personnel as to what is and is not permitted.

Why is this?  Why does the US government need a detailed list of what is/is not torture?  Because left wing nuts think it is appropriate to proclaim from the top of their lungs that sleep deprivation, extra cold air conditioning or repeatedly playing music by The Red Hot Chili Peppers is, in effect, torture.  Is this torture?  No.  It is not.  Is it so terrible that a detained terrorist only gets 20 minutes of sleep in three days and in exchange the United States gets a tip that could protect even a single American citizen from such a fate as that which our loved ones suffered five years ago? No.  One saved American is worth one tired terrorist.

For five years, U.S. government officials have justified unlawful actions with political arguments that have no legal merit.  Now that the political tide is turning, Bush and his associates are behaving like other war criminals throughout history, marshalling what power they have left to shield themselves from the legitimate consequences of their actions.

Can this person be serious?  War crimes set aside, how can anybody with any mental capacity believe that the "political tide is turning?"  Thanks to Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, the Republicans need only maintain the status quo to hold their seats.  The tide is not turning.  Bush is not a war criminal.  How we have changed in five years. I want these lefties to stop for ten minutes and think about the anger they felt after watching the towers fall.  What happened to the zeal?  What happened to our resolve to, not only stop, but annihilate the Islamists (or Islamofascist or Muslim or whatever the correct term is) enemy that brought this carnage to our home front.  God help us if we don't get that zeal and passion back.

Tags: War on Terror, Torture, 9/11, War Crimes

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