More On Bush's Torture (A View From The Outside)

Now that George Bush has admitted to torture and now (it seems) that the Obama administration is just as reluctant to prosecute (or even investigate) those war crimes as ever, the responsibility just now may fall to our overseas allies.

From Rue 89:

A total of 145 other countries, including Canada, are signatories to the U.N. Convention Against Torture. And all signatories have committed to enforcing its provisions, even against offenders residing in other territories.

Therefore, with varying degrees of success, proceedings have been initiated in Spain and Belgium against foreign heads of state, notably the Chilean Pinochet. Water boarding is now considered a form of torture worldwide, and those responsible must be prosecuted.

And:

In fact, a court in Madrid last January opened proceedings against Bush advisors who wrote memos illegally authorizing the use of torture. The case is pending, but the issue was pursued precisely because no American authority took action against the officials responsible.

It's a safe bet that George W. Bush is now in the crosshairs of the Spain tribunal. If it were to condemn him, even in absentia, he would then be subject to the mutual extradition treaty in force among 24 European countries.

In other words, Bush couldn't travel to any of these countries without incurring the risk of being deported to Spain to serve out his sentence.

No one is above the law - not even presidents. That was the case when it came to lying about blowjobs, why isn't it the case when war crimes are involved?

Torture is illegal. Prosecute the torture. It's simple.

More On Bush's Waterboarding War Crime

Of course the rightwing media (and it's enablers in the mainstream) are spreading a false justification.

From Mediamatters.org:

Following the release of former President George W. Bush's book Decision Points, right-wing media are promoting Bush's claim that waterboarding "saved lives." But this claim is disputed by intelligence experts, including former British officials who have "cast doubt" on Bush's waterboarding claims.

And here's one of the most idiotic things I have ever heard the idiotic Brian Kilmeade say (again, from Mediamatters):

"George W. Bush telling his critics who's boss." Later on Fox & Friends, Kilmeade called Bush's comments, "President George W. Bush telling his critics who's boss." After playing Bush's statement that waterboarding "saved lives," Kilmeade said, "That's one of the things he's most proud of."

Then there's the intelligence experts' skepticism. There's this from The Guardian in the UK:

No 10 dismisses George Bush's claim in his memoirs that interrogation technique is legal and helped foil attacks on Heathrow and Canary Wharf

The title of the piece, by the way, is:

Waterboarding is torture, Downing Street confirms

On to the British intelligence expert:

The former chair of the Commons intelligence and security committee, Kim Howells, cast doubt on Bush's claim that it had helped save British lives. "We are not convinced," said the Labour MP.

The piece ends with this from the former shadow Home Secretary David Davis:

Davis told Today that although security information provided from abroad would have to be used regardless of how it was obtained, torture did not work and should be discouraged.

"People under torture tell you what you want to hear," he said. "You'll get the wrong information and ... apart from being immoral, apart from destroying our standing in the world, and apart from undermining the way of life we're trying to defend, it actually doesn't deliver."

There's more from Davis (who's a member of the Conservative party over there in the UK) by way of the BBC:

He said a large part of the false intelligence on WMD that led to the war in Iraq came from torture and illegal rendition.

Which is interesting when the discussion of Iraq's WMD comes up later on in the BBC piece:

Mr Bush said he still had "a sickening feeling" about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

But he defended his decision to invade Iraq, saying Iraqi citizens were better off without the former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and the US was better off without Saddam pursuing biological or chemical weapons.

Mr Bush admits that he was shocked when no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq after the 2003 invasion.

But asked, in an interview with NBC, if he ever considered apologising to Americans for that failure to find WMD, he said: "Apologising would basically say the decision was a wrong decision.

"And I don't believe it was the wrong decision."

Having trouble getting through Dubya's logic here. He was shocked when no WMD were found - but he still thinks the decision (the one based on his mistake about the WMD) to send so many thousands of Americans into battle was incorrect.

Whatever he might believe, he was still wrong about the WMD and he was still wrong about the torture he ordered. And that's still a war crime.

George W. Bush is a war criminal.

George W. Bush, War Criminal

He admitted to giving the order:

In a memoir due out Tuesday, Bush makes clear that he personally approved the use of that coercive technique against alleged Sept. 11 plotter Khalid Sheik Mohammed, an admission the human rights experts say could one day have legal consequences for him.

In his book, titled "Decision Points," Bush recounts being asked by the CIA whether it could proceed with waterboarding Mohammed, who Bush said was suspected of knowing about still-pending terrorist plots against the United States. Bush writes that his reply was "Damn right" and states that he would make the same decision again to save lives, according to a someone close to Bush who has read the book.

There's some more:

The 26-year-old United Nations Convention Against Torture requires that all parties to it seek to enforce its provisions, even for acts committed elsewhere. That provision, known as universal jurisdiction, has been cited in the past by prosecutors in Spain and Belgium to justify investigations of acts by foreign officials. But no such trials have occurred in foreign courts.

Here's the United Nations Convention Against Torture. I know we've done this before but sometimes you just have to point out the obvious again and again. Here's how the Convention defines torture as:

Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

Then there's this, explaining if torture is ever allowable:

No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.

So Bush's about how it was to save lives, doesn't make it not torture.

And War Crimes? Take a look. The US Code defines "torture" as a war crime.

George W. Bush - War Criminal.

When can we see a prosecution from the Obama DOJ? An investigation by the Obama DOJ? A denunciation of the war crimes from Obama himself?