Could Bush Be Prosecuted for War Crimes?

The short answer is "yes." From AlterNet:

Perhaps no person on the planet is better equipped to identify and describe our crimes in Iraq than Benjamin Ferenccz, 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. Ferencz, now 87, has gone on to become a founding father of the basis behind international law regarding war crimes, and his essays and legal work drawing from the Nuremberg trials and later the commission that established the International Criminal Court remain a lasting influence in that realm.

Ferencz's biggest contribution to the war crimes field is his assertion that an unprovoked or "aggressive" war is the highest crime against mankind. It was the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 that made possible the horrors of Abu Ghraib, the destruction of Fallouja and Ramadi, the tens of thousands of Iraqi deaths, civilian massacres like Haditha, and on and on. Ferencz believes that a "prima facie case can be made that the United States is guilty of the supreme crime against humanity, that being an illegal war of aggression against a sovereign nation."

Interviewed from his home in New York, Ferencz laid out a simple summary of the case:

"The United Nations charter has a provision which was agreed to by the United States formulated by the United States in fact, after World War II. Its says that from now on, no nation can use armed force without the permission of the U.N. Security Council. They can use force in connection with self-defense, but a country can't use force in anticipation of self-defense. Regarding Iraq, the last Security Council resolution essentially said, 'Look, send the weapons inspectors out to Iraq, have them come back and tell us what they've found -- then we'll figure out what we're going to do. The U.S. was impatient, and decided to invade Iraq -- which was all pre-arranged of course. So, the United States went to war, in violation of the charter."

Click here for the rest.

As Noam Chomsky has observed repeatedly for decades, if you held post WWII US Presidents to the Nuremberg principles, they'd all be hanged. But no. The staggering double standard, "doublethink" really, which allows Americans to condemn the crimes of enemy or hostile nations while ignoring our government's crimes and those of official allies, makes that actually happening a remote possibility, as the essay observes. Americans believe that it is simply impossible for the US to commit war crimes; we're not that kind of people--we're Americans. What a grand delusion. Our entire history, from the slave trade, to the Indian wars, to the Philippines, to Panama, to Iraq today, American history is written in imperialistic blood. This is a fact; there is no compelling argument to the contrary. Nonetheless, the "Americans don't do that" perception continues to exist.

But make no mistake about it: Bush is one of the greatest war criminals in history, and if we're ever going to be able to look at our own faces in the mirror again, impeachment is a moral necessity.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$