**** Cheney has publicly confessed to ordering war crimes. Asked about waterboarding in an ABC News interview, Cheney replied, “I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared.” He also said he still believes waterboarding was an appropriate method to use on terrorism suspects. CIA Director Michael Hayden confirmed that the agency waterboarded three Al Qaeda suspects in 2002 and 2003.


U.S. courts have long held that waterboarding, where water is poured into someone’s nose and mouth until he nearly drowns, constitutes torture. Our federal War Crimes Act defines torture as a war crime punishable by life imprisonment or even the death penalty if the victim dies.



Under the doctrine of command responsibility, enshrined in U.S. law, commanders all the way up the chain of command to the commander-in-chief can be held liable for war crimes if they knew or should have known their subordinates would commit them and they did nothing to stop or prevent it.



Why is Cheney so sanguine about admitting he is a war criminal? Because he’s confident that either President Bush will preemptively pardon him or President-elect Obama won’t prosecute him.



Both of those courses of action would be illegal.



First, a president cannot immunize himself or his subordinates for committing crimes that he himself authorized. On February 7, 2002, Bush signed a memo erroneously stating that the Geneva Conventions, which require humane treatment, did not apply to Al Qaeda and the Taliban. But the Supreme Court made clear that Geneva protects all prisoners. Bush also admitted that he approved of high level meetings where waterboarding was authorized by Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, John Ashcroft, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld and George Tenet.



Attorney General Michael Mukasey says there’s no need for Bush to issue blanket pardons since there is no evidence that anyone developed the policies “for any reason other than to protect the security in the country and in the belief that he or she was doing something lawful.” But noble motives are not defenses to the commission of crimes.



Lt. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who investigated the Abu Ghraib scandal, said, “There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”



Second, the Constitution requires President Obama to faithfully execute the laws. That means prosecuting lawbreakers. When the United States ratified the Geneva Conventions and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, thereby making them part of U.S. law, we agreed to prosecute those who violate their prohibitions.



The bipartisan December 11 report of the Senate Armed Services Committee concluded that “senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees.”



Lawyers who wrote the memos that purported to immunize government officials from war crimes liability include John Yoo, Jay Bybee, William Haynes, David Addington and Alberto Gonzales. There is precedent in our law for holding lawyers criminally liable for participating in a common plan to violate the law.



Committee chairman Senator Carl Levin told Rachel Maddow that you cannot legalize what’s illegal by having a lawyer write an opinion.



The committee’s report also found that “Rumsfeld’s authorization of aggressive interrogation techniques for use at Guantánamo Bay was a direct cause of detainee abuse there.” Those techniques migrated to Iraq and Afghanistan , where prisoners in U.S. custody were also tortured.



Pardons or failures to prosecute the officials who planned and authorized torture would also be immoral. Former Navy General Counsel Alberto Mora testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee in June 2008 that “there are serving U.S. flag-rank officers who maintain that the first and second identifiable causes of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq – as judged by their effectiveness in recruiting insurgent fighters into combat – are, respectively the symbols of Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo.”



During the campaign, Obama promised to promptly review actions by Bush officials to determine whether “genuine crimes” were committed. He said, “If crimes have been committed, they should be investigated,” but “I would not want my first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of the Republicans as a partisan witch hunt, because I think we’ve got too many problems we’ve got to solve.”



Two Obama advisors told the Associated Press that “there’s little-if any – chance that the incoming president’s Justice Department will go after anyone involved in authorizing or carrying out interrogations that provoked worldwide outrage.”



When he takes office, Obama should order his new attorney general to appoint an independent prosecutor to investigate and prosecute those who ordered and authorized the commission of war crimes.



Obama has promised to bring real change. This must be legal and moral change, where those at the highest levels of government are held accountable for their heinous crimes. The new president should move swiftly to set an important precedent that you can’t authorize war crimes and get away with it.



Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and President of the National Lawyers Guild. She testified before the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties in May about official liability for torture. The author of Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law, her articles are archived at www.marjoriecohn.com.


Marjorie Cohn is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Marjorie Cohn
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=COH20081218&articleId=11431

Everything about the last 8 years in the Bush Administration has been pretty much illegal. Bush and Cheney bent the laws of this country and the world as they saw fit with no consequences. So I highly doubt anyone let alone Cheney is going to be hung.

It almost makes you wonder if lying about a blow job is even worth being impeached anymore.

I think if monica had swallowed there would have been no blue dress with DNA on it. This probably would have been just enough to have allowed Gore to be elected, one cant underestimate the number of voters who voted against Gore to punish Clinton. Imagine a world in wich Monica swallows and Bush never gets elected

Good point! We can always wonder on the what ifs...my personal opinion is that if Gore had won, we would be a little better off today than we are now. We would have saved billions a year because we would have been fighting a war in Iraq and the U.S. would be much farther along in renewable energy.

Some people have too much time on their hands. They need to grow up.

Maybe when there is justice for all the things DEMS do we might have something...other than that your bias is showing.

Go tell it to people who don't know better.

butterfly effect............In a chaotic system, the ability of miniscule changes in initial conditions (such as the flap of a butterfly's wings) to have far-reaching, large-scale effects on the development of the system (such as the course of weather a continent away).


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http://www.answers.com/topic/butterfly-effect-2

Here we go again. I find it verry mature to be against crimes against humanity and peace. I find it imature and delusional to deny that america has not commited war crimes. the reality is there,scroll up, he admited it. case closed.

Time on their hands... Bias... Hmmm

Seems you know a bit about having too much time on your hands as well as Bias....

Shouldn't you follow your own advice?

Couldn't have said it better..

punishment for being a traitor

is being put up against the wall and shot i think

not sure if it was ever changed or not

Thats pretty much what the nazis did to their critics. the reality is that Bush/Cheney did betray us and our values. We are supposed to be the good guys.

the united states is a long ways from being the good guys

it has been down hill since 1913

the united stated is the enforcer for the federal reserve

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7065205277695921912

most of the federal govt should be tried as a traitor

they take an oath to defend the constitution

that is not happening very much

maybe a handful can be found that try

but most are in the pocket of big business

and most big business is in the control of the federal reserve

You dont have to be a card carrying member of the tin foil hat society to see some truth in this.

i would say there is more than some truth in it

but do i think is 100% i doubt it


but i would agree to at least 55% correct

The percentage is probably more depending on what the agenda is of the party that wants us to believe their ideas are sound and have our interests at heart.

Even in voting for Obama, I am not expecting that he is 'in'capable of dissapointing one side or the other or both either. Let's see what happens to his ideas after he gets his butt kissed a few thousand times by special interests the the powers that be up there.

Of course I want him to be a good president, hell daffy duck could do better than Bush.

try watching it

and let us know the agenda please

i am always open to informed suggestions

If I can get the dang thing to load on this pathetic dialup I will, thanks.

Robert H. Jackson
Chief of Counsel for the United States
Nuremberg, Germany
November 21, 1945

May it please Your Honors:

The privilege of opening the first trial in history for crimes against the peace of the world imposes a grave responsibility. The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated. That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law is one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to Reason.

This Tribunal, while it is novel and experimental, is not the product of abstract speculations nor is it created to vindicate legalistic theories. This inquest represents the practical effort of four of the most mighty of nations, with the support of 17 more, to utilize international law to meet the greatest menace of our times-aggressive war. The common sense of mankind demands that law shall not stop with the punishment of petty crimes by little people. It must also reach men who possess themselves of great power and make deliberate and concerted use of it to set in motion evils which. leave no home in the world untouched. It is a cause of that magnitude that the United Nations will lay before Your Honors.

http://www.roberthjackson.org/Man/theman2-7-8-1/