Posted on 04/23/2007 9:06:42 AM PDT by presidio9
He would probably never be able to attract hefty speakers' fees abroad, like the $2 million Ronald Reagan earned in Japan just days after leaving the White House. It is unlikely he would even wish to travel to developing countries as Jimmy Carter still does at the age of 82. He would be foolhardy to risk private visits to the Middle East, in the manner of the retired Bush Senior. And he certainly would never be invited, as was Bill Clinton, to serve as a UN special envoy to foster goodwill.
Instead, as soon as he leaves office at noon, January 20, 2009, George W. Bush is likely to head back to Texas, and stay there. Why? Because he may well fear being thrown into jail if he ever left US sanctuary. Overseas, the threat of indictment, extradition, and arrest hangs heavy. Just like it was for Augusto Pinochet.
The precedent set in 1998 by former Chilean president Pinochet's 16-month house arrest in Britain, while the House of Lords dealt with Spanish prosecutor Balthazar Garzon's request to extradite him to Spain to face charges of torturing Spanish citizens, should be enough to limit Bush's post-White House travel plans. And the close call sitting prime minister Ariel Sharon faced in a Belgian courthouse - criminal indictment for the Sabra and Shatila massacres - should worry him even more.
Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, Paul Wolfowitz, and other former US officials are presently facing war crime charges in a German court for torture in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Germany law provides for "universal jurisdiction" over all crimes, committed by anyone, anywhere, which must be prosecuted for the "good of humanity." Since there is no statute of limitations, George W. Bush's name may be added to the list of those charged at any time.
A fully-documented 384-page request for prosecution of the above named suspects is now before the German federal prosecutor's office, filed by a German lawyer, on behalf of the US' Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents 12 torture victims, under Germany's 2002 Code of Crimes Against International Law.
Similar charges against Rumsfeld were first filed in 2004. German prosecutors then declined to act, arguing that the accused had immunity as a US official, and that they believed American courts would and should be the first to move. Given that Rumsfeld has since resigned and that US prosecutors are unable now to file any charges - following passage of a 2006 American law giving US officials retroactive immunity from all Iraq war crimes - German prosecutors should be reinvigorated.
The 2004 legal procedure against Rumsfeld caused real consternation at the Pentagon, forcing him to cancel a scheduled German military summit - a move meant as much to avoid possible arrest as to express official US disapproval to the German government - until the earlier charges were dropped.
A legal loophole permits prosecutors to decline to act if the charged party is not currently on German soil. Under EU law, however, the physical presence of the accused in any EU country - should Rumseld ever wish, for example, to visit the "new Europe" of unapologetic US allies Poland or Romania - may constitute grounds for the German indictment to go forward.
If so, Rumsfeld would have to move through Europe on fast feet in order to stay one step ahead of the law. Says Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights: "These boys can no longer sleep peacefully."
There is no doubt that European prosecutors and courts are feeling less constrained in going after American officials accused of US government-sanctioned crimes. An Italian court has indicted 26 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operatives, including the Rome bureau chief thought to be involved in the kidnapping of Muslim cleric Abu Omar from Milan in 2003. Extradition requests for the 26, now on US soil, may be forwarded to the US Department of Justice at any moment.
In the meantime, one can be certain none of those CIA operatives will ever again visit Italy, or any other EU member country with reciprocal legal obligations, whether for business or pleasure. In February, the European Parliament asked that extradition procedures for any charges involving rendition from European soil be expedited through local courts. Loopholes are closing fast.
Last month, the International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said he foresaw a time when Bush Junior and Tony Blair might, themselves, face war crime charges. He encouraged Arab countries, in particular Iraq, to ask for standing before his court in order to facilitate such a process.
And if all this international legal wrangling comes to naught? At least Mr. Bush will face a modicum of justice by being stuck in the USA for the rest of his life. Even a proud Texas provincial such as he may one day wish to use his passport, yet the mere possibility of an indictment may keep him on the ranch.
And there is always the chance that what subsequently happened to Pinochet might happen also to him. The Spanish court's moral example finally convinced his own government to strip the former president of immunity from prosecution, and he spent his last years fighting off charges where it mattered most to him - back home, under his own country's laws.
Louis Werner is a frequent Contributor to El Legado Andalusi, a Spanish cultural dialogue journal. He contributed this commentary to the Middle East Times.
These same countries give the leaders of countries with horrendous civil rights records visas to travel to their countries.
They were always happy to have Arafat visit.
No country in Europe is going to actually attempt to arrest Bush now or in the future.
The international criminal court isn't going to actually do anything, because if they did it would quickly expose what a real mockery of justice that "court" really is, and it would get dissolved as soon as leaders from the countries that currently support it start fearing that they could be prosecuted.
There groups are allowed to make noise because it is considered politically beneficial for those who have direct power over those groups. If they tried to actually follow through, the benefits would quickly disappear.
These groups get away with this grandstanding because we let them. Our State Department is so infested with liberal wackos that it's almost impossible to get them to apply consistent politial pressure to end these games.
If the administration overtly speaks out against these groups, it actually widens the amount of people that hear about these bogus charges, and the left would use the opportunity to smear the administration even more.
The best solution in my opinion is a military/political move.
Redeploy our military overseas to provide less protection to nations that support such crap. If they want to play games with threatening our military which is helping secure their nation from external threats, then our military should be far less accommodating.
Start closing military bases in Germany, and German politicians will make these charges disappear quickly.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
In my dreams he runs as a "Green"! I'd even throw in some cash if he did.
Regards,
GtG
You ain't spent much time 'round these parts, have you?
One of those ideas that "feels good" but is a total legal nightmare.
Remember that these people are the Armies of the Night, er, Left. They are all deepest Red at their core.
The function of the Left in Western countries has always been to drive a wedge between Western European governments and the People of the United States, thereby facilitating Soviet/Russian domination of Europe.
They're still doing it. This is just the latest episode of Stalinist "front" politics engineered by the Old Left. Check the creds and connections of the group that is bringing the charges to the ICC, and I think you'll see they're an American Leftist group with a track record of stunt "prosecutions" and "indictments" of Republicans.
And by "Leftists" I don't mean mere "Progressives," as allied to Stalinist groups as they've always been, and I don't mean New Left groups like the successors of the SDS, of which Bill and Hillary Clinton were members. No, I mean the Old Left, the CPUSA -- as in, Earl Browder, Gus Hall, Angela Davis, and the National Lawyers' Guild. Leftists as in, Alger Hiss and Susan Sontag and the Rosenbergs. Hard-core Stalinists.
Check it out.
Center for Constitutional Rights
666 Broadway, 7th Floor New York, NY
10012
Phone :212-614-6464
Fax :212-614-6499
URL: WebsiteFounded by pro-Castro radicals
Opposes post-9/11 anti-terrorism lawsThe Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) was co-founded in November 1966 by the radical attorneys Morton Stavis, Ben Smith, Arthur Kinoy, and William Kunstler, longtime members of the Communist [Party] and radical left. (Kinoy and Kuntsler were well known for their pro-Castro politics.) CCR characterizes itself as an organization that "uses litigation proactively to advance the law in a positive direction, to guarantee the rights of those with the fewest protections and least access to legal resources."
CCR is a core member of the open borders lobby, which seeks to effectively initiate an era of mass, unchecked immigration. In 2002, the Center filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of illegal alien detainees, seeking punitive damages and a declaratory judgment that the detentions were unconstitutional and violated customary international law.
Since 9/11, CCR has focused its efforts heavily on reining in the U.S. government's newly implemented anti-terrorism measures, which the Center depicts as having "seriously undermined civil liberties, the checks and balances that are essential to the structure of our democratic government, and indeed, democracy itself." "Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the government's actions," explains CCR, "has been its attack on the Bill of Rights, the very cornerstone of our American democracy."
CCR was a signatory to a March 17, 2003 letter exhorting members of the U.S. Congress to oppose the Domestic Security Enhancement Act, also known as "Patriot Act II," which was then under consideration. The letter asserted that the new legislation "fail[ed] to respect our time-honored liberties," and "contain[ed] a multitude of new and sweeping law enforcement and intelligence gathering powers … that would severely dilute, if not undermine, many basic constitutional rights." In addition, CCR supports the California-based Coalition for Civil Liberties, which tries to influence city councils to pass resolutions creating "Civil Liberties Safe Zones"; that is, to be non-compliant with the provisions of the Patriot Act.
On January 17, 2006, CCR filed a lawsuit against President George W. Bush, the head of the National Security Agency (NSA), and the heads of the other major security agencies, "challenging NSA's surveillance of persons within the United States." (The NSA program targeted communications between persons in the United States and persons abroad where one party was suspected of having connections to terrorism.)
When law-enforcement agencies attempted, in the wake of 9/11, to conduct voluntary interviews with several thousand Middle Eastern men who were in the United States on temporary visas, CCR denounced such "racial profiling"; it issued this same complaint in response to the government's detention of hundreds of non-citizens from the Middle East for possible terrorist connections. When Attorney General Ashcroft warned in 2002 that visa violators would henceforth be arrested, CCR characterized his comments as "chilling." When new regulations permitted the FBI, CIA, and INS to share information about possible terrorist plots with one another, CCR lamented such assaults on "our privacy."
CCR's views on the political and psychological roots of anti-American terrorism were summarized in March 2002 by the organization's President, Michael Ratner, who said: "If the U.S. government truly wants its people to be safer and wants terrorist threats to diminish, it must make fundamental changes in its foreign policies ... particularly its unqualified support for Israel, and its embargo of Iraq, its bombing of Afghanistan, and its actions in Saudi Arabia. [These] continue to anger people throughout the region, and to fertilize the ground where terrorists of the future will take root." Condemning America's post-9/11 "aggression" against Afghanistan, Ratner suggested that as an alternative to war, the U.S. ought to "treat the attacks on September 11 as a crime against humanity, establish a UN tribunal, extradite the suspects, or if that fails, capture them with a UN force, and try them."
CCR has been a strong supporter of radical attorney Lynne Stewart, who in February 2005 was convicted on charges that she had illegally "facilitated and concealed communications" between her client, the incarcerated "blind sheik" Omar Abdel Rahman, and members of his Egyptian terrorist organization, the Islamic Group, which has ties to al Qaeda. CCR called Stewart's indictment in 2004 "an attack on attorneys who defend controversial figures, and an attempt to deprive these clients of the zealous representation that may be required."
In March 2005, CCR joined with the parents of deceased anti-Israel activist Rachel Corrie (the International Solidarity Movement volunteer who was accidentally crushed to death while trying to obstruct the path of a bulldozer that was engaged in anti-terror operations by Israeli Defense Force soldiers in Gaza) in filing a federal lawsuit against Caterpillar Inc., the Illinois-based manufacturer of the bulldozers used for such purposes by the IDF. Arguing that Caterpillar had violated international and state laws by providing the IDF with this machinery, CCR sued the company, marking the first time that American citizens had filed suit against a U.S. corporation for alleged misdeeds in a foreign country.
CCR only defends clients whose political views it supports, among the more notable of whom was Tom Hayden. Other CCR clients have included members of the Black Liberation Movement, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Students for a Democratic Society, Women's Strike for Peace, the Communist Party, the Black Panther Party, the Chicago Seven, and the Catonsville Nine. The organization has also taken up the cause of Leonard Peltier, an American Indian rights activist who was convicted of murdering two FBI agents in 1975, a crime for which he is currently serving a life sentence in prison.
Regarding international matters, CCR has argued in court that: the Vietnam War was unconstitutional and criminal; bombing North Vietnam was illegal; the Nuremberg war crimes laws should have been applied to Americans involved in the Vietnam War; the American military should have been restrained from fighting in Cambodia; fighting the Communist onslaught in Vietnam was wrong; and the U.S. Navy should not be permitted to use the Puerto Rican island of Vieques for bombing exercises. In addition, the Center attacked America's anti-Communist foreign policies concerning El Salvador, Nicaragua, Chile, Cuba, and elsewhere in Central and South America.
Characterizing President Bush as a political leader who is "out of control" and engaged in the "reckless abuse of power," CCR in 2006 produced a book titled Articles of Impeachment Against George W. Bush. This screed accused Bush of "illegally spying on U.S. citizens, lying to the American people about the Iraq war, seizing undue executive power, and sending people to be tortured overseas." CCR exhorted likeminded people to sign its online impeachment petition.
In November 2006, CCR filed a criminal complaint requesting "an investigation and, ultimately, a criminal prosecution that will look into the responsibility of high-ranking U.S. officials for authorizing war crimes in the context of the so-called 'War on Terror.'" The defendants in the case included former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, former CIA Director George Tenet, and former Chief White House Counsel (and current Attorney General) Alberto R. Gonzales. The complaint was brought on behalf of 12 Iraqi citizens who were held at Abu Ghraib prison and one Guantanamo detainee -- all of whom were, according to CCR, tortured by American authorities.
In December 2006, CCR and the Humanitarian Law Project (HLP) jointly petitioned a federal judge to dismiss many of the charges brought against the Hamas-linked organization Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, which in 2001 was shut down by the U.S. government because of its terrorist ties. Defense attorneys argued that Executive Order 13224, the statute under which HLF was named as a financier of terrorism, is overly broad.
A member organization of the Abolition 2000 and United For Peace and Justice anti-war coalitions, CCR is supported, in part, by donations from the Ford Foundation, the JEHT Foundation, the Samuel Rubin Foundation, the Scherman Foundation, the Open Society Institute, the Public Welfare Foundation, the New World Foundation, the Stewart R. Mott Charitable Trust, the Tides Foundation, and the Vanguard Public Foundation [Emphasis and basic edits supplied]
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Source:
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6148
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