Bush Aims to Kill War Crimes Act

[_ID_]

Ok, wasn't quite sure if this should go into the news section, or the pollitics section. Kind of fits for both, but its more news I think.

The following article is in my opinion the Bush administration writing their own pardon for clearly violating laws they thought they were above. I think this due to the paragraph I am going to quote.

I would enjoy hearing what others think, especially supporting views of this action. I just can't seem to understand how this would be in anyway a lawful thing to do.

The link

http://www.newcitizenship.net/2006/0...es-act_11.html

The quote

As David Cole of the Georgetown University Law Center pointed out in the August 10 issue of The New York Review of Books, the Supreme Court's decision in Hamdan v. Rusmfeld "suggests that President Bush has already committed a war crime, simply by establishing the [Guantánamo] military tribunals and subjecting detainees to them" because "the Court found that the tribunals violate Common Article 3--and under the War Crimes Act, any violation of Common Article 3 is a war crime." A similar argument would indicate that top US officials have also committed war crimes by justifying interrogation methods that, according to the testimony of US military lawyers, also violate Common Article 3.

Lo and behold, the legislation the Administration has circulated on Capitol Hill would decriminalize such acts retroactively. Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice, told the Associated Press on August 10, "I think what this bill can do is in effect immunize past crimes. That's why it's so dangerous." Human rights attorney Scott Horton told Democracy Now! on August 16 that one of the purposes of the proposed legislation is "to grant immunity or impunity to certain individuals. And these are mostly decision-makers within the government."

V/R
ID

[chattel69]

I like this part...
Quote:
Bush officials have not acknowledged that one of their real motives for gutting the War Crimes Act is to protect themselves from being prosecuted for their own crimes. But so far they have apparently offered only one other reason for tampering with the law: The existing law, especially the Geneva language prohibiting "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment," is too vague to enforce. (Perhaps the Bush Administration should declare the US Constitution's ban on "cruel and unusual punishment" as too vague to enforce as well.)

[Timberwolf]

Surprising? No.

Disappointing? Yes.

[Sir_G]

Mmmnn a government that changes the law to suit their own ends. First the Patriot act, then Patriot act 2, now war crimes.

I remember a government in Europe that did similar things and sparked WW2.

Kissinger and Nixon did it during Vietnam. Kissinger lengthened the war there by years. Todays politics are muddy at best and I have no respect left for world leaders that piss down our backs and tell us its raining.

[cariad]

"Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely" Lord Acton

cariad

[mkemse]

Buch also recently pardoned a gentleman who had served time for stealing and forging POstal Mnoey order the President upon parding him said "If did so as his crime was NOT MAJOR in scope"
If i am not mistaken the postal service is part of the US governemt and any crime against the post office is a FEDERAL OFFENSE, if this is correct, the Busch does not seem to think there is any thing wrong withas put it it a "minor the minor crime" of stealing and forging Fedral Checks,
Thisi s very resuring to me know our Prsiednt will pardon someone convicted of a Federal Offense, It might furtherb e adeed the man who commited this crime freely admitted he did