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Edited on Fri Jun-17-05 02:18 PM by Jack Rabbit
I've drawn up my own lists. Usually I don't include Perle, although that is mainly for brevity, or General Myers or General Franks, although a case against them is plausible, because I tend to give military the benefit of the doubt when carrying out orders. The basis of the war crimes case to be made is that Bush and his inner circle knew that the case against Saddam was thin and that they willfully fabricated facts and dissembled intelligence reports to build the case for what they knew was actually an unjustified war of aggression. It may not be the business of General Franks or General Myers to know that the case for war was a pack of lies.
A case can be made against Perle, but he may not be as big a player as many think. A bigger fish to fry would be Lewis Libby, Mr. Cheney's chief of staff, who allegedly assisted Cheney in pressuring intelligence analysts to write what they wanted to read without regard to the actual facts. Another case can be made if one can get Mr. Woodward's account of an intelligence briefing to stand up would be against George Tenet, former director of the CIA, based on two little words ("slam dunk") that he had no reason to utter under those circumstances. Charges against Tenet may also arise for any role he had in dissembling intelligence reports; these are charges similar to those against Mr. Libby and some against Mr. Cheney.
Another person on your list who doesn't show up on mine is Ashcroft. I'd love to include him, but I can't think of any charges I would make against him. Enforcing the Patriot Act and persecuting Arab/Islamic immigrants to the extent that he did does not seem to make a good case under international law.
On the other hand, I usually include Ashcroft's successor, Alberto Gonzales, for drawing up momoranda while he was White House Counsel based of spurious legal arguments designed to provide justification for circumventing the rights of prisoners or war and other protected persons under the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
Under charges related to the operation of the network of offshore gulags, in addition to Bush, Rumsfeld and Gonzales, I include: the undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, Stephen Cambone; John Yoo, currently a law professor at the University of California at San Francisco, who played a major role in assisting Gonzales in drawing up the torture memos, General Geoffrey Miller, former commander of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay and currently the commander of the detention facility at Abu Ghraib; and General Ricardo Sanchez, former commander of ground forces in Iraq, who issued orders approving of interrogation techniques that are illegal under international law.
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