Perhaps the most worrisome aspect of the current state of our nation is the near total impunity with which the Bush administration and those who aid and abet it can commit crimes without having to be held to account or pay any price. I do not understand those who feel that this is not a very ominous development. I especially do not understand how Congress can sit by without attempting to address the problem at its roots – that is, through the impeachment and removal from office of those at the top, our President and Vice President. Here are just a few examples to illustrate this point.
Impunity to use deadly forceOne of the scariest types of impunity being offered by the Bush administration is impunity to use deadly force. If a government can do that, then what can’t it do? And
why would a government in a supposed democracy do such a thing?
Blackwater USAFirst let’s consider Blackwater USA, the mercenary corporation that has contracted with the Bush administration for $700 million dollars to provide “diplomatic security” in Iraq. On September 16th, 2007, Blackwater forces protecting a U.S. State Department official opened fire on an Iraqi vehicle. The
incident is described in
The Nation by Jeremy Scahill:
Inside the vehicle was… a young Iraqi family – man, woman and infant – whose crime appeared to be panicking in a chaotic traffic situation… Gunfire rang out in Nisour Square as people fled for their lives. Witnesses described a horrifying scene of indiscriminate shooting by the Blackwater guards. In all, as many as 28 Iraqis may have been killed…
Within 24 hours of the killings, the Iraqi government announced that it was expelling Blackwater from their country and intended to prosecute those responsible. Scahill explains how that worked out:
But getting rid of Blackwater would not prove to be so easy. Four days after being grounded, Blackwater was back on Iraqi streets. After all, Blackwater is not just any security company in Iraq; it is the leading mercenary company of the US occupation… The company’s domestic political clout has been key to its success…
This was not an isolated incident, and Blackwater’s impunity to kill Iraqis was not unplanned. Just before leaving Iraq on June 27, 2004, in the process of
allegedly handing over sovereignty to the Iraqi government, the US administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority, L. Paul Bremer, issued
Order 17, which granted immunity to all U.S. private contractors in Iraq for all future crimes that they may commit. Since then, Blackwater has been involved in
several deadly incidents, including five in the year prior to the one described above. But whenever Iraq has complained about those incidents the U.S. government has
refused to take any action against the culprits or to allow Iraqi prosecution of them.
Nor is Blackwater’s license to kill limited to foreign countries. Scahill describes the following Blackwater activity during their response to Hurricane Katrina, from his book
“
Blackwater – The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army”:
The company beat the federal government and most aid organizations to the scene as 150 heavily armed Blackwater troops dressed in full battle gear spread out into the chaos of New Orleans… All of them were heavily armed…. A possibly deadly incident involving hired guns underscored the dangers of private forces policing American streets… The security guard said their convoy came under fire from “black gangbangers”… The guard said he and his men were armed with AR-15s and Glocks and that they unleashed a barrage of bullets in the general direction of the alleged shooters on the overpass. “After that, all I heard was moaning and screaming, and the shooting stopped.”
No charges were ever brought against Blackwater for the civilian deaths in Iraq
or in New Orleans.
InfraGardInfraGard is a private organization consisting of some 23,000 persons, which collaborates with the FBI and Department of Homeland Security in George W. Bush’s “War on Terror”. Their main job is to spy on American citizens and provide information thus gained to the government.
But that’s not the scariest part. An anonymous and concerned member of the organization
described to Matthew Rothschild of
The Progressive a meeting sponsored by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, where InfraGard members were told what else might be expected of them:
Then they said, when – not if – martial law is declared, it was our responsibility to protect our portion of the infrastructure, and if we had to use deadly force to protect it, we couldn’t be prosecuted.
One other member of InfraGard refused to deny the above member’s claim, and another confirmed it to Rothschild, saying, “We were assured that if we were forced to kill someone to protect our infrastructure, there would be no repercussions”.
As best I can interpret all this, it means that the Bush administration is planning for the declaration of martial law, that when that happens certain private corporations will receive certain benefits for cooperating with government in maintaining order, and that they will probably be expected to use lethal force in that effort.
Impunity against war crimes and other impeachable offenses by the Bush administrationNo presidential administration in the history of our country has
committed as many impeachable crimes as has the Bush administration. Consequently, it has gone to great lengths to provide immunity for itself and its abettors with respect to those crimes:
Torture at Abu Ghraib (and elsewhere)Torture is
prohibited by the US Constitution, and according to international law it is a
war crime. Yet, when solid evidence of torture of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison surfaced in April 2004, investigations did not reach very far up the food chain, despite the fact that 41 death investigations were opened.
Elizabeth Holtzman described the situation:
Although the terrible revelations of torture at Abu Ghraib hit the front pages in April 2004, no senior officials in the US military or the Bush Administration have yet been held accountable (nor were they ever held accountable). The scandal … has prompted no investigative commission with a mandate to find the whole truth, or full-scale bipartisan Congressional hearings, as occurred during Watergate. Indeed, it is as though the Watergate investigations ended with the prosecution of only the burglars, which is what the cover-up was designed to insure, instead of reaching into the highest levels of government, which is what ultimately happened (with Watergate).
That should not have been very surprising to anyone familiar with the Bush administration’s position on torture. Though torture at Abu Ghraib received relatively more publicity than at any other US prison, due largely to the fact that photographs from Abu Ghraib were made available, a great amount of evidence indicates that
torture was (and is) widespread and condoned at the highest levels of the Bush administration, including George Bush and Dick Cheney themselves. It seemed quite clear that any serious investigation of the torture at Abu Ghraib would have led right to the top.
Immunity for the telecomsI must confess that George Bush’s violation of our Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures by virtue of his warrantless spying program would probably be of little concern to me if I thought that the purpose of this program was legitimate. However, I think it would take a great deal of gullibility to believe that.
One of the four articles of impeachment against George Bush drawn up by the Center for Constitutional Rights (
CCR) was for his warrantless spying program. Article 1 of their book, “
Articles of Impeachment Against George W. Bush”, reads in part as follows:
.... authorizing the National Security Agency and various other agencies within the intelligence community to conduct electronic surveillance outside of the statutes Congress has prescribed as the exclusive means for such surveillance, and to use such information for purposes unknown but unrelated to any lawful function of his office; he has also concealed the existence of this unlawful program of electronic surveillance from Congress, the press, and the public…
Though Bush actually
publicly admitted to this crime numerous times, he claimed a good reason for doing it: He needed to bypass the request for a warrant in his efforts to spy on American citizens in order that he could act quickly enough to catch terrorists. However, given that the then currently existing law (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978) allowed a warrant to be requested
retroactively, it is very difficult to understand how bypassing the warrant request would allow George Bush to act any quicker – since nothing is quicker than
retroactive. Therefore, the only plausible conclusion is that the purpose of much of his spying activities is so unrelated to a legitimate function of government that even the conservative FISA judges wouldn’t approve them.
But it wasn’t enough for Bush that he be allowed to continue his warrantless spying program. In requesting a replacement bill from Congress he
demanded that the telecommunication systems that collaborated with him on his illegal and unconstitutional program be given full and retroactive immunity from prosecution for any crimes that they
may have committed with respect to their role in this program.
Again, this was not the least bit surprising. Any investigation of crimes committed during the course of this program would surely have led to evidence of how George Bush and Dick Cheney used the program for their own purposes.
The commuting of Scooter Libby’s prison sentenceScooter Libby, aid to Vice President Dick Cheney,
was convicted of perjury, obstruction of justice, and false statements in connection with the Valerie Plame scandal. All the evidence indicated that the blowing of Plame’s CIA cover was undertaken by the Bush administration as retribution against her husband, Joe Wilson, for his public statements
exposing the lies of the Bush administration that they utilized to take our country to war against Iraq. Though discrediting Joe Wilson would be unlikely to restore credibility to the Bush administration on this issue, at least their retribution against his wife would likely serve as a warning to future potential whistleblowers.
Shortly following Libby’s conviction, which entailed a 2½-year prison term, George Bush
erased Libby’s prison term with the stroke of his pen. As with the squelching of investigations into torture and the proposed immunity for the telecom companies, this act would dramatically decrease the likelihood of further investigation of the outing of a CIA agent by the Bush administration, which likely would have led all the way to the top, thus necessitating impeachment hearings against Dick Cheney, George Bush or both of them.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid put the commutation of Libby’s pardon in context:
“The President’s decision to commute Mr. Libby’s sentence is disgraceful. Libby’s conviction was the one faint glimmer of accountability for White House efforts to manipulate intelligence and silence critics of the Iraq War.
Now, even that small bit of justice has been undone.”
It seems quite clear that George Bush is guilty of war crimes – for committing aggressive war against a nation that posed no danger whatsoever to his country, for his treatment of prisoners of war in violation of the
Geneva Conventions, and for
terror bombing of civilian populations.
Under U.S. law, the
penalty for war crimes is defined as follows:
Whoever, whether inside or outside the United States, commits a war crime, in any of the circumstances described in subsection (b), shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both, and if death results to the victim, shall also be subject to the penalty of death.
But no problem. Bush and Cheney and all their co-conspirators have apparently already been pardoned for their war crimes by legislation signed by President Bush himself. As
explained on Jack Cafferty on CNN prior to the enacting of the legislation:
Buried deep inside this legislation is a provision that will pardon President Bush and all the members of his Administration for any possible crime connected with the torture and mistreatment of detainees, dated all the way back to September 11, 2001.
At least President Nixon had President Ford to do his dirty work. President Bush is trying to pardon himself.
Other cover-ups and scandalsRefusal to obey Congressional subpoenasAnother apparent serious impeachable offense committed by the Bush administration was the
firing of 9 US attorneys between 2006 and 2007 for either prosecuting Republicans too vigorously or failing to prosecute Democrats vigorously enough. This represented a near total politicization of the Bush Justice Department, a totally unprecedented occurrence in US history.
Another of the many tricks that the Bush administration used to avoid accountability for their crimes was to refuse to comply with Congressional subpoenas or to order their subordinates to refuse to do so. Again the purpose is to curtail investigations that could lead to the exposure of crimes.
An example of this was the
ordering of Harriet Miers to refuse to comply with Congressional subpoenas to testify in the US attorney firing scandal. The strategy in these cases is always the same. Simply claim “executive privilege”, meaning that “national security” would be compromised if the witness is required to testify. When Congress asks for some evidence to support that claim the Bush administration simply says that even to provide a rationale to Congress for the claim of national security would jeopardize national security.
Of course, taking these so-called “executive privilege” claims seriously completely destroys the balance of power in our government, as it stymies the ability of Congress to conduct any meaningful investigation of Executive Branch crimes or other misconduct.
Closing the investigation of the murder of someone who knew too muchRaymond Lemme was the official from the Florida Inspector General’s Office who was charged with investigating
Clint Curtis’ allegations of election fraud involving the theft of the 2004 presidential election. In his affidavit, Curtis describes a June 2003 meeting with Lemme, where Lemme told Curtis that he (Lemme) “had tracked the corruption all the way to the top”.
But we will probably never know what explosive information Lemme had obtained, for he was found dead in a Valdosta, Georgia, Knights Inn motel room two weeks later, July 1, 2003. His arm was slashed twice with a razor blade, near the left elbow. The
Brad Blog has thoroughly investigated this case and put forth several reasons to believe that Lemme’s death was not suicide, as has been ruled by the Valdosta police:
In the first place, nobody knows why Lemme was in Georgia, about 80 miles north of Tallahassee, where he lived and worked. No autopsy was performed, whereas had the death occurred in Florida, an autopsy would have been required.
Secondly, motel receipts are not consistent with the rest of the story. There is an unsigned check-in receipt dated June 29, 2003, and a signed check-out receipt dated June 30, 2003, 6:54 a.m. Yet Lemme was found dead in the hotel on July 1, the day AFTER he apparently checked out. The police claim that the check-out date on the receipt is wrong, and ascribe the “incorrect” date to machine error, but refused to provide additional detail on that.
Thirdly, there are mysteries surrounding and inconsistencies between the photographs of the scene of the crime and the police report. The initial police report stated: "a defect in the camera flash memory cards resulted in no usable photographs. Photographs will not be submitted with this report." Yet good quality photographs of the crime scene, some showing Lemme in the bath tub where he is said to have killed himself, and which were previously said not to have existed, later showed up. The legitimacy of the photographs was confirmed by the Valdosta police.
An official report by Detective Shannon Floyd states that there was no sign of foul play, and that there was no blood on the towel on which a black belt (apparently used as a tourniquet) was found. Yet, the pictures clearly show blood on the towel and severe bruising on the right side of Lemme’s neck.
When Brad Blog attempted to talk with Detective Floyd about her inconsistent findings, he was told that she no longer works for the Department, and the police refused to tell him how he could reach her.
And fourthly, after re-opening the case (late 04 or early 05), the case was quickly closed after the Valdosta police talked with the Florida Department of Transportation (under the Governorship of the President’s brother). The Valdosta police refused to comment on why the Florida DOT should have a say in when they close a death investigation in Georgia.
Giving our Vice President carte blanch to profit from warWhen Dick Cheney became Vice President in 2001 he
refused to let go of 189,000 shares of Halliburton stock, though he repeatedly proclaimed that he had done so.
With the onset of war in Iraq, which Cheney had lobbied for constantly for two and a half years, Halliburton received billions of dollars worth of
no-bid contracts. That made the Iraq War the single most profitable event in Halliburton’s history. Due largely to those no-bid contracts, the value of Halliburton stock has risen by more than 300 % during Cheney’s time in office so far.
Furthermore, Halliburton was found guilty of
over-billing our government $1.5 billion, and several billions of dollars allocated to the reconstruction of Iraq
went missing. Yet, no meaningful investigation has ever been conducted by the Bush administration to hold the perpetrators accountable.
ConclusionThus we are living in a nation where our leaders and our leaders’ friends and supporters often have complete impunity for whatever crimes or misdeeds they may commit, where: our government hires mercenaries with a license to kill with impunity, both at home and abroad; those who assist our government in the commission of their crimes (torture, illegal spying, revealing of state secrets, or whatever) do so with impunity, in order to squelch investigations lest an investigation reveal the role of our government in those crimes; whistleblowers risk severe retribution, so as to minimize the risk of holding our government accountable for anything; “executive privilege” and “national security” are invoked repeatedly as excuses for withholding of critical testimony which might reveal the role of our government in the commission of its crimes; conflicts of interest are routinely ignored, so as to allow high level administration officials to reap huge personal profits from their illegal wars; and just to make sure that they are safe, our government pardons itself for war crimes. Yet our Congress, which was provided by our Founding Fathers the Constitutional responsibility to achieve a balance of power by holding the Executive Branch accountable for its crimes or misdeeds, sits by and repeatedly fails to do so. Elizabeth Holtzman succinctly sums up what this means to our democracy.
Failure to investigate wrongdoing in high places and tolerating misconduct or criminality can have only the most corroding impact on our democracy and the rule of law that sustains us.
Come to think of it, what’s the difference between that and tyranny?
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