Topic: Crime and Punishment
Hang 'Em High? Law School Dean Makes SERIOUS Plans To Try Bush Regime for War Crimes Law school dean Lawrence Velvel is putting plans in motion to bring the torture pushing, rights bashing neocon criminals to real justiceby Sherry Baker
(libertarian)
Saturday, July 12, 2008
You know what? It's not ok to invade sovereign nations using a B.S. reason, kill a million of one of the country's citizens, rob and destroy their artifacts and hang their president after a puppet trial.
And it's NOT ok to torture people and hold them in a hell hole because you think, maybe, possibly, they might be one of the great modern day Boogie Men , a.k.a a "terrorist".
It's also not ok to take my rights away and yours, and spit on the Constitution because those amorphous Boogie Men might be lurking around disguised as, well, you or me. And do we really expect and want good ol' Big Brother and the modern equivalent of storm troopers to protect us ( remember what a fine job they did in New Orleans after Katrina, ripping legally owned guns out of people's illegally barged into homes)??
Bottom line: it's not ok for our so-called leaders, the neo-con ( emphasis on "con") regime to break international laws and just pretend that it's ok because we're the great US of A and not like those meanies of Germany and Japan who deserved to be held accountable when they did the same.
Well, finally someone has the fortitude ( I'd say "gonads" but I don't want to be TOO brazen), smarts and courage to DO SOMETHING about the above.. and it's a lawyer! Who'd a thunk it!!
And he's one who knows his stuff and is saying ENOUGH. Someone has decided to step up to the proverbial plate and go after these criminals.
I'm thrilled. I'm encouraged.
I'm telling you about it because I'm hoping some of you will feel the same way and maybe use some of your creativity and energy and the kind of inspiration and guts that went into the grassroots Ron Paul campaign and get behind this effort.
What effort?
I thought you'd never ask.
I just found out from the American Bar Association news desk that the dean of the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover, Lawrence Velvel, is getting together a September conference to map out war crimes prosecutions.
Yep, the criminals he is going to prosecute include our own King George, er, President George W "the Decider" Bush, other administration officials and possible some federal judges.
And thank HEAVENS he's talking about going after John "I Never Met A Horrendous Torture Device I Didn't Think Was Just Fine And Dandy" Yoo, the former Justice Department official who wrote one of the so-called torture memos.
Velvel said in a statement that "plans will be laid and necessary organizational structures set up, to pursue the guilty as long as necessary and, if need be, to the ends of the Earth...We must insist on appropriate punishments including, if guilt is found, the hangings visited upon top German and Japanese war criminals in the 1940s."
Velvel explains in excruciatingly accurate detail just what's what, and why he's going after the Bush regime, in a series of articles called The Long Term View that you can read here: [link edited for length]
He says, flat out, "there is no question" that Bush and other officials are guilty of the federal crime of conspiracy to commit torture.
And he succinctly sums up Bush senior's sonny boy's persona, the loser ad infinitum: "The man ultimately responsible for the torture had a unique preparation and persona for the presidency: he is a former drunk, was a serial failure in business who had to repeatedly be bailed out by daddy's friends and wanna-be-friends, was unable to speak articulately despite the finest education(s) that money and influence can buy, has a dislike of reading, so that 100-page memos have to be boiled down to one page for him, is heedless of facts and evidence, and appears not even to know the meaning of truth."
I say "BRAVO" and I also say, let's figure out a grassroots way to support Velvel's effort.
The Wall Street Journal actually PUBLISHED SOMETHING THIS STUPID and illogical -- an editorial that chews into House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers for issuing subpoenas trying to get information about the possible torture of Sept. 11 suspects and the same article attacks UK professor Philippe Sands, who also says ( GO Professor Sands!! ) that U.S. officials are guilty of war crimes.
Why?
Get this rationale: "Nearly seven years after 9/11, the U.S. homeland hasn't been struck again and American civil liberties remain intact," the newspaper insanely blithers. "So how does Congress say thank you'? By trying to ruin the men who in good faith set the legal rules that have kept us safe."
They honestly think our rights are INTACT? Do they not read the news? Don't they know the government can now listen into private conversations because, well, they can? These "legal rules" are what have kept us safe from the big bad Boogie Men terrorists? And forget about the fact our borders remain wide open ... we are all secure because we have Homeland Security, duct tape and orange and red and maybe polka dot this week terror levels.
Let me get another thing straight here.
Was it ok for "good Germans" to say, "Well, those Jewish bankers and shopowners and professors down the street I didn't like are gone now and we are happier without them... so why does anyone want to look into what happened to them?...whatever it was ,they must have deserved their fate, even if it included a bit of torture, because our fatherland security forces would never do anything that wasn't necessary...our government is keeping us safe in good faith. Heil Hitler!"
The good Germans who were just "following orders" were told that didn't cut it after WWII.A war crime against humanity is just that. We fought to hang 'em high.
Shouldn't the war criminals who have ordered and approved torture this go round, in the 21st century,who have broken law after law, who are directly responsible for the lost and destroyed lives of countless thousands of our own people and innocents of other lands, be held accountable , too?
Don't look back one day and say, well, you were just going along with your government, just being a "good American" when you looked the other way as our country was destroyed for the selfish, even sadistic vision of the neocons.
Thank you, Lawrence Velvel, for giving me hope that justice and law still exist. And so do brave Americans who will not give up fighting for what is right.
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The views expressed in this
article are those of Sherry Baker only and do not represent
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Posted By: Jake, the champion of the constitution
Date: 2008-07-13 07:29:43
Sherry -
This is good news, thanks for posting. Glad to see Cheney and Rumsfeld are included. Have you seen Taxi to the Dark Side from youtube yet? And, although Murder is the ultimate Torture, also reference you to a new book just published The Prosecution of George W. Bush For Murder by Vincent Bugliosi, another fellow that apparently has gonads. I was very heartened to see a book like that published, if only for the fact that dissent exists and can be published still (although the first thing the author does is complain about how hard it was to get published!)
And what I view as a big question for McBama - "Will you or will you not pardon Bush and his administration for any war crimes committed in the last 8 years?" Don't think we will see THAT question in the debates, but one can hope :)
>>And what I view as a big question for McBama - "Will you or will you not pardon Bush and his administration for any war crimes committed in the last 8 years?" Don't think we will see THAT question in the debates, but one can hope :)<<
EXCELLENT POINT. It won't be a question in the debates but anyone within shouting distance of the candidates, LET THEM KNOW , LET THEM HEAR THIS, ASK THIS QUESTION!! very important point..
Another social-anarchist pipe dream. What's okay with you and what passes muster under our laws, our constitution and international law are not the same thing.
Perhaps when Bush leaves office you can get a group together an invade the Crawford ranch and lynch him.
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