Media Consultants
Twenty Recommendations For Action
Now Being Considered
As A Result Of Conference On War
Crimes.
Goal Is To Give Continued Life To
Nuremberg Principles
Instead Of Allowing Bush/Cheney To
Destroy Them With Impunity.
ANDOVER, MASS. (Special) -- Twenty
recommendations made at a conference
on prosecuting
President
George Bush for war
crimes are under consideration for
action, according to conference
convener Lawrence Velvel, a
prominent
law school dean.
"Attendees discussed the violations
of international and domestic law
that were committed and are now
studying recommendations for
action," said Velvel. “All of us
feel that those who committed war
crimes and
other crimes against humanity
must be held accountable," he said.
“The continued viability of the
Nuremberg Principles depends on
it.”
More than 120 public officials,
lawyers, academics, and authorities
on the U.S. Constitution and
international law attended.
The conference resulted in
recommendations ranging from asking
the next U.S.
Attorney
General to prosecute Bush,
to having any of some 2,700
county
district attorneys launch
proceedings against him for murder,
to having Bush prosecuted for war
crimes in other countries. A newly
formed central committee will decide
which of the suggestions can
practicably be persued.
The complete list of possible
actions is:
1. Working for the election of
district attorneys who pledge to
prosecute high level war criminals
for murder under state law, and
working for the reelection of
district attorneys who pledge to
prosecute such criminals for murder.
2. Working for the election of state
attorneys general who pledge to
prosecute high level war criminals
for murder under state law.
3. Working for the election of local
executive and legislative officials
(e.g., city council members) in
specified localities who will
formally denounce war crimes and
might even seek to take action
against them, as apparently has
occurred in Vermont.
4. Mandamus proceedings to force
local prosecutors to act.
5. Requesting state bar authorities
to disbar the lawyers who were part
of the executive cabal to authorize
torture and other abuses that are
crimes under international law,
domestic law, or both.
6. Teach-ins at universities on the
question of war crimes.
7. Asking universities to conduct
hearings on whether certain
individuals (e.g., John Yoo, Jack
Goldsmith) should be dismissed from
faculties for aiding and abetting
criminal acts.
8. A march of many thousands of
American lawyers on the Department
of Justice (a la Civil Rights or
Viet Nam war marches or the million
man march). The purpose of the
march would be to highlight lawyers’
belief that crimes were committed
and must be punished.
9. Seeking prosecutions of high
level war criminals before foreign
courts or before international
tribunals such as the International
Criminal Court.
10. Asking the next federal Attorney
General to prosecute war criminals.
11. Seeking major congressional
investigations of what occurred.
12. Obtaining inspector general
reports of what was done in given
federal departments like the
Department of Justice, the Pentagon,
the State Department, the CIA, etc.
13. A truth and reconciliation
commission.
14. Impeachment, even after the
culprits leave office. And, unless
he resigns from the federal bench,
Jay Bybee, who collaborated with
John Yoo on the first torture
papers, will still be in office
after the election.
15. Legislative or judicial action
to dramatically cut back on, and
sometimes totally eliminate, the
present vast overuse by the federal
government of the state secrets
doctrine, executive privilege and
other such doctrines.
16. Repeal of immunity amendments
(which, even if not repealed, may
have tremendous holes in them with
regard to federal prosecutions, are
unlikely to have any immunizing
effect at the state level (though
they may nonetheless be claimed as a
defense), and whose only effect on
foreign and international
prosecutions would be to encourage
them because these amendments
indicate that the American federal
government (like the governments of
Argentina and Chile for many years)
refuses to take action against
federal criminals.
17. Resisting pardons, particularly
advance pardons by Bush or the next
president before there are
convictions.
18. Creating an office of Chief
Prosecutor(s), with Vince Bugliosi
as Chief Prosecutor for domestic
actions and perhaps a Co-Chief
Prosecutor, with international
prosecutorial experience, as Chief
Prosecutor for foreign and
international actions. This office
would handle prosecutions in which
governmental officials are willing
to use “our” designated chief
prosecutor as the lead lawyer, and
would advise governmental
prosecutors who desire to handle the
prosecutions themselves but are
willing to use “our” chief
prosecutor as an adviser.
19. Setting up an
internet-accessible repository, or
library, of information on the
pertinent war crimes, so that
persons will have ready access to
all relevant information. The
repository, or library, should be
cross indexed by subject matter, and
should include briefs, articles,
books, memos, speeches, etc. --
anything that sheds light on what
was done.
20. Considering what, if anything,
can be done to overcome the current
ineptitude, failure and sometimes
even deliberate hiding of facts by
the corporate mass media, and to
consider how the web might be used
to accomplish this.
Vincent Bugliosi, former
Los Angeles
county prosecutor,
extensively explained the legal
reasoning under which Bush can be
prosecuted for murder once he is no
longer president. Bugliosi added
that “No Federal, state or local
statute says there is any person who
can't be prosecuted for murder."
Bugliosi said that, of the 2,700
district and
county
attorneys having the power to
prosecute, "There should be one
prosecutor bold enough to say 'No
man is above the law'. I am looking
for that courageous prosecutor and I
am not going to be satisfied until I
see George
W. Bush in an American
courtroom prosecuted for murder."
Bugliosi said the evidence of U.S.
war crimes
in Iraq was overwhelming.
"There are over 100 books” providing
facts to underpin“ bringing Bush to
prosecution for the deaths of 4,000
American
soldiers under
false
pretenses," Bugliosi said.
Philippe
Sands, director of the Centre
of
International Courts and Tribunals
at University College, London,
discussed violations of law such as
torture. He said that "Under the
Convention Against Torture, any
person who has tortured anywhere in
the world can be arrested in the
United Kingdom" if they enter that
country.
Political scientist Christopher Pyle
of Mt. Holyoke College, S. Hadley,
Mass., spoke for many Conference
attendees when he said, “The
evidence is overwhelming. The
torture, kidnapping, and degradation
of suspected terrorists was part of
a deliberate policy, hatched and
concealed at the highest levels of
the Bush administration.” Pyle said
the nation does not need any “truth
commission” that will offer immunity
to suspects who confess their crimes
because “if there is no threat of
punishment, and therefore no
prospect of plea bargains, why would
underlings admit anything?”
Any attempt by President Bush to
pre-pardon himself or any of his
aides involved in war crimes and
torture would be “an obstruction of
justice,” said Pyle.
He suggested one approach could be
to appoint “a non-partisan
prosecutor with considerable
independence,” much as Attorney
General Elliot Richardson did when
he chose Archibald Cox to lead the
Watergate team. “A special
prosecutor could be chosen by the
next attorney general from among any
number of distinguished Republican
attorneys.”
Professor Amy Bartholomew of
Carleton University, Ottawa, told
the conference that the Bush
administration was attempting to
replace the Nuremberg Principles
adopted after World War Two with “a
global and transnational state of
exception” under which the U.S. can
invade countries with impunity.
Peter Weiss of the Center For
Constitutional Rights pointed out
that there is no need for any new
legislation to outlaw aggressive
war, since “It is already outlawed
by Article 2 of the United States
Charter.”
Dean Velvel summarized the
conference proceedings by saying,
“In a nutshell, this conference was
about giving continued life to the
Nuremberg principles, which our
country itself established, instead
of allowing guilty members of the
Bush Administration to destroy those
principles wholesale by committing
aggressive war and torture with
impunity.”