There oughtta be a law. Law #1

Yes, this first law should read as follows: Anyone who thinks water-boarding is not torture must be water-boarded 3 times and then asked if they think it is not torture. Today, John Ashcroft was the latest of the Bush Administration to claim it was not torture when he was Attorney General. So that makes Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Gonzales and now Ashcroft all covering their behinds in case of any future legal proceedings (within the U.S. or Internationally) that might be brought against them.

So which of you brave people are willing to step forward and be the first to try out water-boarding? Anyone, anyone?

Headline from Serbia could just as well be from U.S.

The headline and story: "Bosnian Serb police chief turned over to UN court" First some details from the story:

Jun 21st, 2008 | BELGRADE, Serbia -- Serb authorities Saturday turned over an ex-Bosnian Serb police chief to the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in the Netherlands.

Stojan Zupljanin was arrested in the town of Pancevo last week after nine years on the run. A Belgrade court on Friday rejected his appeal against extradition.

"Stojan upljanin was transferred today into the tribunal's custody, after evading justice for more than eight years," the court in The Hague, Netherlands, confirmed. Details of the transfer routinely are not disclosed.

Serbia has been under pressure from the European Union to turn over suspects to the international tribunal, which has charged Zupljanin with war crimes for allegedly overseeing Serb-run prison camps where thousands of Muslims and Croats were killed during the 1992-95 war in Bosnia.

The EU has stressed that all the suspects sought by the tribunal must be arrested and extradited if Belgrade wants to move closer to the 27-nation bloc." (Click here for the entire story posted on Salon.com.)

You could substitute the name Donald Rumsfeld, Cheney or Bush, for that matter, for that of the Serbian Police Chief or former President Slobodan Milosevic, it is possible the same story could play out here, based upon suspected approved torture techniques from our government and played out in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.

The question I put to you is this, do we as citizens have the courage to consider this request if it were made of us? Would we be willing to turn over any of our citizens to be tried in the World Court at the Hague in the Netherlands? We insist other countries do, as does the EU make similar requests, as they have in this example. We must elevate our morality and sense of justice, instead of entitlement, to consider these larger questions. I would love to hear from you as to what you believe we should do faced with a similar request from other governments or the U.N. Leave a comment.

More proof of U.S. War Crimes authorized by Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld

From the headlines today, "For the most extensive medical study of former U.S. detainees published so far, Physicians for Human Rights had doctors and mental health professionals examine 11 former prisoners. The group alleges finding evidence of U.S. torture and war crimes and accuses U.S. military health professionals of allowing the abuse of detainees, denying them medical care and providing confidential medical information to interrogators that they then exploited.

"Some of these men really are, several years later, very severely scarred," said Barry Rosenfeld, a psychology professor at Fordham University who conducted psychological tests on six of the 11 detainees covered by the study. "It's a testimony to how bad those conditions were and how personal the abuse was."

One Iraqi prisoner, identified only as Yasser, reported being subjected to electric shocks three times and being sodomized with a stick. His thumbs bore round scars consistent with shocking, according to the report obtained by The Associated Press. He would not allow a full rectal exam." To read the complete story click here.

The World is building a case against Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld for War Crimes while the Congress finally took the first steps to impeach the President & Vice President when Rep. Dennis Kucinich read the Articles of Impeachment on the floor of Congress last week. We have been a little late to this party as a nation of free people, but the world has been moving forward steadily.

The day will come in the next few years under a Barack Obama or John McCain Presidency, when we will be asked to hand these individuals over to the World Court to be held on War Crimes charges. Under a McCain Presidency, we would never even consider this as it would be declared not to have jurisdiction over any U.S. citizen. An Obama Presidency would also be pressed to turn over at least Rumsfeld to the World Court. My hope would be that we would have a different kind of politic and Presidency under Obama and that he would give this request serious consideration and would consider this to heal the rift of the World community with the U.S. But remember this, the time is coming and as a nation we must consider this option, especially if we ask every other country in the world to hand over their suspected War Criminals to the World Court.

What's right with China and lessons we can learn from them

Headline reads: Ex-Party Boss in China Gets 18 Years. The former Communist Party boss of Shanghai, Chen Liangyu, was sentenced on Friday to 18 years in prison for taking bribes and abusing power. This may not sound like much of a big deal but it is. You see the Chinese government does seem to take actions against incompetence and corruption, as this former Party boss observes first hand. We have similar problems here with the Bush Administration, but our politicians don't do the same. I guess they all figure that they have also been guilty of incompetence and corruption, so why call one of their own on it. Someday it may happen to them. So all is forgiven. WRONG!!!

Yesterday, it was learned that Vice President Cheney convened a group of "Principles" including Condi Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft, George Tenet and Colin Powell, to approve and review specified torture techniques to be used on selective enemy combatants. This is in violation of the Geneva Convention. This report was first published by ABC News. As President Bush has admitted, he approved the new "techniques". According to reports, they got a couple of lawyers in the Justice Dept. to write letters in support of the changes in interrogation techniques. Those letters and findings were later pulled back and nullified by the individuals writing them. But nevertheless, they went ahead with the torture techniques, like water boarding, on those prisoners. If this isn't enough to start impeachment hearings, I don't know what is. Is there no backbone in this country? Is there one brave soul who is an elected official willing to confront this President and Vice President?

Getting back to China for a moment, according to the article which you can read by clicking here, "Mr. Chen, who before his arrest in late 2006 was also a member of China’s ruling Politburo, is the highest ranking government official to be stripped of power here in over a decade.

His sentence was handed down Friday at the No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court in the northern city of Tianjin, where he had recently been on trial."

I know it is hard to believe but it appears we can learn something from China.

Therefore, I am adding a new Poll. The only question: Would you like the House of Representatives to initiate Articles of Impeachment for both President Bush and VP Cheney even if it goes beyond their term of office? I do! If we let their actions go unpunished, we risk losing our democracy and shredding our Constitution for our sons, daughters and grandchildren as well as other generations to follow.