(CNN) –– Could George W. Bush or some of his top aides end up behind bars?
George W. Bush could be investigated for the steps taken after 9/11.
It’s extremely unlikely, but the Obama administration is taking its first steps along a path that could lead in that direction, with the investigation of Central Intelligence Agency interrogators involved in the war on terror.
"You don’t know where these things are going to end up," former CIA agent Peter Brookes told me. "They could go to very high levels in the government."
The probe will focus on whether interrogators exceeded their instructions and broke the law when, for example, they choked a prisoner until he lost consciousness or threatened another one with a gun and a power drill.
There is no obvious enthusiasm in the Obama administration for second-guessing the CIA’s efforts after September 11, 2001 to keep America safe.
President Obama has said several times he wants to "look forward, not back."
Republicans immediately criticized the new investigation and even some Democrats said it would be unpopular.
"This is not very good politically for the administration," said Democratic strategist James Carville. "The public clearly doesn’t have much of an appetite for this."
But Attorney General Eric Holder said evidence of abuses was compelling enough to require it. No one knows what other evidence will ultimately compel the administration to do.
The American Civil Liberties Union, an activist organization that campaigns against prisoner abuse, says "any investigation that truly follows the facts where they lead would inevitably lead to prosecutions of high government officials,"
Does it sound far-fetched?
One Bush administration legal advisor, Jack Goldsmith, says his colleagues were acutely conscious that the president or his advisors could someday be investigated for the steps they took or approved after 9/11.
And remember that Bill Clinton was impeached for just lying about sex.
NL-Do you think W and his buddies should face the music for his lies, like Weapons of Mass Distruction that didn’t exist etc ? Do I have some Bush supporters out there? Or are we all haters? I have to admit that seeing him and Chaney in jail would be one of my dreams come true.
Its kind of irrelevant because even if they got convicted Obama would pardon them anyway.
yes!
Bush, Cheney and all the neo-con artists should be investigated, tried and if convicted, executed for war crimes after 9/11 and for causing 9/11, itself.
It’s a most fascinating and interesting case. There are countless books, videos and excellent write-ups on the subject. I can go into it for hours and hours as I was born on 9/11, am from N.Y., have a FDNY uncle and am a “conspiracy nut” as some would say.
Greg Palast did a great job investigating and proving that Bush stole the ’00 and ’04 elections. All black counties supposedly voting for Bush is just but one example.
And they ran the country exactly as someone who stole a car.. they ran wild and ran our country into the ground and to the whole fucking’ world’s detriment.
After much resistance, Bush appointed the 9/11 commission himself with ol’ buddies tied to Bush, gov’t and oil, who after their pre-determined “no blame” verdict, got great jobs for themselves and their relatives.
Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta testified to the Warren, I mean Kean/Hamilton Commission that Cheney gave him stand-down orders at the Pentagon, regarding the approaching plane (actually, it was a global hawk which shot a missle into the pentagon) the most guarded piece of real estate with a near by air force base and ground launch missles surrounding it, which was on red-alert already following the two planes which had already hit the twin towers.
Bush’s brother Marvin P. Bush was part of the head of Securacom for the World Trade Towers. Hoards of “engineers” were coming and going for weeks before 9/11, and the security cameras and doors were non-operational while they rigged it with explosives. Jet fuel can not blow towers into dust, it can not even melt steel unless under artificial conditions at temperatures 1000 degress higher than jet fuel can provide under artificial conditions.
Anyone in denial that the towers were blown up needs to only looking at smoking gun #1 in this case, which is WTC building 7. Video footage clearly shows it came down by controlled demolition. This requires preparation weeks or month in advance, at least. Do a google search on it.
We need to come to terms that we are mentally caught deep inside the web of an orwellian society. That’s the only way we can come out of it. The corporate media never provides the big picture, although there are enough official items from corporate news to see what is happening if you put all the pieces together.
(copy, paste and delete spaces between the letters to see link)
http : //www . 911truth . org/article.php?story=20050724164122860
Do I think George W. Bush deserves to be thrown in jail? No, I think he deserves to be exiled from the human society altogether. But do I think anybody can actually prosecute Bush and his colleagues and succeed? Of course not, it would never happen because it cannot happen. Nobody can cross them, because they own the United States of America, they own this fucking place. Period.
‘It’s a big club, and you’re not in it. You and I are not members of the club.’ – George Carlin
I’ll stand up for Bush only on the principle that to actively go after former cabinet level and above officials, is tantamount to political folly of the first degree.
Gerald Ford had it 110% right, when he pardoned Richard Nixon for efforts to cover-up Watergate. As to have put him on trial, would have done untold damage to the nation, the Constitution and to the Executive Branch. He’d created legal precedent for future administrations to put the previous administration ‘on trail’ for any old political BS reason.
That’s why this nation has democratic elections. You don’t like the current people in Congress/WH — vote them out. Not happy with an election, as they do have consequences, get out and vote. Become an informed citizen and don’t just expect your neighbors to vote for people you agree with. Don’t feel that your elected officials are up to the job — then run for office yourself.
Obama was a Harvard educated ‘community organizer’, Palin a former pageant contestant turned member of her local city council, and Reagan was active in his industry’s politics as president of SAG before running for CA governor and then the presidency. So I don’t want to hear the usual whine of, “…well I’m a nobody, with no money or support…who would ever vote for me…”
If you think you’re so smart, then persuade others to back you so you can become a part of government. I might give someone like Stormy Daniels a lot of grief, but at least she’s out there trying to make a difference by running for elective office (instead of sitting around bellyaching about this and that conspiracy).
Besides, there’s a lot we don’t know about Iraq and the larger War On Terror. For all we know, Saddam could of had the basic technology to create nukes and was just waiting, as he had in the past, for the world to forget about him so he could go back to work. Just because Bush ignored the warnings, doesn’t make him a war criminal. Just because Bush used fear to get the public to go after Iraq doesn’t make him a war criminal (as then, we’d have to go back to LBJ and The Gulf of Tonkin, or McKinley and The Spanish-American War). Just because he failed to actually come up with a coherent strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan, doesn’t make him a war criminal.
Incompetent, yes. Not much of a leader, hell yes. Yet again, to go after him as he was Pol Pot or Stalin is just hyper-partisan politics.
Bush wasn’t censured or impeached, so he won’t be indicted or convicted of the crimes he did commit. And even if he is, he’ll just flee to Argentina or another country like his fellow Rightist Adolf Hitler did, so he wouldn’t face the Nuremburg trials.
For the alleged sin, approving the torture of suspected enemies NO.
“The probe will focus on whether interrogators exceeded their instructions and broke the law when, for example, they choked a prisoner until he lost consciousness or threatened another one with a gun and a power drill.”
What a bunch of sissies, a choke or a threat to a suspected terrorist and they cry torture and say that the The Probe will focus on whether interrogators exceeded their instructions and broke the law when, for example, they choked a prisoner until he lost consciousness or threatened another one with a gun and a power drill and saying that the president shall be jailed for that.
I bet that the Jack Bauer fanbase will be unhappy.
Torture were I come from is beating the shit out of prisioners, putting electricity to their genitals as Kink.com will do, waterboarding not the prisioner but his familiy members while he is watching, puting firehoses on somebody anus and turning the water on, doing mock executions on unsupecting prisioners. Raping and sodomizind them while goingverbally Max Hardcore or Khan Tusion on them. Now that is torture.
And the little dirty secret is that it often works, not as a interrogation device, but as a intimidation device. The enemy becomes so scared to fall prisioner knowing that are worse fates than death that many people are just discouraged to join their ranks. And they colaborate willingly to avoid getting tortured when caught.
The message that the are sending to Osama Bin Laden and his minions is that Americans are too pussyfied to go all the way in the war on Terror, so wait and make your next move. And I bet they eventually will.
Torture is usefull and saves friendly lives, deal with that. Even Christopher Hitchens, always the maverik bad boy, recognizes that.
“Incompetent, yes. Not much of a leader, hell yes. Yet again, to go after him as he was Pol Pot or Stalin is just hyper-partisan politics.”
I totally agree with Sammy here.
Hey Sammy, George W. Bush swore an oath upon inauguration that he would defend the constitution. Instead, he broke his oath and dismantled the constitution and the bill of rights.
The newly created neo-con concept of “pre-emptive strike” and going to war without the approval of other allied nations is a violation of U.N. Geneva convention rules and so is torture. Bush launched missles on innocent people because Bush’s cabal hired some scumbag to falsify data. If you read the PNAC documents (Project for a New American Century), written by all of Bush’s brass before Bush became President, you’ll see the outline for war (genocide) for geo-political and economic reasons. It said there would be no justification for going to war unless something drastic happened. Bush and Cheney made tons of money through Oil and Halliburton by going to war, killing people, stealing their oil and resources in the name of “defending freedom”.
War is the biggest enterprise. The military-industrial complex by far is the the most powerful lobbying group.
We had already bombed Iraq in the early 90s via W’s Daddy. Every country has the right to be armed to defend themselves, especially considering the fact that the United States leads the world in bombing other countries. Our own U.N. weapons inspectors kept saying again and again that Iraq had no WMDs but these guys were either murdered or duped into having a date with an underaged girl in order to neutralize their credibility, and then Iraq was bombed anyway. How the fuck would you like if some country started bombing your town?
I prefer James Bond to Jack Bauer, Harvey Dent AKA Rics.
Mr. Steele — clearly you have missed your calling in life. So when you’re done defending the shitty porn parodies Will Ryder makes, you should run for City Council, and then Mayor. From there, it’s just a short leap to the national scene if you play your cards right…then you’ll be in the right position to expose all of what you have such intimate knowledge of.
You can also, from the Bully Pulpit, keep pushing Will Ryder’s crappy porn parodies (thusly, killing two birds with one stone).
Rics/Harvey, have you ever seen Reservoir Dogs where
Nice Guy Eddie (Chris Penn) says
“If you fucking beat this prick long enough he’ll tell you he started the god damn Chicago fire. Now that don’t necessarily make it fucking so!!! Come on, Man, think!!!!!”
You should learn from these words of wisdom, and should every American with their fascist loving head up their ass!
Rics, they round people up because it’s a racist numbers game and it’s a provable scam (semi-long story). If they start torturing you because you look like you might be a terrorist I’m sure they could get info out of you, too!
Instead of torturing people we could stop evil if we only do some fucking research and homework and share that knowledge the way a witness who saw and caught a murder on tape would do so.
Torture solves nothing, is evil and those who condone it should be have the experience, themselves.
Sure, Sammy, from someone who says “Gerald Ford had it 110% right”, a man who was the most brain-dead President in history, was a pawn and member of the Warren Commission which said Kennedy was killed by a magic bullet, your reasonings are as intellectual as a hippopotamus’ fart.
I’m just curious, could you tell me which Will Ryder parody you’ve actually watched and what your specific criticism are?
Germy you have not caught my drift, neither Hollywood, they always get it wrong when they come to villians.
“If you fucking beat this prick long enough he’ll tell you he started the god damn Chicago fire.”
Of course, Germy, of course, but that is not the real point of torture. The real point of torture is to terrorize. To demoralize and dehumanize the enemy. Not to gather information. And torture does work. Torture creates the enviroment were information can easy be gathered from OTHER PEOPLE.
People gives the French the reputation of cowards because they were defeated by the Germans and they many of them colaborated and were rating on each other to the Gestapo.
But to the truthfull, if the US and the UK had a common land border with Germany in 1939 they would have been invaded and defeated by the Germans too, and if the Gestapo has started to use terror to subdue the citizens of the UK and the USA, many would have colaborated or rated on their neighbords too.
I caught a wiff of your drift rics and it stinks.
“The real point of torture is to terrorize”
Yes, rics, that’s what we is…. terrorists. We kill our own as an excuse to bomb, and otherwise kill and terrorize others while usurping their resources.
Yeah we learned a lot from the Germans and the U.S. loved them so much they imported scores of germans after WW2 into the alphabet agencies (read up on “operation paperclip”)
I think Bush should be in jail for so blatantly allowing special interests to be such a huge part of his governing party. I wrote in another post that he signed the bankruptcy reform act that was written by MBNA Bank, the largest issuer of credit cards in the US and his largest campaign contributor. He disregarded what the american people whom he represented completely and went against their will on so many occasions and he trampled on the constitution repeatedly. Plus, he threw Tommy Chong in jail!
But to go back and throw out the decisions of past presidents and then put them or others on trial is a huge mistake. How many things did Clinton do that were blatantly illegal or questionable?
And why in the fuck do these liberals give such a fuck about the treatment of people who laugh at our softness? Who kill their own children and prey upon innocents in the name of their God? Why should we be so concerned about if they were violated and had their feelings hurt? If it was someone in your family who had been captured you wouldnt give a fuck what it took to get the info to save them.
I read in a book recently about the mujaheddin during the soviet afghan war that the worst thing that could happen was to be handed over to the afghan women if you were captured. they would filet them and strip them of the meat from their bones while alive and they did it at night within ear shot of the soviet camps so they could hear the screaming. They would also sever the abdominal muscle wall and cut it clean through until the stomach could no longer be held in and the guts began to spill out. they would take their intestines out and pile them right in front of their faces on their chests and video tape their death to document how long it took. Some died from infection and shock but most died from hypothermia because without their intestines their core temperature dropped until they died. The longest documented was 19 hours which to me is beyond imagination. And it is also beyond crazy that we worry about them being tortured to get information to save lives.
I appreciate your passion Mariah but what makes you think that anyone necessarily has any information to give when they are tortured? And what secrets do you think can be revealed? No one needs to be tortured to find out what is REALLY going on… only do some research and then this scam of perpetual war will end…
The truth is out there but collectively we refuse to grasp it because the political corporate media won’t serve it to us on a plate…
Shortly before his untimely death, former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook told the House of Commons [and wrote in The Guardian] that “Al Qaeda” is not really a terrorist group but a database of international mujaheddin and arms smugglers used by the CIA and Saudis to funnel guerrillas, arms, and money into Soviet-occupied Afghanistan.
In July 2001, just weeks before the 9/11 attacks, French media reported that Bin Laden (while on the CIA’s “Most Wanted” List) was visited at the American Hospital in Dubai by Larry Mitchell, the CIA’s station chief in Dubai.
It’s sort of like the James Bond series… in order for them to keep making movies they have to keep making super bad guys so they can get your money at the box office. The war industry is a much bigger enterprise than James Bond, but essentially the same; a fiction; a lie.
There are certainly times when they capture someone who they know has intel that can be used and many times the captives have been trained to hold out through some pretty rigorous interrogations. to me if there is intel to be had and it will save lives or prevent future acts of terrorism than do what you have to fucking do to get them to talk.
Most of the time they know background on people they capture especially if they are in the higher ranks. Anyone who thinks treating them well will get them to talk they are either fucking stupid or crazy.
I saw on Al Jazeera where they were making jokes at the softness of the US and the weakness that we show towards enemy combatants. I know a lot of that is propaganda for those viewers but it is also very true. We treat criminals better than any country in the world yet we have the highest crime rate. We keep people condemned to death alive for over 20 years through appeals with cable TV phone and hot meals and clean clothing at tax payer expense.
The ACLU is the great Satan IMO. If anyone ever has a problem deciding which side they are on the left or right, just look into the ACLU and what they represent and then you’ll know right away.
How could Al Jazeera possibly be making jokes about US softness and weakness towards enemy combatants? This statement makes absolutely no sense. Do you think Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and the Bush sanctioned torture methods have been construed as US weakness, as opposed to being complained about on an international level? Have you seen what they do to people at Guantanamo, people who have never even been charged with anything?
Do you know how many people have attempted or committed suicide there because of their treatment as they are being held indefinitely (a violation of Due Process)?
How is the American Civil Liberties Union the great Satan? Of course they are on the left. So that makes them the Great Satan to you?
What if you were put in prison because someone in America said you were with some terrorist group? What if they person accusing you just made it up because they don’t like you, but the government, not wanting to take any chances, tortured you and kept you held captive indefinitely? Guess who’d be fighting for your rights? The ACLU.
I respect people with conservative views but these statements make no sense and can’t be construed as “liberal” or “conservative”; only nonsensical.
They weren’t making jokes, there was someone that was being interviewed who was speaking about the Libyan piece of shit who was released and the softness of the west. he went on to mention how the US treats its criminals better than it treats its citizens.
The ACLU defends and protects people who have no value in this world at all. Pedophiles and rapists being a perfect example. Where I live they are fighting to make it illegal to publish sex offenders names and photos on websites and in local papers saying it violates their rights to privacy, even though they are on parole and some have committed horrible acts against children. They fight minimum sentencing for child molesters and rapists and have spent millions of dollars trying to defeat the Jessica Act which gives sentences of 25 to life for anyone who sexually violates or rapes a child 12 and under. WTF is wrong with that? who in a civilized society wouldn’t think that is fair? The ACLU doesn’t.
that piece of shit who abducted the girl 18 years ago and kept her in his back yard and fathered 2 children with her…he was out on parole when he did that and take a big fat fucking guess who had petitioned for his release from prison for the first girl he abducted and raped? He did only a few years for that one. That is fucking sickening.
Due process doesn’t apply to people NOT on US soil. That is how they have been able to be kept there without being charged. How much useful information has come from Git-mo? From what I understand the information has been plentiful. They have released several people who went right back to fighting against us too.
You just said on post 19, paragraph 3 that they WERE making jokes and now you open post 21 with the statement that they weren’t making jokes.
Who is the “Libyan piece of shit”? Does he have a name?
Some of the ACLU’s cases are controversial and I do not agree with all of them, nor am I aware of every one you mentioned (I’d like to see some links, if you have any) but they do protect non-worthless members of society’s rights. They also oppose the so-called “Patriot Acts” which are acts of treason, in my opinion.
It’s hypocrisy to stand for human rights in our land and then intentionally make US bases off US soil for the purpose of violating people’s human rights.
“We treat criminals better than any country in the world yet we have the highest crime rate. ”
I do not think you will a single person who agrees with that statement.
when I said jokes I didnt mean it in the literal sense. I was just correcting myself not you.
We have the highest rate of violent crimes and the most rape of any industrialized nation. of course we can’t count the 3rd world countries simply because there are no stats for that. Don’t take my word for it, Michael Moore among others on the left have quoted that same statement.
What other country allows their criminals cable television and conjugal visits and hot meals and telephone access. We’re the only country with country club prisons without fences. we have fucking prisons here that have golf courses and tennis courts. You tell me who else has that luxury while in prison outside the US.
We can’t count them because there are no stats? With ease we can say that the U.S. doesn’t even come in the top 10 in crime rate per capita. Somalia is a country that doesn’t even have a government. Rape in Africa happens on the regular, like its nothing. Latin America, Eastern Europe all have more crime than we do, we just make Western Europe, Canada and parts of Asia look really violent.
We don’t treat our criminals the best. First off, we consider people to be criminals who aren’t really criminals and incarcerate people for non violent crimes that don’t involve theft (i.e drugs, prostitution etc). The Libyan was let out by Scotland I believe. The U.S. has no mercy laws, we let mofos just die in prison when they have terminal illness.
I think people get confused with jail, minimum security prison and maximum security prison.
Suffice it to say maximum security prison is no country club and if you know anyone that has done any kind of bid there they will tell you that.
I do know people who have and I agree. So you think if you get sick you should get out of jail???????? Even if you blew up 270 people you never even met or who never did anything to you or anyone for that matter?
So you haven’t told me what country treats their prisoners better than we do. Yes it’s harsh in prison but 3 hot meals, cable tv, air conditioning and heat. there are places where they don’t even feed you. In Venezuela and other South American countries the prisoners have fucking machete’s and machine guns and grenades…… in prison!!!
Look, we can argue all you want but the topic was should George Bush be in jail. I say yes. I say Cheney is correct on many things he has said recently but he is just as corrupt as GW. It isnt going to get better. The Dems are owned by business as much as the republicans are. the biggest problem is that public open campaign fund raising makes it impossible to run an even fair election. Whoever takes money is subject to owing favors and being owned. Obama raised over 700 million dollars for his campaign. that is criminal to me in a time when the economy is so bad that he took public money rather than the fixed 87 million or whatever it was. if you can’t run a campaign on 100 million something is seriously wrong.
we need a major revilution and i dont mean by the left or the green party or some crazy Ron Paul groupies, even though I do like a lot of what he believes.
We need someone who thinks like ROn Paul or the other libertarians but isnt a fucking wierdo. why can’t there be libertarians who are so fucking strange?
I don’t think people should be out let of jail for terminal illness necessarily, but I don’t wouldn’t care if we instituted a narrow policy either
Obviously for starters the country that let the Libyan bomber treats criminals better. I’d think most of Western Europe treats their criminals better than we do. You talk about cable TV like that is a huge expensive. I’m sure the prison would have cable anyway even if prisoners couldn’t watch it at some point. I don’t believe they have solitary confinement in other countries either.