Category: War Crimes

January 17, 2007

Pentagon Attacks Lawyers of Guantánamo Detainees

In one of the most severe blows the Bush administration has dealt to our constitutional democracy, the Pentagon attacked the lawyers who have volunteered to represent the Guantánamo detainees. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Charles Stimson threatened corporate lawyers who agree to defend the men and boys imprisoned there. Flashing a list of corporations that… Read more »

November 10, 2006

Donald Rumsfeld: The War Crimes Case

As the Democrats took control of the House of Representatives and were on the verge of taking over the Senate, George W. Bush announced that Donald Rumsfeld was out and Robert Gates was in as Secretary of Defense. When Bush is being run out of town, he knows how to get out in the front… Read more »

September 8, 2006

Bush Fears War Crimes Prosecution, Impeachment

With great fanfare, George W. Bush announced to a group of carefully selected 9/11 families yesterday that he had finally decided to send Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and 13 other alleged terrorists to Guantánamo Bay, where they will be tried in military commissions. After nearly 5 years of interrogating these men, why did Bush choose this… Read more »

May 30, 2006

The Haditha Massacre

They ranged from little babies to adult males and females. I’ll never be able to get that out of my head. I can still smell the blood. This left something in my head and heart.– Observations of Lance Cpl. Roel Ryan Briones after the Haditha Massacre On November 19, 2005, Marines from Kilo Company, 3rd… Read more »

May 1, 2006

Scapegoats in Terror War

The Moussaoui jury today enters its fifth day of deliberations on whether to execute the self-avowed conspirator in the September 11 attacks. After hours of graphic testimony and videotapes of the horrors on 9/11, as well as Moussaoui’s confession, this should have been an open-and-shut case. Yet the jury cannot ignore the fact that Zacarias… Read more »

March 14, 2006

War Crimes: Goose and Gander

Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was found dead in his jail cell at The Hague Saturday. Since 2001, he had been on trial for genocide in Bosnia, and war crimes and crimes against humanity in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo. Although many have already adjudged him guilty, we will never hear the official verdict of the… Read more »

February 20, 2006

US Force-feeding Prisoners in Torture Camp

Last week, the United Nations Human Rights Commission reported that the violent force-feeding of detainees by the US military at its Guantánamo prison camp amounts to torture. More than a third of the prisoners held there have refused food to protest being held incommunicado for years with no hope of release. They have concluded that… Read more »

January 25, 2006

Bush on Trial for Crimes against Humanity

The International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration convened last weekend in New York City’s Riverside Church. Martin Luther King Jr.’s portrait hangs in the foyer. Dr. King delivered his historic 1967 speech, “Beyond Vietnam: A Place to Break the Silence,” opposing the war and calling for the removal… Read more »

January 9, 2006

First Officer Publicly Resists War

Yesterday, US Army First Lieutenant Ehren Watada became the first officer to publicly state his refusal to obey an order to deploy to Iraq. Lieutenant Watada said at a press conference in Tacoma, Washington, “The war in Iraq is in fact illegal. It is my obligation and my duty to refuse any orders to participate… Read more »

October 18, 2005

Continuing in His Defiance of the Law

Republicans and Democrats have finally found something they can agree on. They have bipartisan support to stop Bush’s inhuman and degrading treatment of prisoners in United States custody: It’s bad for our image in the Arab and Muslim world. It breeds more resentment against the US, making us more vulnerable to terrorism. And it’s just… Read more »