Once upon a time, there was a recommended diary that chided "crazy" progressives for making outrageous claims. You know, like Dick Cheney should be tried for war crimes.
This "pragmatic" and "sober" viewpoint led to such blanket statements as
I still haven't heard from anyone who can tell me that there's enough hard evidence to convict Dick Cheney, just a lot of ranting and gnashing of teeth about Nancy Pelosi's perfidy, Harry Reid's weakness, and Barack Obama's unwillingness to defend the Constitution. I guess a show trial might be satisfying at some level. So he walks? At least we tried, stupid and toothless as the try was.
Let's see if this dog can hunt, shall we?
Let's start with the invasion of Iraq. Last I checked, that happened when Dick Cheney and George Bush were in charge. Whether they were in the Executive Branch or not may be a point worth debating, but no one doubts they were deciding stuff on our behalf.
So what did people say about the invasion of Iraq? When the BBC posed the question to then-UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, it was reported thus:
When pressed on whether he viewed the invasion of Iraq as illegal, he said: "Yes, if you wish. I have indicated it was not in conformity with the UN charter from our point of view, from the charter point of view, it was illegal."
But hey, who cares what that darkie says, right? I mean how dare a secretary second guess a president? How uppity can you get?
Randy Scheunemann, (yes THAT Randy Sheunemann) was quick to defend his former bosses
I think it is outrageous for the Secretary-General, who ultimately works for the member states, to try and supplant his judgement for the judgement of the member states,"
Outrageous indeed. I'm shocked. SHOCKED! How dare the UN Secretary-General have an opinion on international issues. Silly African.
I suppose there are some folks who think "Yeah, it was messed up and all that, but that doesn't make it a crime, right?" Actually, that would be wrong. You don't need to go ask the UN what constitutes a war crime. The US has weighed in on this. Remember the trials at Nuremberg? You ever wonder what they executed people for? Seriously. Do you know what crime they were guilty of that led to their execution?
Sure there were doctors who used their skills to torture people on the orders of others. (Just like the US did) But the highest ranking people never had blood on their hands directly. They were found guilty of planning and waging a war of aggression. They killed with paper. Perhaps the most shocking outcome was what became known as "the banality of evil."
Those who come to the trials expecting to find sadistic monsters are generally disappointed. What is shocking about Nuremberg is the ordinariness of the defendants: men who may be good fathers, kind to animals, even unassuming--yet committed unspeakable crimes.
This is where the pragmatic and sober voices amongst us will now cry "Godwin!" and declare the arguments offered null and void. But is Jack Cafferty a wild-eyed polemicist? Does the "C" in CNN stand for "Conspiratorial" or "Crazy" News?
Here's the money quote from his comments of September 28, 2006:
At least Richard Nixon had Gerald Ford to do his dirty work. President Bush is trying to pardon himself. Here's the deal: under the War Crimes Act, violations of the Geneva Convention are felonies. In some cases, punishable by death. When the Supreme Court ruled the Geneva Convention applied to Al Qaida and Taliban detainees, President Bush and his boys were in big trouble. They'd been working these prisoners over pretty good. In an effort to avoid prosecution, they are trying to cram this bill through congress before the end of the week, before congress adjourns... I really do wonder sometimes what we're becoming in this country... The question is this:
Should congress pass a bill giving retroactive immunity to President Bush for possible war crimes?
But hey, he's a journalist. He ain't no lawyer. What do the lawyers say? Well... how about Jonathan Turley?
When Keith Olbermann asked him "Did Dick Cheney just confess to a war crime?" Turley's answer was pretty clearcut:
It's almost like a zen sort of question, "If someone commits a crime and everyone is around to see it and does nothing, is it still a crime? And I think that's the argument of this administration: "It can't be a crime because no one has prosecuted us for it." But it most certainly is a crime to particpate -- to create-- to in many ways monitor a torture program.
Yeah, but Cheney didn't admit to it, he said he was asked about it and he supported it, that's not like he said "I did it." That doesn't count, right? I wonder what John Dean, a lawyer with some familiarity with this sort of thing might say. Too bad no one asked him. Oh wait a second. Someone (Keith Olbermann) did:
[Cheney] admitted to torture, which once was a war crime."
"I'm not quite sure after the Bush administration lawyers got finished with it that it was," Dean continued, though his tone of voice made it clear that he didn't actually mean his words. "At least [Cheney] doesn't seem to believe that it is. But by normal beliefs, it is a war crime."
Again, I'm shocked. SHOCKED I tell you! How dare anyone apply the standard of "normal beliefs" to Fourth Branch. Silly Wabbit. Besides, Cheney wasn't The Decider. That was Dubya's job. And even Cheney was quick to admit that Bush signed off on the torture.
I know, you're shocked. SHOCKED! Everyone knows America doesn't torture. George was very clear about that.
"This government does not torture people."
Ah.... but what about contractors? That's different, right? And what about the secret prisons George admitted we had, after Condi repeatedly said we didn't?
Well those were in Europe. Besides, 9/11 changed everything and the Bush Doctrine was in effect because the Cheney Doctrine of 1% was in effect. And we knew these guys were a threat to our very existence. We couldn't wait until the smoking gun was a mushroom cloud, right? Are you seriously suggesting that a Defense Department transcript of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld declaring "We know where they [WMD] are" should be ignored? What more justification do you need? They knew the WMD were there. We had the receipts. Case closed.
Of course, when they didn't find them, that was awkward. But so what if we were wrong? We couldn't take the risk of them "hitting us again." And no one was more adamant than Dick Cheney that Iraq and Al Qaeda were just two sides of the same coin. Never mind that people like Richard Clark said there was no connection between the two. Cheney had solid intelligence that proved otherwise. Except.... it turns out that wasn't true, was it?
I do not believe and have never seen any evidence to confirm [emphasis added] that [Hussein] was involved in 9/11. We had that reporting for a while, [but] eventually it turned out not to be true."
I know I'm repeating myself, but dissecting that confession should prompt some serious questions:
Cheney admitted he never saw any evidence to support the claims he was making in 2002 and 2003. Yet, at that time he was adamant they had "solid" intelligence. Maybe "solid" means something different in Fourth Branch-land. Someone should check the dictionary.
"We had the reporting for a while" is true... because they were reporting WHAT HE WAS SAYING....
Here's the kicker: It did not "eventually" turn out to be false. It was ALWAYS false. As Dick Cheney ultimately admitted.
Simply put: There never was any evidence. That's important because it means we didn't go to war based on bad evidence, or even a bad intepretation of faulty evidence. We went to war based on NO EVIDENCE. In short, we went to war on a lie and Cheney admits he NEVER had evidence to support it. And he knew that at the time. That means it was a war of aggression.
Looks like we have an answer to the awkward question first posed by that "crazy" liberal polemicist, William F. Buckley, Jr. "Who Screwed Up?"
Is that the end of the story? Of course not. I haven't even mentioned the death squads. But one thing is certain. There is more than enough evidence to warrant several trials for war crimes. Dismissing that out of hand because there has been no conviction is bizarre. Isn't that the whole point of having a trial - to see if the evidence is strong enough to convict? Or did I miss the memo declaring a new "efficiency in jurisprudence" doctrine?
I'm sure these are awkward questions, but don't worry about them. What do I know? I'm just a "crazy" progressive and poor practitioner of Ars Oblivionalis, the Art of Forgetting, a dark art clearly mastered by our "pragmatic" and "sober" friends.