Bush And His Gang Are War Criminals

By James Donahue

The U. S. media completely ignored it, and the politicians failed to even bring it up during the heavy campaigning for public offices, but former President George W. Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney, and six other members of their staff were tried in absentia for war crimes and found guilty before a War Crimes Commission in May, 2012.

Found guilty were both Bush and Cheney, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and their legal advisors Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, William Haynes, Jay Bybee and John Yoo.

The trial was held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The tribunal of judges heard witness accounts from victims of torture suffered at the hands of U. S. soldiers and government hired contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The full transcripts of the trial and relevant material has been sent to the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court and the United Nations Security Council. The Lumpur Commission asked that the names of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gonzales, Yoo, Bybee, Addington and Haynes be entered in the Commission’s Register of War Criminals for public record.

Because the United States refuses to recognize the authority of the International War Crimes Commission (a decision made when Mr. Bush was in office), even if the case goes before this body, none of these men will probably ever be arrested and punished for their crimes. If they ever leave the country, however, they would all be subject to arrest.

The tribunal was the initiative of Malaysia’s retired Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who opposed the American invasion of Iraq in 2003.

At the conclusion of the trial, President of the tribunal Tan Sri Dato Lamin bin Haji Mohd Yunus Lamin made the following statement: "As a tribunal of conscience, the Tribunal is fully aware that its verdict is merely declaratory in nature. The tribunal has no power of enforcement, no power to impose any custodial sentence on any one or more of the eight convicted persons."

What is hoped, Mr. Lamin said, is that similar trials will be held in other countries and that a world movement will evolve forcing the arrest and conviction of all eight by the International Criminal Court at the Hague.

During the trial, the panel of judges heard testimony of witnesses exposed to what was described as brutal, barbaric, cruel and dehumanizing acts against them. They said these acts were designed "to inflict the worst possible pain and suffering," the lawyers argued.

In his ruling, Lamin found that "the prosecution had established beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused persons . . . engaged in a web of instructions, memos, directives, legal advice and action that established a common plan and purpose, joint enterprise and/or conspiracy to commit the crimes of torture and war crimes, including and not limited to a common plan and purpose to commit the following crimes in relation to the ‘War on Terror’ and the wars launched by the U. S. and others in Afghanistan and Iraq."

Mr. Bush and Britain’s Tony Blair fell into world disgrace when they jointly decided to launch an invasion of Iraq under the false pretense that Iraq dictator Saddam Hussein possessed or was on the verge of possessing "weapons of mass destruction," namely a nuclear bomb. Such weaponry was never found. Hussein was arrested, tried and hung before a U. S. established court in Baghdad. Millions of innocent Iraqi and Afghanistan citizens were killed, severely maimed and left homeless by the fierce bombing assault imposed on them. Iraqi and Afghanistan men were arrested and tortured in American prison camps.

Bush launched the war in Afghanistan after a small terrorist group led by Osama bin Laden allegedly staged the aerial assault on the United States on 9-11. Rather than send a small military team to capture Bin Laden and drive his organization out of Afghanistan, American forces were sent to attack the whole country.

Bush and his team broke the long established rules of the Geneva Convention when they decided to introduce torture in the prison camps.

Many world leaders are calling for similar charges to be brought against England’s former Prime Minister Tony Blair.