Some odious comparisons between Bush/Cheney and Hitler (yes, the stench is semi-similar)

US Must Follow Nuremberg Code -- by David Rupel

Perhaps it was by some quirk of Intelligent Design that Congress passed the law legitimizing the Bush administration's right to do whatever it chooses to detainees (short of rape and mutilation) almost 60 years to the day of the verdicts at Nuremberg.

Two of the Nuremberg trial defendants, Field Marshall Wilhelm Keitel and Gen. Alfred Jodl, were sentenced to death on Oct. 1, 1946, in part, for delegating Hitler's infamous "commando order." Hitler ranted that allied commandos who attacked German troops by stealth were not soldiers but common criminals. Gangsters, he added, were not covered by the Geneva Convention.

Substitute the word "enemy combatants" for "gangsters," and the Bush administration's approach is certainly rooted in precedent. Moreover, the law doesn't abandon the Geneva Convention. It merely allows leeway in interpreting old-fashioned notions about what constitutes torture.

A second strike against Keitel dealt with his role in carrying out Hitler's "Night and Fog" decree. Under this directive, suspected resistance sympathizers were whisked away by night to places where no one would ever learn of their fates.

Substitute the word "insurgents" for "resistance" and this, too, has a familiar ring. In the wake of Abu Ghraib, the U.S. Army estimated that between 70 percent and 90 percent of those rounded up had done nothing.

Worse, Republicans in Congress maintain that any objections to these breaches of international law and basic decency "coddle" terrorists. For obvious political reasons, advance word is that trials in some cases could begin in synch with next month's elections.

The Nuremberg Charter enumerated four crimes. In highlighted form, these were:

Conspiracy to wage war of aggression;
Actual launching of aggressive war;
Killing, plundering and destroying in a war not justified by militarily necessity; and
Crimes against humanity.

Arguably, the invasion of Iraq fails to rise to the level of crimes against humanity revealed at Nuremberg. As long as the world draws a moral distinction between shoving children into gas chambers versus chalking up their unintended deaths in an unnecessary war to "collateral damage," that debate will continue. But the first three counts speak for themselves. And I submit that at least some who were hanged at Nuremburg were less guilty of war crimes than the people who brought us Iraq.

Julius Streicher, for one, was executed on general principles. Although a loathsome sort, no evidence was presented linking Streicher to specific murders or the war. However, the tribunal concluded that publishing his vicious anti-Semitic tabloid constituted a crime against humanity because it incited others to murder. In truth, it differed more in focus than in content from some anti-Islamic vitriol heard nowadays from stage right.

Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, chief U.S. prosecutor, affirmed that the legacy of Nuremberg should be that the Germans stood trial not because they lost the war -- but because they started it.

The jury of history is out on whether he was correct. Until that verdict is final, holding these detainees without charge or having them tried by hand-picked "military commissions" serves only to incite global terror and lower America's credibility even further.

If there is any evidence of crimes, why not allow these detainees to be judged by an independent international body, as was done with such painstaking circumspection 60 years ago at Nuremberg?

(David Rupel is a retired state employee who lives in Olympia, Washington)


2. Return of the War Criminal -- by Molly Ivins

The Old War Criminal is back. I try not to hold grudges, but I must admit I have never lost one ounce of rancor toward Henry Kissinger, that cynical, slithery, self-absorbed pathological liar. He has all the loyalty and principle of Charles Talleyrand, whom Napoleon described as “a piece of dung in a silk stocking.”

Come to think of it, Talleyrand looks pretty good compared to Kissinger, who always aspired to be Metternich (a 19th century Austrian diplomat). Just count the number of Americans and Vietnamese who died between 1969 and 1973, and see if you can find any indication he ever gave a damn.

As for Kissinger’s getting the Nobel Peace Prize, it is a thing so wrong it has come to define wrongness—as in, “As weird as the time Henry Kissinger got the Nobel Peace Prize.”

Tom Lehrer, who was a lovely political satirist, gave up satire after that blow.

The War Criminal’s return is the only piece of news I have yet found in Bob Woodward’s new book, and what amazes me is the reaction to the work. Gosh, gasp, imagine, Woodward says the war’s a disaster!

People who know a lot more than Bob Woodward have been saying the war’s a disaster for years—because war is self-evidently a disaster. Why this is greeted as an annunciation from on high just because Woodward, the world’s most establishment reporter, now says so is a mystery to me.

I have read snippets here and there suggesting the self-important chattering class of Washington is massively resistant to admitting they were wrong about Iraq, and that you only have credibility as a critic of the war if you were for it in the first place. I missed a logical link there. I know how vain the chattering classes are, but the majority of the American people has since come to conclude they were wrong about the war—and they say so without feeling disgraced.

What’s wrong with the Washington press corps? Speaking of people who have trouble with the truth, here’s a recent George W. line from two weeks ago I particularly prize: “There’s kind of an urban myth here in Washington about how this administration hasn’t stayed focused on Osama bin Laden. Forget it. It’s convenient throwaway lines when people say that.”

How do these urban myths get started? Perhaps with GWB on March 13, 2002: “I don’t know where bin Laden is. ... You know ... I just don’t spend that much time on him. ... I’ll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him.”

Or as Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on April 6, 2002: “The goal (in Afghanistan) has never been to get bin Laden. ... The goal there was never (to go) after specific individuals.” Donald Rumsfeld: Bin Laden has been “neutralized.” And Vice President Cheney: “Bin Laden himself is not that big a threat.”

And etc., etc. We got two straight years of quotes from officials all across the Bush administration pushing the idea that Osama bin Laden is just a minor player, we’re not hunting him, the war on terror is a much larger deal, and so on and so forth. You know, it’s one thing to tell a whopper yourself—it’s adding insult to injury to call the people who point this out liars themselves.

A half-hour documentary about Granny D (Doris Haddock) will be playing throughout October on various PBS channels around the country. Granny D, the crusader for campaign finance reform, who hiked across the country at age 90, is now 96, and the documentary of her work is inspiring.

She’s such an adorably “sweet old lady” that one forgets how tough she has been and how consistent she has been. You want to know where to get the strength, courage and optimism to keep fighting for change? Listen to Granny D. More at www.grannyd.com .

(Molly Ivins' first newspaper job was in the complaint department of the Houston Chronicle, followed by the position of sewer editor. She went on to the Minneapolis Tribune, where she was the first woman police reporter in that city and, later, the reporter who covered a beat called Movements for Social Change, where she notes that she wrote about "militant blacks, angry Indians, radical students, uppity women and a motley assortment of other misfits and troublemakers." She left the Tribune to write for the Texas Observer from 1970 to 1976. The New York Times, concerned that its prevailing writing style was too staid and lifeless, hired her away from the Observer in 1976, and she wrote for the Times until 1982. Her more colorful style clashed with the editors' expectations, and in 1982, after she wrote about a "community chicken-killing festival" and called it a "gang-pluck," she was dismissed. She then wrote for the Dallas Times Herald from 1982 until the paper's demise in 1992, moving in that year to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, her current home paper. Her column, currently distributed by Creators Syndicate, appears in more than 300 papers nationwide.)


3. After Torture, What's Next? -- by James Abourezk

So, waterboarding is now okay. So is the suspension of one of our basic Constitutional rights - habeas corpus. Habeas corpus, according to the US Constitution, can only be suspended in cases of invasion or rebellion. Our Supreme Court has held that "habeas corpus is the fundamental instrument for safeguarding individual freedom against arbitrary and lawless state action."

Abe Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War, and even then it was a questionable act. And even more hopeless is that part of the law that permits President George W. Bush to interpret Common Article Three of the 1949 Geneva Conventions. Although Mr. Bush claims that the article is vague, no one before him has had any trouble understanding that torture is wrong, and in violation of international law.

But the suspension of habeas corpus in 2006 is not only unconstitutional because there is neither a rebellion nor have we been invaded, it is flat-out wrong.

The only rebellion we were faced with was the one begun by three Republican Senators - McCain, Graham and Warner. All three had served in the military, but McCain had actually spent time as a prisoner of war in North Viet Nam. Many of us cheered when he stood up to the president to say that if we permitted torture, which is what Bush and Cheney were trying to legalize, our own soldiers, sailors and airmen would be subject to the same brutalization as Mr. Bush was hoping to inflict on his "terror suspects."

But the rebellion was quickly quelled when McCain, Graham and Warner caved in and said that the compromise they had worked out with the president would both preserve our morals and get valuable information from enemy combatants.

First, people who are experts in interrogation of the enemy pretty much agree that torture doesn't work. Those being tortured will say anything they think their interrogators want to hear, just so the torture will stop. Secondly, the information, even if true, which is rare, in virtually every case is outdated by the time the torture is finished. Certainly no enemy would continue with plans known to someone who was captured.

But even more important, as former secretary of state and famous Army general Colin Powell said, we lose our moral high ground if we torture prisoners. To me, that is a hundred times more powerful a statement than the repetitious rantings of George W. Bush, who continually cites the mantra, "We are protecting Americans." That phrase, of course, is born of polling that says Americans want to be protected, and delivered by the likes of Karl Rove, who, if nothing else, knows demagoguery.

But the hottest place in political hell should be reserved for members of Congress, including the weak-kneed Democrats, who essentially went along with Mr. Bush's "compromise."

It did not seem to bother senators and representatives that habeas corpus is being suspended for enemy combatants. There is now no way to learn whether or not the prisoner is indeed an enemy, or just someone who was gathered up in a sweep of foreigners in Afghanistan, because, without habeas corpus, their detention cannot be tested in a court.

Senate Democrats, who in recent years have dug in to filibuster at the slightest provocation, this time merely stood up to record their opposition, knowing full well they would lose a straight up or down vote on the Bush compromise. But instead of really trying to stop the legislation, those who opposed it were content to make a speech and vote against it so they could later brag about their principled stand.

Everyone knew that was the Bush/Rove strategy - bring it up just before the elections so you can accuse the opposition of being soft on terrorism. It worked with the Iraq War resolution in 2002, so why not now?

My wife, who is from the Middle East, in fact from a country that tortures its prisoners, was nearly in tears when, after hearing about the legislation, she told me that everyone in her home country always looked up to America as a beacon of freedom. But those who loved America as an idea would now feel completely alone.

President Bush continually says that "they" hate us because of our freedoms. That may explain why, in this legislation and in the Patriot Act, he is, piece by piece, trying to remove our freedoms. If this is his idea of protecting Americans, we really can't stand much more protection.

The public's opposition to this draconian law is the only thing that will give Congress the backbone to preserve our freedoms.

(James Abourezk served as the US Congressman and Senator from South Dakota from 1973-1979. His memoir, Advise & Dissent: Memoirs of South Dakota and the US Senate, was published in 1989. Abourezk founded the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, and he is a signer of the "Call to Drive Out the Bush Regime" from World Can't Wait, which held protests in over 150 cities on October 5, 2006.)