Fw: [NOLA_C3_Discussion] National Campaign to Impeach George W Bush

[Guest guest]

I removed all the > marks and ragged lines from the letter below,

then sent it on to my Congressman, Senators, as well as the War Criminal in

the White House. I agree with Boyle that the American Republic is on the

verge of death and only an impeachment, followed by an international war

crimes tribunal can possibly save the US from the dark night of a

dictatorship, with loss of all civil liberties at home, and a never-ending

war against the rest of the world. Let me give a brief pull-quote from the

letter below, to get your interest:

 

> Congressman Conyers was so kind as to allow me the closing argument

> in the debate. Briefly put, the concluding point I chose to make was

> historical: The Athenians lost their democracy. The Romans lost their

> Republic. And if we Americans did not act now we could lose our

> Republic! The United States of America is not immune to the laws

> of history! "

 

 

Alobar

 

 

-

" Ward Reilly " <wardpeace

<cawi >; <NOLA_C3_Discussion >;

<2spells; <Geraldole

Thursday, June 23, 2005 10:52 AM

[NOLA_C3_Discussion] National Campaign to Impeach George W Bush

 

 

> Francis Boyle was a guest speaker at Loyola in 2003...he is a scholar and

> one of us....peace from Ward

>

Francis A. Boyle

Law Building

504 E. Pennsylvania Ave.

Champaign, IL

61820 USA

217-333-7954 (voice)

217-244-1478 (fax)

fboyle (personal comments only)

 

 

 

 

owner-aalsmin-l On Behalf Of Boyle, Francis

[NYTr] National Campaign to Impeach George W Bush

Via NY Transfer News Collective *

 

 

The National Campaign to Impeach President George W. Bush

 

by Professor Francis A. Boyle

 

Since the U.S. Supreme Court's installation of George W. Bush as President

in January of 2001, the peoples of the world have witnessed a government in

the United States of America that demonstrates little if any respect for

fundamental considerations of international law, international

organizations, and human rights, let alone appreciation of the requirements

for maintaining international peace and security. What the world has watched

instead is a comprehensive and malicious assault upon the integrity of the

international legal order by a group of men and women who are thoroughly

Machiavellian in their perception of international relations and in their

conduct of both foreign policy and domestic affairs. This is not simply a

question of giving or withholding the benefit of the doubt when it comes to

complicated matters of foreign affairs and defense policies to a U.S.

government charged with the security of both its own citizens and those of

its allies in Europe, the Western Hemisphere, and the Pacific. Rather, the

Bush Jr. administration's foreign policies represent a gross deviation from

those basic rules of international deportment and civilized behavior that

the United States government had traditionally played the pioneer role in

promoting for the entire world community. Even more seriously, in many

instances specific components of the Bush Jr. administration's foreign

policies constitute ongoing criminal activity under well-recognized

principles of both international law and U.S. domestic law, and in

particular the Nuremberg Charter, the Nuremberg Judgment, and the Nuremberg

Principles.

 

Depending upon the substantive issues involved, those international crimes

typically include but are not limited to the Nuremberg offenses of crimes

against peace, crimes against humanity and war crimes, as well as grave

breaches of the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the 1907 Hague

Regulations on land warfare, torture, disappearances, and assassinations. In

addition, various members of the Bush Jr. administration committed numerous

inchoate crimes incidental to these substantive offenses that under the

Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles were international crimes in

their own right: viz., planning, preparation, solicitation, incitement,

conspiracy, complicity, attempt, aiding and abetting, etc. Of course the

great irony of today's situation is that six decades ago at Nuremberg,

representatives of the U.S. government participated in the prosecution,

punishment and execution of Nazi government officials for committing some of

the same types of heinous international crimes that members of the Bush Jr.

administration currently inflict upon people all around the world. To be

sure, I personally oppose the imposition of capital punishment upon any

person for any reason no matter how monstrous their crimes: Bush Jr., Blair, Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic, Vladimir Putin, Ariel Sharon, my

former client John Wayne Gacy, etc.

 

Furthermore, according to basic principles of international criminal law,

all high-level civilian officials and military officers in the U.S.

government who either knew or should have known that soldiers or civilians

under their control committed or were about to commit international crimes,

and failed to take the measures necessary to stop them, or to punish them,

or both, are likewise personally responsible for the commission of

international crimes. This category of officialdom who actually knew or at

least should have known of the commission of such substantive or inchoate

international crimes under their jurisdiction and failed to do anything

about it typically includes the Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, of Central Intelligence, the National Security Adviser, the

Attorney General, the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff and regional CINCs,

and presumably the President and Vice President. These U.S. government

officials and their immediate subordinates, among others, were personally

responsible for the commission or at least complicity in the commission of

crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and war crimes as specified

by the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles - at a minimum. In

international legal terms, the Bush Jr. administration itself should be

viewed as constituting an ongoing criminal conspiracy under international

criminal law.

 

Consequently, on Tuesday 11 March 2003, with the Bush Jr. administration's

war of aggression against Iraq staring the American People, Congress and

Republic in their face, Congressman John Conyers of Michigan, the Ranking

Member of the House Judiciary Committee (which has jurisdiction over Bills

of Impeachment), convened an emergency meeting of forty or more of his top

advisors, most of whom were lawyers. The purpose of the meeting was to

discuss and debate immediately putting into the U.S. House of

Representatives Bills of Impeachment against President Bush Jr., Vice

President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and then

Attorney General John Ashcroft in order to head off the impending war.

Congressman Conyers kindly requested that Ramsey Clark and I come to the

meeting in order to argue the case for impeachment.

 

This impeachment debate lasted for two hours. It was presided over by

Congressman Conyers, who quite correctly did not tip his hand one way or the

other on the merits of impeachment. He simply moderated the debate between

Clark and I, on the one side, favoring immediately filing Bills of

Impeachment against Bush Jr. et al. to stop the threatened war, and almost

everyone else there who were against impeachment for partisan political

reasons. Obviously no point would be served here by attempting to digest a

two-hour-long vigorous debate among a group of well-trained lawyers on such

a controversial matter at this critical moment in American history. But at

the time I was struck by the fact that this momentous debate was conducted

at a private office right down the street from the White House on the eve of

war.

 

Suffice it to say that most of the " experts " there opposed impeachment not

on the basis of enforcing the Constitution and the Rule of Law, whether

international or domestic, but on the political grounds that it might hurt

the Democratic Party effort to get their presidential candidate elected in

the year 2004. As a political independent, I did not argue that point.

Rather, I argued the merits of impeaching Bush Jr., Cheney, Rumsfeld, and

Ashcroft under the United States Constitution, U.S. federal laws, U.S.

treaties and other international agreements to which the United States is a

party, etc. Article VI of the U.S. Constitution provides that treaties

" shall be the supreme Law of the Land. " This so-called Supremacy Clause of

the U.S. Constitution also applies to international executive agreements

concluded under the auspices of the U.S. President such as the 1945

Nuremberg Charter.

 

Congressman Conyers was so kind as to allow me the closing argument in the

debate. Briefly put, the concluding point I chose to make was historical:

The Athenians lost their democracy. The Romans lost their Republic. And if

we Americans did not act now we could lose our Republic! The United States

of America is not immune to the laws of history!

 

After two hours of most vigorous debate among those in attendance, the

meeting adjourned with second revised draft Bills of Impeachment sitting on

the table.

 

Certainly, if the U.S. House of Representatives can impeach President

Clinton for sex and lying about sex, then a fortiori the House can, should,

and must impeach President Bush Jr. for war, lying about war, and

threatening more wars. All that is needed is for one Member of Congress with

courage, integrity, principles and a safe seat to file these currently

amended draft Bills of Impeachment against Bush Jr., Cheney, Rumsfeld, and

now Attorney General Albert Gonzales, who bears personal criminal

responsibility for the Bush Jr. administration torture scandal. Failing

this, the alternative is likely to be an American Empire abroad, a U.S.

police state at home, and continuing wars of aggression to sustain

both-along the lines of George Orwell's classic novel 1984. Despite all of

the serious flaws demonstrated by successive United States governments that

this author has amply documented elsewhere during the past quarter century

as a Professor of Law, the truth of the matter is that America is still the

oldest Republic in the world today. " We the People of the United States "

must fight to keep it that way!

 

[Francis A. Boyle is a Professor of International Law and a human rights

attorney. He is the author of " Destroying World Order " (2004, Clarity

Press).]

 

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