What's to Stop Him? Bush's Assaults on Freedom

PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

On June 29 the US Supreme Court in a 5-3 decision ruled that President Bush's effort to railroad tortured Guantanamo Bay detainees in kangaroo courts "violates both US law and the Geneva Conventions." Better late than never, but it sure took a long time for the checks and balances to call a halt to the illegal and unconstitutional behavior of the executive. The Legal Times quotes David Remes, a partner in the law firm of Covington & Burling: "At the broadest level, the Court has rejected the basic legal theory of the Bush administration since 9/11--that the president has the inherent power to do whatever he wants in the name of fighting terrorism without accountability to Congress or the courts." Perhaps the Court's ruling has more far reaching implications. In finding Bush in violation of the Geneva Conventions, the ruling may have created a prima facie case for charges to be filed against Bush as a war criminal. Many readers have concluded that Bush assumed the war criminal's mantle when he illegally invaded Iraq under false pretenses. The US itself established the Nuremberg standard that it is a war crime to launch a war of aggression. This was the charge that the chief US prosecutor brought against German leaders at the Nuremberg trials...

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