Richard Falk Delivers Keynote at NLG Convention

On October 15, Professor Richard Falk delivered the keynote address, "Imperial Wars and the Obama Presidency: The Role of Law," at the National Lawyers Guild convention in Seattle. He was introduced by NLG president Marjorie Cohn.

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"The Legal Avenger," an interview of Marjorie Cohn

Covers illegality of Iraq and Afghanistan wars, prosecuting war crimes, the duty to disobey unlawful orders - See:

http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/8498

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Stanford Anti-War Alumni, Students Call for Condi War Crimes Probe

During the Vietnam War, Stanford students succeeded in banning secret military research from campus. Last weekend, 150 activist alumni and present Stanford students targeted Condoleezza Rice for authorizing torture and misleading Americans into the illegal Iraq War.

Veterans of the Stanford anti-Vietnam War movement had gathered for a 40th anniversary reunion during the weekend. The gathering featured panels on foreign policy, the economy, political and social movements, science and technology, media, energy and the environment, and strategies for aging activists.

On Sunday, surrounded by alumni and students, Lenny Siegel and I nailed a petition to the University President’s office door. The petition, circulated by Stanford Says No to War, reads:

“We the undersigned students, faculty, staff, alumni, and other concerned members of the Stanford community, believe that high officials of the U.S. Government, including our former Provost, current Political Science Professor, and Hoover Institution Senior Fellow, Condoleezza Rice, should be held accountable for any serious violations of the Law (included ratified treaties, statutes, and/or the U.S. Constitution) through investigation and, if the facts warrant, prosecution, by appropriate legal authorities.”

I stated, “By nailing this petition to the door of the President’s office, we are telling Stanford that the university should not have war criminals on its faculty. There is prima facie evidence that Rice approved torture and misled the country into the Iraq War. Stanford has an obligation to investigate those charges.”

After the petition nailing, I cited the law and evidence of Condoleezza Rice’s responsibility for war crimes - including torture - and for selling the illegal Iraq War:



As National Security Advisor, Rice authorized waterboarding in July 2002, according to a newly released report of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Less than two months later, she hyped the impending U.S. invasion of Iraq, saying, “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” Her ominous warning was part of the Bush administration’s campaign to sell the Iraq war, in spite of the UN International Atomic Energy Agency’s assurances that Saddam Hussein did not possess nuclear weapons.

A week before the nailing of the petition, Rice made some Nixonian admissions in response to questions from Stanford students during a campus dinner designed to burnish Rice’s image on campus.

In October 1968, Stanford anti-war activists had nailed a document to the door of the trustees’ office which demanded that Stanford “halt all military and economic projects concerned with Southeast Asia.”

If you have had any affiliation with Stanford, please sign the petition at http://www.stanford.edu/group/antiwar/crpetition.html.

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Preemptive Strikes Against Protest at RNC

In the months leading up to the Republican National Convention, the FBI-led Minneapolis Joint Terrorist Task Force actively recruited people to infiltrate vegan groups and other leftist organizations and report back about their activities. On May 21, the Minneapolis City Pages ran a recruiting story called "Moles Wanted." Law enforcement sought to preempt lawful protest against the policies of the Bush administration during the convention.

Since Friday, local police and sheriffs, working with the FBI, conducted preemptive searches, seizures and arrests. Glenn Greenwald described the targeting of protestors by "teams of 25-30 officers in riot gear, with semi-automatic weapons drawn, entering homes of those suspected of planning protests, handcuffing and forcing them to lay on the floor, while law enforcement officers searched the homes, seizing computers, journals, and political pamphlets." Journalists were detained at gunpoint and lawyers representing detainees were handcuffed at the scene.

"I was personally present and saw officers with riot gear and assault rifles, pump action shotguns," said Bruce Nestor, the President of the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, who is representing several of the protestors. "The neighbor of one of the houses had a gun pointed in her face when she walked out on her back porch to see what was going on. There were children in all of these houses, and children were held at gunpoint."

The raids targeted members of "Food Not Bombs," an anti-war, anti-authoritarian protest group that provides free vegetarian meals every week in hundreds of cities all over the world. They served meals to rescue workers at the World Trade Center after 9/11 and to nearly 20 communities in the Gulf region following Hurricane Katrina.

Also targeted were members of I-Witness Video, a media watchdog group that monitors the police to protect civil liberties. The group worked with the National Lawyers Guild to gain the dismissal of charges or acquittals of about 400 of the 1,800 who were arrested during the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York. Preemptive policing was used at that time as well. Police infiltrated protest groups in advance of the convention.

Nestor said that no violence or illegality has taken place to justify the arrests. "Seizing boxes of political literature shows the motive of these raids was political," he said.

Further evidence the political nature of the police action was the boarding up of the Convergence Center, where protestors had gathered, for unspecified code violations. St. Paul City Council member David Thune said, "Normally we only board up buildings that are vacant and ramshackle." Thune and fellow City Council member Elizabeth Glidden decried "actions that appear excessive and create an atmosphere of fear and intimidation for those who wish to exercise their first amendment rights."

"So here we have a massive assault led by Federal Government law enforcement agencies on left-wing dissidents and protestors who have committed no acts of violence or illegality whatsoever, preceded by months-long espionage efforts to track what they do," Greenwald wrote on Salon.

Preventive detention violates the Fourth Amendment, which requires that warrants be supported by probable cause. Protestors were charged with "conspiracy to commit riot," a rarely-used statute that is so vague, it is probably unconstitutional. Nestor said it "basically criminalizes political advocacy."

On Sunday, the National Lawyers Guild and Communities United Against Police Brutality filed an emergency motion requesting an injunction to prevent police from seizing video equipment and cellular phones used to document their conduct.

During Monday's demonstration, law enforcement officers used pepper spray, rubber bullets, concussion grenades and excessive force. At least 284 people were arrested, including Amy Goodman, the prominent host of Democracy Now!, as well as the show's producers, Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar. "St. Paul was the most militarized I have ever seen an American city to be," Greenwald wrote, "with troops of federal, state and local law enforcement agents marching around with riot gear, machine guns, and tear gas cannisters, shouting military chants and marching in military formations."

Bruce Nestor said the timing of the arrests was intended to stop protest activity, "to make people fearful of the protests, but also to discourage people from protesting," he told Amy Goodman. Nevertheless, 10,000 people, many opposed to the Iraq war, turned out to demonstrate on Monday. A legal team from the National Lawyers Guild has been working diligently to protect the constitutional rights of protestors.

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End the Occupation of Iraq - and Afghanistan

So far, Bush's plan to maintain a permanent U.S. military presence in Iraq has been stymied by resistance from the Iraqi government. Barack Obama's timetable for withdrawal of American troops has evidently been joined by Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, Bush has mentioned a "time horizon," and John McCain has waffled. Yet Obama favors leaving between 35,000 and 80,000 U.S. occupation troops there indefinitely to train Iraqi security forces and carry out "counter-insurgency operations." That would not end the occupation. We must call for bringing home - not redeploying - all U.S. troops and mercenaries, closing all U.S. military bases, and relinquishing all efforts to control Iraqi oil.

In light of stepped up violence in Afghanistan, and for political reasons - following Obama's lead - Bush will be moving troops from Iraq to Afghanistan. Although the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan was as illegal as the invasion of Iraq, many Americans see it as a justifiable response to the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the casualties in that war have been lower than those in Iraq - so far. Practically no one in the United States is currently questioning the legality or propriety of U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan. The cover of Time magazine calls it "The Right War."

The U.N. Charter provides that all member states must settle their international disputes by peaceful means, and no nation can use military force except in self-defense or when authorized by the Security Council. After the 9/11 attacks, the Council passed two resolutions, neither of which authorized the use of military force in Afghanistan. Resolutions 1368 and 1373 condemned the September 11 attacks, and ordered the freezing of assets; the criminalizing of terrorist activity; the prevention of the commission of and support for terrorist attacks; the taking of necessary steps to prevent the commission of terrorist activity, including the sharing of information; and urged ratification and enforcement of the international conventions against terrorism.

The invasion of Afghanistan was not legitimate self-defense under article 51 of the Charter because the attacks on September 11 were criminal attacks, not “armed attacks” by another country. Afghanistan did not attack the United States. In fact, 15 of the 19 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, there was not an imminent threat of an armed attack on the United States after September 11, or Bush would not have waited three weeks before initiating his October 2001 bombing campaign. The necessity for self-defense must be “instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation.” This classic principle of self-defense in international law has been affirmed by the Nuremberg Tribunal and the U.N. General Assembly.

Bush's justification for attacking Afghanistan was that it was harboring Osama bin Laden and training terrorists. Iranians could have made the same argument to attack the United States after they overthrew the vicious Shah Reza Pahlavi in 1979 and he was given safe haven in the United States. The people in Latin American countries whose dictators were trained in torture techniques at the School of the Americas could likewise have attacked the torture training facility in Ft. Benning, Georgia under that specious rationale.

Those who conspired to hijack airplanes and kill thousands of people on 9/11 are guilty of crimes against humanity. They must be identified and brought to justice in accordance with the law. But retaliation by invading Afghanistan is not the answer and will only lead to the deaths of more of our troops and Afghanis.

The hatred that fueled 19 people to blow themselves up and take 3,000 innocents with them has its genesis in a history of the U.S. government's exploitation of people in oil-rich nations around the world. Bush accused the terrorists of targeting our freedom and democracy. But it was not the Statue of Liberty that was destroyed. It was the World Trade Center - symbol of the U.S.-led global economic system, and the Pentagon - heart of the U.S. military, that took the hits. Those who committed these heinous crimes were attacking American foreign policy. That policy has resulted in the deaths of two million Iraqis - from both Bill Clinton's punishing sanctions and George W. Bush's war. It has led to uncritical support of Israel's brutal occupation of Palestinian lands; and it has stationed more than 700 U.S. military bases in foreign countries.

Conspicuously absent from the national discourse is a political analysis of why the tragedy of 9/11 occurred and a comprehensive strategy to overhaul U.S. foreign policy to inoculate us from the wrath of those who despise American imperialism. The "global war on terror" has been uncritically accepted by most in this country. But terrorism is a tactic, not an enemy. You cannot declare war on a tactic. The way to combat terrorism is by identifying and targeting its root causes, including poverty, lack of education, and foreign occupation.

There are already 60,000 foreign troops, including 36,000 Americans, in Afghanistan. Large increases in U.S. troops during the past year have failed to stabilize the situation there. Most American forces operate in the eastern part of the country; yet by July 2008, attacks there were up by 40 percent. Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security advisor for Jimmy Carter, is skeptical that the answer for Afghanistan is more troops. He warns that the United States will, like the Soviet Union, be seen as the invader, especially as we conduct military operations "with little regard for civilian casualties." Brzezinski advocates Europeans bribing Afghan farmers not to cultivate poppies for heroin, as well as the bribery of tribal warlords to isolate al-Qaeda from a Taliban that is "not a united force, not a world-oriented terrorist movement, but a real Afghan phenomenon."

Indeed, on July 29, 2008, the RAND corporation released a report that argues that, "Current U.S. strategy against the terrorist group al Qaida has not been successful in significantly undermining the group's capabilities." The United States should pursue a counterterrorism strategy against al Qa'ida that emphasizes policing and intelligence gathering rather than a “war on terrorism” approach that relies heavily on military force, according to RAND.

We might heed Canada's suggestion that a broader mission, under the auspices of the United Nations instead of NATO, would be more effective. Our policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan should emphasize economic assistance for reconstruction, development and education, not for more weapons. The United States must refrain from further Predator missile strikes in Pakistan, and pursue diplomacy, not occupation.

Nor should we be threatening war against Iran, which would also be illegal and result in an unmitigated disaster. The U.N. Charter forbids any country to use, or threaten to use, military force against another country except in self-defense or when the Security Council has given its blessing. In spite of the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency's conclusion that there is no evidence Iran is developing nuclear weapons, the White House, Congress, and Israel have continued to rattle the sabers in Iran's direction. Nevertheless, the antiwar movement has so far fended off passage of HR 362 in the House of Representatives, a bill that is tantamount to a call for a naval blockade against Iran - considered an act of war under international law. Credit goes to United for Peace and Justice, Code Pink, Peace Action, and dozens of other organizations that pressured Congress to think twice before taking that dangerous step.

We should pursue diplomacy, not war, with Iran; end the U.S. occupation of Iraq; and withdraw our troops from Afghanistan.

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Cheney Impeachment Gains Traction in House Judiciary Committee

Nine out of 23 Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee favor starting impeachment hearings against Vice-President Dick Cheney. Six of the nine are co-sponsors of H.R. 799, which contains three articles of impeachment.

Articles I and II of H.R. 799 accuse Cheney of purposely manipulating intelligence to deceive Congress and the American people about a fabricated threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and about an alleged relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda, respectively. Article III charges Cheney with openly threatening aggression against Iran absent any real threat to the United States. All three articles say Cheney's actions have damaged our national security interests.

Three of the nine Judiciary Committee Democrats who advocate launching impeachment hearings against Cheney, Reps. Robert Wexler (D., Fla.), Luis Gutierrez (D., Ill.) and Tammy Baldwin (D., Wis.), co-authored an op-ed that appeared on December 27 in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

They wrote, "The issues at hand are too serious to ignore, including credible allegations of abuse of power that, if proven, may well constitute high crimes and misdemeanors under the Constitution. The allegations against Cheney relate to his deceptive actions leading up to the Iraq war, the revelation of the identity of a covert agent for political retaliation, and the illegal wiretapping of American citizens."

There is also credible evidence that policies set in Cheney's office authorized the torture of prisoners in U.S. custody, in violation of three treaties the United States has ratified, as well as the U.S. Torture Statute and War Crimes Act. The policies on the treatment of prisoners emanating from Cheney's office triggered the abuse and torture, according to Lawrence Wilkerson, former Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff.

"It was clear to me that there was a visible audit trail from the Vice President's office through the Secretary of Defense down to the commanders in the field," Wilkerson, a former colonel, said on National Public Radio's "Morning Edition."

In November, the House of Representatives sent the impeachment resolution to the House Judiciary Committee for further proceedings. However many Democrats oppose impeachment, citing the year and a half of testimony about Bill Clinton's personal relations. They think impeachment will detract from Congress's other pressing business.

Yet, the three congresspersons noted, the Clinton impeachment "must not be the model for impeachment inquiries. A Democratic Congress can show that it takes its constitutional authority seriously and hold a sober investigation, which will stand in stark contrast to the kangaroo court convened by Republicans for Clinton."

And, they argue, the hearings would "involve the possible impeachment of the vice president - not of our commander in chief - and the resulting impact on the nation's business and attention would be significantly less than the Clinton presidential impeachment hearings."

Seventy percent of American voters think Cheney has abused his powers and 43 percent say he should be removed from office, according to a Nov. 13 poll by the American Research Group. Organizations, including the National Lawyers Guild, have called for the impeachment of Dick Cheney.

Impeachment hearings against Cheney would not only fulfill the Constitution's command that high officials who commit high crimes and misdemeanors be brought to justice. It would also deter the vice president from committing additional crimes that threaten the national security of the United States.

Any impeachment proceeding would have to start in the House Judiciary Committee. The nine Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee who favor impeachment hearings are: Robert Wexler, Fla.; Luis Gutierrez, Ill.; Anthony Weiner, N.Y.; Tammy Baldwin, Wisc.; Sheila Jackson Lee, Texas; Steve Cohen, Tenn.; Keith Ellison, Minn.; Maxine Waters, Calif.; and Hank Johnson, Ga.

Here is a list of the entire House Judiciary Committee: http://judiciary.house.gov/CommitteeMembership.aspx.

For information about the campaign to impeach Dick Cheney, see http://impeachcheney.org.

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Bush Still Spinning Nukes in Iran

The unanimous conclusion of the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, that Iran ceased pursuing a program of nuclear weapons in 2003, has dealt a severe blow to the Bush-Cheney agenda of forcible regime change in Iran. For several months, the rhetoric emerging from the White House escalated to the point that many observers predicted Bush would attack Iran before he leaves office.

But although the new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) makes it more difficult to carry out his agenda in Iran, Bush is trying to publicly undermine its conclusions. "I have said Iran is dangerous," he declared, "and the NIE estimate doesn't do anything to change my opinion about the danger Iran poses to the world - quite the contrary." Will Bush provoke an incident with Iran and then respond in “self-defense”?

Bush "rewarded" Iran for its help in consolidating U.S. power in Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks by inaugurating Iran into his “axis of evil” in January 2002. The following year, Iran offered the U.S. government a comprehensive plan for negotiations and cooperation, which addressed all of Bush's claimed pet peeves about Iran. In Iran's 2003 memorandum, sent to the U.S. government via Swiss diplomats, Iran proposed a "dialogue in mutual respect." It sought negotiations with the United States on the concerns Bush has repeatedly expressed.

Iran proposed “full transparency” to show “there are no Iranian endeavors to develop or possess WMD.” It also sought to guarantee “decisive action against any terrorists (above all Al Qaida) on Iranian territory, full cooperation and exchange of all relevant information.” In Iraq, Iran proposed "coordination of Iranian influence for activity supporting political stabilization and the establishment of democratic institutions and a non-religious government." Iran agreed to discuss the “stop of any material support to Palestinian opposition groups (Hamas, Jihad etc.) from Iranian territory" and "pressure on these organizations to stop violent action against civilians within borders of 1967." And Iran listed its "acceptance of the Arab League Beirut declaration (Saudi initiative, two-states-approach)." This meant Iran would recognize the state of Israel.

The Iranian memorandum also offered to negotiate the following with the United States: "Halt in US hostile behavior and rectification of status of Iran in the U.S.: (interference in internal or external relations, 'axis of evil', terrorism list)"; "Abolishment of all sanctions: commercial sanctions, frozen assets, judgments (FSIA), impediments in international trade and financial institutions"; "Iraq: democratic and fully representative government in Iraq, support of Iranian claims for Iraqi reparations, respect for Iranian national interests in Iraq and religious links to Najaf/Karbal"; "Full access to peaceful nuclear technology, biotechnology and chemical technology"; "Recognition of Iran's legitimate security interests in the region with according defense capacity"; and "Terrorism: pursuit of anti-Iranian terrorists, above all MKO."

This 2003 offer by Iran to negotiate these pressing issues with the United States was an incredible opportunity, which Bush, who claims to pursue diplomacy, should have seized. Yet the White House thumbed its nose at the Iranian offer and then tried to cover up the story.

Why did Bush reject Iran's 2003 offer and now seek to discredit the conclusions of the National Intelligence Estimate? Because even if all his stated gripes with Iran were resolved, Bush's hidden agenda would not be addressed. That agenda comes into focus on the website of the American Enterprise Institute, a neoconservative think tank that claims Paul Wolfowitz, Lynne Cheney, Richard Perle and John Bolton as members. Under the AEI's list of "Research Projects" is "Global Investment in Iran."

Just as "Operation Iraqi Freedom" was about corporate control over Iraq's oil, Bush's strategy on Iran is about making Iran safe for global investment. And just as Bush lied about the danger posed by Saddam Hussein, he is now lying about the perils Iran poses.

U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency Director Mohamed ElBaradei has consistently said there is “no evidence” Iran has ever maintained a program of developing nuclear weapons. Yet even though Bush learned about the NIE report in August or September, according to National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, he invoked World War III in the same breath with Iran in October. On December 4, Bush lied about when he learned Iran had no weapons program, saying, "I was made aware of the NIE last week."

Hadley's report on the timing of Bush's knowledge of the NIE is corroborated by a shift in the rhetoric emerging from the White House. During the last two months, Bush stopped talking about Iran possessing nukes, and began referring to Iran having "knowledge" of nuclear weapons, which he linked with World War III.

In spite of the unanimous conclusion in the National Intelligence Estimate and ElBaradei's informed judgment, we cannot trust Bush-Cheney to abandon their imperial designs on Iran. Bush will probably provoke a military confrontation with Iran, then invoke the language in the 2002 Congressional authorization for the use of military force in Iraq that says, "The President has authority under the Constitution to take action in order to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism against the United States."

Congress must support Rep. Neil Abercrombie's resolution stating that Bush has been given no authority to go to war with Iran.

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Operation Iraqi Freedom Exposed: Bush Negotiates Permanent Presence in Iraq

The revelation that Bush will sign an agreement for a permanent U.S. military presence in Iraq before his term is up confirms the real reason he invaded Iraq and changed its regime.

It was never about weapons of mass destruction. It was never about ties between Saddam and al Qaeda. And it was never about bringing democracy to the Iraqi people. These claims were lies to cover up the real motive for Operation Iraqi Freedom: to create a permanent American presence in Iraq. With Bush's November 26, 2007 announcement that the United States and Iraq were negotiating a permanent "security relationship," his lies have been exposed.

Bush declared, Iraqi leaders "understand that their success will require U.S. political, economic, and security engagement that extends beyond my presidency." His outline for the permanent U.S.-Iraqi "Economic" relationship is "to encourage the flow of foreign investments to Iraq." Two senior Iraqi officials told the Associated Press that Bush is negotiating preferential treatment for U.S. investments.

This isn't the first time Bush has tried to turn Iraq into an investment haven for U.S. oil companies. He used to tout the "Iraqi oil law," which would transfer control of three-quarters of Iraq's oil to foreign companies, as the benchmark for Iraqi progress. But in the face of opposition by the Iraqi oil unions, the parliament has refused to pass that law.

All along, Bush has been building mega-bases In Iraq. Camp Anaconda, which sits on 15 square miles of Iraqi soil, has a pool, gym, theater, beauty salon, school and six apartment buildings. Our $600 million American embassy in the Green Zone just opened. The largest embassy in the world, it is a self-contained city with no need for Iraqi electricity, food or water.

Although Bush has negotiated terms to keep U.S. troops in Iraq in perpetuity, the majority of American people oppose a permanent American occupation of Iraq.

So do many Iraqis. University of Michigan Juan Cole's blog, "Informed Comment," cited an Al-Hayat report in Arabic that the Sadr Movement and the Sunni Iraqi Accord Front rejected the "memorandum of understanding" between the United States and Iraq that Bush and Nuri al-Maliki signed. According to the Iraqi Constitution, the agreement would be illegal unless ratified by the legislature, and Iraqi lawmakers complain about the absence of any timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops.

No wonder Iraqis oppose the U.S. occupation. The organization Just Foreign Policy has estimated that 1,118,846 Iraqis have been killed since Operation Iraqi Freedom began. Australian born journalist John Pilger wrote, "The scale of death caused by the British and U.S. governments may well have surpassed that of the Rwanda genocide, making it the biggest single act of mass murder of the late 20th century and the 21st century."

Yet Congress refuses to reign in the President. When Bush announced that violence is down in Baghdad so he can withdraw 5,000 troops, the Democratic candidates cheered, diverting their criticism to the lack of political progress in Iraq. But with so many Iraqis dead, there are fewer to kill.

We the people have to keep the pressure on. As we demand the United States withdraw completely from Iraq, we must also forbid Bush to attack Iran. Our voices must be heard - by Congress, by the media, and throughout the world.

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Pursue Diplomacy, Not War, With Iran

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit to the United States has prompted an outcry, including protests and tabloid headlines calling him “evil” and a “madman.” As Juan Cole says, "The real reason his visit is controversial is that the American right has decided the United States needs to go to war against Iran. Ahmadinejad is therefore being configured as an enemy head of state." The Bush administration, which maintains that “all options” remain on the table with Iran, should vigorously pursue the diplomatic option, instead of moving inexorably toward the military option.

Ahmadinejad said in a “60 Minutes” interview, “It’s wrong to think that Iran and the U.S. are walking toward war. Who says so? Why should we go to war? There is no war in the offing.” Iran has not threatened to attack the United States, or Israel for that matter, except if it is attacked first. Iranian authorities sent a proposal to the United States in May 2003 offering negotiations on a deal for Iran to freeze its nuclear program if the United States would end its hostility against Iran. The Bush administration thumbed its nose at the Iranian proposal, then tried to cover up the story, according to Trita Parsi, in his new book, Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States.

Bush has conducted a belligerent policy toward Iran ever since he inaugurated it into his “axis of evil” in January 2002. General David Petraeus and Bush both menacingly mentioned Iran five times in their respective August speeches touting how well things are going in Iraq. Petraeus referred to “malign actions” by Iran; Bush discussed Iran and al-Qaeda in the same breath even though Iran has never attacked us.

U.S. plans for war with Iran continue to escalate. Centcom (U.S. Central Command) has engaged in detailed contingency planning for an attack on Iran for more than two years. In June, the U.S. Air Force established Project Checkmate tasked with “fighting the next war.” The Pentagon is building a military base near the Iran-Iraq border. Earlier this month, British forces, at the request of the Americans, were sent from Basra to the Iranian border. Two aircraft carrier groups (USS Nimitz and USS Truman) are reportedly en route to the Persian Gulf to join the USS Enterprise.

Philip Giraldi wrote last month in The American Conservative that Dick Cheney ordered the U.S. Strategic Command to draw up a “contingency plan” for a large-scale air assault on Iran using both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons. “As in the case of Iraq,” according to Giraldi, “the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States. Several senior Air Force officers involved in the planning are reportedly appalled at the implications of what they are doing – that Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack – but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections.”

Bush will likely provoke a confrontation with Iran, then strike back in “self-defense.” The Sunday Telegraph reported, “A strike will probably follow a gradual escalation. Over the next few weeks and months the U.S. will build tensions and evidence around Iranian activities in Iraq . . . Under the theory – which is gaining credence in Washington security circles – U.S. action would provoke a major Iranian response, perhaps in the form of moves to cut off Gulf oil supplies, providing a trigger for air strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities and even its armed forces.”

Steve Clemons likewise wrote on Salon that David Wurmser, a member of Cheney’s national security staff, allegedly discussed convincing Israel to launch a low-yield cruise missile strike against the Natanz nuclear reactor in Iran, to “hopefully” prompt a military reaction by Iran against U.S. forces in Iraq and the Gulf.

Former CIA counter-terrorism chief Vincent Cannistrano, now a security analyst, stated, “The decision to attack was made some time ago. It will be in two stages. If a smoking gun is found in terms of Iranian interference in Iraq, the U.S. will retaliate on a tactical level, and they will strike against military targets. The second part of this is: Bush has made the decision to launch a strategic attack against Iranian nuclear facilities, although not before next year. He has been lining up some Sunni countries for tacit support for his actions.”

Patrick Cronin, director of studies at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, concurs. “Washington is seriously reviewing plans to bomb not just nuclear sites, but oil sites, military sites and even leadership targets. The talk is of multiple targets,” he said. “In Washington there is very serious discussion that this is a window that has to be looked at seriously because there is only six months to ‘do something about Iran’ before it will be looked at as a purely political issue.”

The United Nations’ chief nuclear weapons inspector, Mohamed ElBaradei, warned against an “out of control” drift to war with Iran. “I would not talk about any use of force,” he said. “There are rules on how to use force, and I would hope that everybody would have gotten the lesson after the Iraq situation, where 700,000 innocent civilians have lost their lives on the suspicion that a country has nuclear weapons.” The UN Charter only permits the use of force in self-defense or with the blessing of the Security Council. “Many of the potential targets are in populated places, endangering civilians both from errant bombs and the possible dispersal of radioactive material,” cautioned Peter Galbraith in the New York Review of Books. The failure to protect civilians violates the Geneva Conventions.

Yet Bush continues his march to war. In an end run around the UN Security Council, “Washington and its allies are developing a parallel track to the UN effort in the event that a third resolution ends up only modestly increasing pressure on Iran,” according to the Washington Post. “We’ll continue on the UN track, but we also have the track of the U.S.-E.U.,” a State Department official said.

Former General Wesley Clark is a likely presidential running mate for Hillary Clinton, who also intends to keep the military option against Iran on the table. In Sunday’s Washington Post, Clark laid out a detailed military plan to ensure that we “win” the next war. “Today, the most likely next conflict will be with Iran,” he wrote, while cautioning that war is the last resort.

Senators Joe Lieberman and Jon Kyl just introduced an amendment to the defense authorization bill that would authorize Bush to attack Iran. Here is the language from the amendment:

(3) that it should be the policy of the United States to combat,
contain, and roll back the violent activities and destabilizing
influence inside Iraq of the Government of the Islamic Republic of
Iran, its foreign facilitators such as Lebanese Hezbollah, and its
indigenous Iraqi proxies;

(4) to support the prudent and calibrated use of all instruments of
United States national power in Iraq, including diplomatic, economic,
intelligence, and military instruments, in support of the policy
described in paragraph (3) with respect to the Government of the
Islamic Republic of Iran and its proxies.

If the Congress adopts this amendment, U.S. policy would be to "combat" Iran with "all . . . military instruments." It is imperative that this amendment be defeated.

As Bush and Cheney once again go through the motions of diplomacy as they did during the run-up to war with Iraq, they move steadily toward war. They would do well to heed the sentiments of the Bipartisan Security Group, which advocates the Middle Powers Initiative. That statement says, “Resolution of differences between the United States and Iran through diplomatic means has become imperative. The catastrophe of Iraq should inform us that the use of force under present circumstances will bring even greater tragedy to the war-torn Middle East. Any threat to unilaterally use overwhelming force is irresponsibly hazardous. There is no imminent threat posed by Iran. There is a practical, legal and moral obligation to obtain security through peaceful and law abiding means.”

The initiative points to the United States’ hypocrisy of condemning Iran for seeking nuclear weapons while maintaining the right to use nukes against Iran. “The United States and other nuclear weapon states can more credibly insist on Iranian compliance with its international obligations if they meet their own. To decry the Iranian potential of developing nuclear weapons while brandishing arsenals of unimaginable destructive capacity on launch-on-warning status is inconsistent . . . Accordingly, the United States is required to renounce the use of nuclear weapons against Iran rather than to maintain that ‘all options are on the table.’”

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Bush Plans War on Iran

The Sunday Times of London is reporting that the Pentagon has plans for three days of massive air strikes against 1,200 targets in Iran. Last week, Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, told a meeting of The National Interest, a conservative foreign policy journal, that the military did not intend to carry out "pinprick strikes" against Iranian nuclear facilities. He said, "They're about taking out the entire Iranian military."

Bush has already set the wheels in motion. With Rovian timing, Alberto Gonzales' resignation was sandwiched between two Bush screeds - one aimed at ensuring Congress scares up $50 billion more for the occupation of Iraq, the other designed to scare us into supporting war on Iran. As Gonzales rides off into the sunset, the significant questions are who will take his place and how that choice will facilitate Bush's occupation of Iraq and attack on Iran.

One name that's been floated for Bush's third attorney general is Joe Lieberman, the "independent" senator from Connecticut. Lieberman, who advocates the use of military force against Iran, was the only person Bush quoted in his August 28 speech to the American Legion. Bush called Iran "the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism" and pledged to "confront Tehran's murderous activities."

Gonzales greased the Bush/Cheney wheels for torturing in violation of the Geneva Conventions, illegally spying on Americans, and purging disloyal Bushies.

Similarly, Lieberman would ensure the Justice Department mounts a vigorous defense of a war of aggression against Iran. And Bush would get a two-fer: Connecticut's Republican governor would appoint a Republican to fill Lieberman's seat, returning control of the Senate to the GOP. A Republican-controlled Senate would direct the agenda, thereby furthering the Bush/Cheney plan.

Lieberman is closely affiliated with American Israeli Public Affairs Committee. "AIPAC leverages its power by an alliance with the Christian Right, which has adopted a bizarre ideology of 'Christian Zionism,'" according to University of Michigan professor Juan Cole. "It holds that the sooner the Palestinians are ethnically cleansed, the sooner Christ will come back. Without millions of these Christian Zionist allies," Cole added, "AIPAC would be much less influential and effective."

During the 2004 election, a 100% "AIPAC voting record" was Lieberman's litmus test for an acceptable presidential candidate. As the House of Representatives was on the verge of passing a resolution that would've required Bush to consult Congress before attacking Iran, the AIPAC lobby stopped it in its tracks.

Bush's WMD-hyping against Iran is déja vu in the run-up to Operation Iraqi Disaster, where he played loose and fast with the truth about Iraq's alleged WMDs. His statement that a nuclear Iran could put the region "under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust" conjures up his images of a "mushroom cloud" in the hype-up to Iraq.

How inconvenient for Bush that the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) just found Iran's uranium enrichment program is operating well below capacity and is nowhere near producing significant amounts of nuclear fuel. The IAEA report says that Iran "has been providing the agency with access to declared nuclear materials, and has provided the required nuclear material accountancy reports in connection with declared nuclear material and facilities."

Iran and IAEA agreed on a plan with a step-by-step timetable of cooperation to settle unresolved issues. The agreement said there were "no other remaining issues and ambiguities regarding Iran's past nuclear program and activities," and characterized the accord as "a significant step forward."

"This is the first time Iran is ready to discuss all the outstanding issues which triggered the crisis in confidence," said IAEA director general Mohamed ElBaradei. "I'm clear at this stage you need to give Iran a chance to prove its stated goodwill. Sanctions alone, I know for sure, are not going to lead to a durable solution"

In 2003, when Dr. ElBaradei reported there was no evidence that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program, the White House was not pleased. And as Saddam Hussein became more cooperative with the weapons inspectors, Bush became "infuriated," according to Bob Woodward.

Bush's vow, "We will confront this danger before it is too late," is the Iran incarnation of his illegal preemptive war doctrine, which he inaugurated in Iraq. In a clear signal he is seeking regime change in Iran, Bush called for "an Iran whose government is accountable to its people, instead of leaders who promote terror and pursue the technology that could be used to develop nuclear weapons."

Barnett Rubin reported on Global Affairs blog that one of the leading neo-conservative institutions has "instructions" from Dick Cheney's office to "roll out a campaign for war with Iran in the week after Labor Day; it will be coordinated with the American Enterprise Institute, the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, Fox, and the usual suspects. It will be heavy sustained assault on the airwaves, designed to knock public sentiment into a position from which a war can be maintained. Evidently they don't think they'll ever get majority support for this - they want something like 35-40 percent support, which in their book is 'plenty.'"

Bush/Cheney created the White House Iraq Group (WHIG) to lead a propaganda campaign to bolster public support for war with Iraq. The White House decided to wait until after Labor Day of 2002 to kick off WHIG's mission. Chief of staff Andrew Card explained, "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August." Five years later, they're marketing a new and even more dangerous product - war with Iran. British military historian Corelli Barnett says "an attack on Iran would effectively launch World War III."

Our military spending has reached $1 billion every 2-1/2 days and we are borrowing $2-1/2 billion per day. Bush is mortgaging our children's future security and wealth. We have lost more than 3,700 soldiers in Iraq and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died.

We have already seen how easily Congress caves in to AIPAC. It's up to the people. As Noam Chomsky said, "The most effective barrier to a White House decision to launch a war [on Iran] is the kind of organized popular opposition that frightened the political-military leadership enough in 1968 that they were reluctant to send more troops to Vietnam."

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Bush's Killing Fields: Turning Iraq Into Vietnam

Desperate to shore up support for continuing his unpopular war on Iraq, George W. Bush drew an analogy with Vietnam when he addressed the Veterans of Foreign Wars. "The price of America's withdrawal [from Vietnam] was paid by millions of innocent citizens," Bush declared. But he overlooked the four million Indochinese and 58,000 American soldiers who paid the ultimate price for that imperial war. And the myriad Vietnamese and Americans who continue to suffer the devastating effects of the defoliant Agent Orange the U.S. forces dropped on Vietnam. The 10 years it took to end our war there claimed untold numbers of lives.

Bush cited the "killing fields," referring to the more than one million Cambodians who died after we pulled out of Vietnam. He failed to mention that if Richard Nixon had ended the war by 1969, as the antiwar movement was demanding, the war wouldn't have extended into Cambodia. Secret U.S. carpet bombing of Cambodia destroyed that country, enabling Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge to come to power. Nixon, too, had warned of a bloodbath in Vietnam to justify continuing his war.

Contrary to the picture Bush painted, Vietnam is a unified, stable country that doesn't threaten the region; it has become a trading partner of the United States.

In his desperation to rationalize the death and destruction he is wreaking in Iraq, Bush credited the United States with the great progress South Korea and Japan have made. He didn't say that the people of North and South Korea seek to reunify their country but the United States stands in the way. And Bush neglected to add that his government is pressuring Japan to repeal Article 9 of its Peace Constitution which now forbids the aggressive use of military force.

George Bush also reiterated that Iraq is "the central front" of the war on terror. But for his invasion, war and occupation of Iraq, however, al Qaeda wouldn't be there.

Bush claimed "our troops are seeing this progress that is being made on the ground." Perhaps the President didn't read the elegant op-ed that seven infantrymen and noncommissioned officers penned in the New York Times last week. "The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefield in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework," they wrote. The soldiers noted the two million Iraqis in refugee camps and close to two million more who are internally displaced. "Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise, while we have substituted Baath Party tyranny with a tyranny of Islamist, militia and criminal violence."

The only reason we stayed in Vietnam as long as we did was to avoid the U.S. superpower from being perceived as the "loser." American involvement in Vietnam finally ended because our soldiers refused to fight, our people took to the streets in record numbers, Nixon was weakened by his impending impeachment, and the North Vietnamese - unlike the government in the South - won the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people.

Congress has no more will to end the Iraq War than it did the Vietnam War. It was one year after our troops came home that Congress finally cut the funding for all support of the South Vietnamese government; Nixon didn't veto the bill because he needed insurance against impeachment. There is no substantial support in Congress or among the leading presidential candidates to bring all the troops home and disband the mega-bases Bush has built in Iraq.

Resistance to the Iraq War will continue to grow within the military. Like the Vietnamese, the Iraqis will be instrumental in ending Bush's war. The soldiers pegged it in their op-ed: Iraqis "will soon realize that the best way to regain their dignity is to call us what we are - an army of occupation - and force our withdrawal."

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Iraqis Will Be the Deciders

As Congress debates whether to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq, George Bush is trying to buy time. He and Dick Cheney have no intention of ever pulling out of Iraq.

Cheney commissioned a 2000 report by the neoconservative Project for a New American Century, which said “the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.” A document for Cheney's secret energy task force included a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries, charts detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects, and a “Foreign Suitors for Iraq Oil Contracts.” It was dated March 2001, six months before 9/11.

On April 19, 2003, shortly after U.S. troops invaded Baghdad, the New York Times quoted senior Bush officials as saying the United States was "planning a long-term military relationship with the emerging government of Iraq, one that would grant the Pentagon access to military bases and project American influence into the heart of the unsettled region.” They discussed "maintaining perhaps four bases in Iraq that could be used in the future.”

Indeed, Bush is building mega-bases In Iraq. Camp Anaconda, which sits on 15 square miles of Iraqi soil, has a pool, gym, theater, beauty salon, school and six apartment buildings. To avoid the negative connotation of “permanent,” Bush officials call their bases “enduring camps.” Our $600 million American embassy in the Green Zone will open in September. The largest embassy in the world, it is a self-contained city with no need for Iraqi electricity, food or water.

The motive for a permanent presence in Iraq has been obvious from day one. It’s the oil. The oft-mentioned benchmark for Iraqi progress, touted by Bush and Congress alike, is the so-called Iraqi oil law. The new law would turn over control of most oil production and royalties to foreign oil companies. The Iraqi people are opposed to the oil law.

The biggest impediment to the privatization of Iraq’s oil is the unions. Faleh Abood Umara, general secretary of the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions, told U.S. photojournalist David Bacon, “It will undermine the sovereignty of Iraq and our people … If the law is ratified, there will be no reconstruction. The U.S. will keep its hegemony over Iraq.”

In early June, the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions shut down the oil pipelines. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki capitulated to the union’s demand that implementation of the oil law be postponed until October so the union could propose alternatives.

Arab labor leader Hacene Djemam said, “War makes privatization easy: First you destroy society; then you let the corporations rebuild it.” After Halliburton entered Iraq in 2003 and tried to control the wells and rigs by withholding reconstruction aid, the union went on strike for three days. Exports stopped and government revenue was cut off. Halliburton shut down its operations.

Iraqis overwhelmingly oppose a permanent U.S. presence in their country. A group of Iraqi nationalists, including Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds, have formed a pan-Iraqi coalition to topple al-Maliki. They represent a vast majority of rank-and-file Iraqis outside of Parliament. Their primary basis of unity is opposition to the U.S. occupation of Iraq; they also strongly oppose Al Qaeda in Iraq and the Iranian influence in Iraq.

“All the problems come from the occupation," Umara observed "… The occupation fosters the enormous corruption ... As long as we have an occupation, we’ll have more sabotage and killing. But when people from the local tribes control the security, they have expelled the al-Qaeda forces and those others who are terrorizing people. This means we can protect ourselves and bring security to our nation, with no need of the U.S. forces. To those who believe that if the U.S. troops leave there will be chaos, I say, let them go, and if we fight each other afterwards, let us do that. We are being killed by the thousands already.”

The Iraqi unions want the occupation to end. Hashmeya Muhsin Hussein, president of the Electrical Workers Union of Iraq, told Bacon, "If it was up to Bush, he'd occupy the world. But that's not what the nations of the world want. Would they accept occupation, as we have had to do? Our nation does not want to be occupied, and we'll do our best to end it."

Nationalists in the Iraqi Parliament recently passed a bill calling for the United States to set a timetable for withdrawal, and another demanding the Iraqi government present any plan to extend the occupation past 2007 to Parliament. They will not accept a proposal that includes permanent U.S. bases on Iraqi soil. Our national discourse must include a discussion of U.S. intentions for Iraq after a troop withdrawal. But ultimately, as in Vietnam, it will be the Iraqi people who are the deciders.

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Reining In an Out-of-Control Executive

Our Founding Fathers created three separate but co-equal branches of government to check and balance each other so no one branch would become all powerful. Indeed, James Madison wrote in the Federalist Papers, "The preservation of liberty requires that the three great departments of power should be separate and distinct." Madison warned, "The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary in the same hands ... may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny." The American colonists were reacting against a police state.

More than 200 years later, we have another King George. In the last six years, George W. Bush has sought to accumulate all governing powers in the same hands - his. In the Declaration of Independence, the framers charged that the King "refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good." Bush has repeatedly violated the Constitution's command that the President "shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed," by breaking some and refusing to enforce others. The Constitution grants Congress the power to make laws; after both houses pass a bill, the President can only sign it or veto it. Bush, however, takes a different tack. He has vetoed just three bills, then quietly attached "signing statements" to more than 1,000 congressional laws, indicating his intent to follow only those parts with which he agrees.

In an end run around Congress and the courts, Bush secretly authorized the Terrorist Surveillance Program to conduct electronic surveillance without a judicial warrant, in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and the Fourth Amendment. Although two judges on a three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the dismissal of a lawsuit challenging the legality of Bush's spying program for lack of standing, the only two judges ever to rule on the merits declared the program illegal.

The Bush administration lied to Congress to get authority to invade Iraq. Long before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Bush and his officials were planning to attack Iraq and change its regime. Dick Cheney's secret energy task force drew up maps of Iraq's oil fields to divvy up the black gold once we occupied that country. They then devised an elaborate scheme to convince the American people that Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the United States, notwithstanding overwhelming intelligence to the contrary. Since Bush launched "Operation Iraq Freedom," more than 3,600 American soldiers and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis have died; many thousands more have been wounded. This invasion is a war of aggression, which violates the UN Charter, because it was neither executed in self-defense nor approved by the Security Council.

During the war, U.S. troops have been acting under rules of engagement - free-fire zones - that have led some to commit war crimes. For instance, the killing, execution-style, of 24 civilians in the Haditha Massacre, the execution of a disabled man, and the shooting of a wounded unarmed Iraqi in a mosque violate the Geneva Conventions which prohibit willful killing of civilians. Commanders, all the way up the chain to the commander-in-chief, could be convicted of war crimes if they should've known their subordinates would commit them and the commanders didn't stop or prevent it.

Bush's legal eagles, particularly David Addington and John Yoo, concocted elaborate "legal" arguments to justify the torture of prisoners. Never mind that international and American law forbid torture under all circumstances. Pursuant to a common plan to violate the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, prisoners in U.S. custody are being tortured and abused. Prisoners have been subjected to water-boarding, attacks by dogs, sexual humiliation, and excruciatingly painful force-feeding.

The Bush administration has secretly rendered prisoners to other countries to be tortured. One former CIA agent observed, "If you want a serious interrogation, you send a prisoner to Jordan. If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear - never to see them again - you send them to Egypt."

Shortly after 9/11, the Bush gang set up a prison camp in Guantánamo, intending to create a legal black hole where they could hold prisoners for the rest of their lives without any judicial oversight. But the Supreme Court didn't buy the administration's argument that U.S. courts have no jurisdiction over Guantánamo because it's in Cuba. And the Court struck down Bush's original military commissions since they violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Geneva Conventions.

The Supreme Court said in Berger v. United States that a prosecutor's job is to see that justice is done, not to politicize justice. But Bush's Department of Justice, the chief law enforcement agency in the government, has been seriously compromised. Several U.S. attorneys who refused to bring frivolous charges that would further Bush's political agenda, or who brought charges that didn't, were purged.

The White House is resisting congressional subpoenas that call for testimonial and documentary evidence about the U.S. attorney firing scandal. The deadline for Bush, Cheney and the Justice Department to produce documents in response to Senate Judiciary Committee subpoenas about the warrantless surveillance is July 18. In 1974, when the House Judiciary Committee passed three articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon, Article III charged refusal to comply with subpoenas during the Watergate hearings.

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The Opportunistic Commuter-in-Chief: The use and misuse of presidential clemency power

When he announced the commutation of Scooter Libby's 30-month sentence, George W. Bush cited the ways Libby has and will suffer: damage to his reputation, the suffering of his wife and children, large fines, and the "long-lasting" consequences of being a convicted felon.

When he was governor of Texas, however, Bush showed no compassion for the 152 people whose death sentences he refused to commute. One was Terry Washington, a mentally retarded man executed for murdering a restaurant manager. The jury was never told about Washington's mental condition. Bush was unmoved.

When Bush's Department of Justice recently convinced the Supreme Court to affirm the 33-month sentence of Victor Rita, a decorated war hero who was charged with the same crimes as Libby, Bush expressed no concern for Rita's family or future.

And when his attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, argued just last month that the Justice Department would advocate legislation to make federal sentences longer, Bush was unconcerned about how those long prison sentences would impact the family and future of the prisoners. Yet Bush found Scooter Libby's sentence to be "excessive." But instead of reducing the prison sentence of this convicted felon, Bush let him off without a day in jail.

By commuting Libby's sentence, Bush signaled his complicity in the obstruction of justice of which Libby was convicted. Bush and Cheney had initiated the smear campaign to discredit and punish Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame, after Wilson publicly debunked the centerpiece of the administration's lies about WMD in Iraq.

During Libby's trial, he subpoenaed Cheney and other top Bush officials to support his defense that he was the fall-guy for his superiors. But Libby ultimately backed down and presented almost no defense to the charges. The only logical explanation is that Bush promised Libby he would never see the inside of a prison cell. The quid pro quo: Libby keeps his mouth shut about Bush's and Cheney's involvement in the conspiracy. With the commutation, Bush made good on his promise.

Why didn't Bush simply pardon Libby and wipe his record clean? Because then Libby would be precluded from claiming the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination in any future criminal or congressional proceeding, and he would be susceptible to depositions in the Wilson/Plame civil lawsuit. This calculated commutation preserves his appeal rights (and thus his Fifth Amendment claim). It is a continuation of the cover-up.

James Madison warned, "if the President be connected, in any suspicious manner, with any person, and there be grounds to believe he will shelter him, the House of Representatives can impeach him; they can remove him if found guilty."

Rep. John Conyers Jr. has scheduled a hearing next week to investigate "the use and misuse of presidential clemency power." Responding to the Libby commutation, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Bush "abandoned all sense of fairness when it comes to justice, he has failed to uphold the rule of law, and he has failed to hold his administration accountable." Maybe now they will put impeachment back on the table.

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The Unitary King George

As the nation focused on whether Congress would exercise its constitutional duty to cut funding for the war, Bush quietly issued an unconstitutional bombshell that went virtually unnoticed by the corporate media.

The National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive, signed on May 9, 2007, would place all governmental power in the hands of the President and effectively abolish the checks and balances in the Constitution.

If a "catastrophic emergency" - which could include a terrorist attack or a natural disaster - occurs, Bush's new directive says: "The President shall lead the activities of the Federal Government for ensuring constitutional government."

What about the other two co-equal branches of government? The directive throws them a bone by speaking of a "cooperative effort" among the three branches, "coordinated by the President, as a matter of comity with respect to the legislative and judicial branches and with proper respect for the constitutional separation of powers." The Vice-President would help to implement the plans.

"Comity," however, means courtesy, and the President would decide what kind of respect for the other two branches of government would be "proper." This Presidential Directive is a blatant power grab by Bush to institutionalize "the unitary executive."

A seemingly innocuous phrase, the unitary executive theory actually represents a radical, ultra rightwing interpretation of the powers of the presidency. Championed by the conservative Federalist Society, the unitary executive doctrine gathers all power in the hands of the President and insulates him from any oversight by the congressional or judicial branches.

In a November 2000 speech to the Federalist Society, then Judge Samuel Alito said the Constitution "makes the president the head of the executive branch, but it does more than that. The president has not just some executive powers, but the executive power -- the whole thing."

These "unitarians" claim that all federal agencies, even those constitutionally created by Congress, are beholden to the Chief Executive, that is, the President. This means that Bush could disband agencies like the Federal Communications Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, the Federal Reserve Board, etc., if they weren't to his liking.

Indeed, Bush signed an executive order stating that each federal agency must have a regulatory policy office run by a political appointee. Consumer advocates were concerned that this directive was aimed at weakening the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The unitary executive dogma represents audacious presidential overreaching into the constitutional province of the other two branches of government.

This doctrine took shape within the Bush administration shortly after 9/11. On September 25, 2001, former deputy assistant attorney general John Yoo used the words "unitary executive" in a memo he wrote for the White House: "The centralization of authority in the president alone is particularly crucial in matters of national defense, war, and foreign policy, where a unitary executive can evaluate threats, consider policy choices, and mobilize national resources with a speed and energy that is far superior to any other branch." Six weeks later, Bush began using that phrase in his signing statements.

As of December 22, 2006, Bush had used the words "unitary executive" 145 times in his signing statements and executive orders. Yoo, one of the chief architects of Bush's doctrine of unfettered executive power, wrote memoranda advising Bush that because he was commander in chief, he could make war any time he thought there was a threat, and he didn't have to comply with the Geneva Conventions.

In a 2005 debate with Notre Dame professor Doug Cassel, Yoo argued there is no law that could prevent the President from ordering that a young child of a suspect in custody be tortured, even by crushing the child's testicles.

The unitary executive theory has already cropped up in Supreme Court opinions. In his lone dissent in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, Justice Clarence Thomas cited "the structural advantages of a unitary Executive." He disagreed with the Court that due process demands an American citizen held in the United States as an enemy combatant be given a meaningful opportunity to contest the factual basis for that detention before a neutral decision maker. Thomas wrote, "Congress, to be sure, has a substantial and essential role in both foreign affairs and national security. But it is crucial to recognize that judicial interference in these domains destroys the purpose of vesting primary responsibility in a unitary Executive."

Justice Thomas's theory fails to recognize why our Constitution provides for three co-equal branches of government.

In 1926, Justice Louis Brandeis explained the constitutional role of the separation of powers. He wrote, "The doctrine of the separation of powers was adopted by the convention of 1787 not to promote efficiency but to preclude the exercise of arbitrary power. The purpose was not to avoid friction, but, by means of the inevitable friction incident to the distribution of the governmental powers among three departments, to save the people from autocracy."

Eighty years later, noted conservative Grover Norquist, describing the unitary executive theory, echoed Brandeis's sentiment. Norquist said, "you don't have a constitution; you have a king."

One wonders what Bush & Co. are setting up with the new Presidential Directive. What if, heaven forbid, some sort of catastrophic event were to occur just before the 2008 election? Bush could use this directive to suspend the election. This administration has gone to great lengths to remain in Iraq. It has built huge permanent military bases and pushed to privatize Iraq's oil. Bush and Cheney may be unwilling to relinquish power to a successor administration.

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Cover-up of Women Soldiers' Deaths

The scandal at Walter Reed Army Medical Center has called into question the Bush administration's "support" for our troops. But it doesn't stop there. On March 8, Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! broadcast the testimony of former Abu Ghraib commander Col. Janis Karpinski as she responded to my questioning at a January 2006 war crimes commission in New York. Karpinski said American women soldiers in Iraq who had to go outside to use the latrine at night were raped by male soldiers. They stopped drinking water after 4:00 in the afternoon to avoid having to urinate. But in the 120-degree heat, some died of dehydration. Then, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez ordered that dehydration not be listed as the cause of death. See my article, "Military Hides Cause of Women Soldiers' Deaths,"... for more details on this shocking cover-up.

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Conscientious Objector Faces Court-Martial

On March 6, the court-martial will begin in Germany for Army Specialist Augustín Aguayo, who faces up to seven years in prison for refusing to deploy to Iraq for a second tour of duty. His petition for habeas corpus was denied by a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals on February 16. Judges Sentelle and Randolph were the same jurists who recently upheld the provision of the Military Commissions Act that strips habeas corpus rights from Guantánamo detainees.

Before his first deployment to Iraq, Aguayo discovered he was a conscientious objector. When he began to train in arms, Aguayo had great difficulty firing at human-shaped silhouettes and stabbing human mannequins. "During basic training," he recalls, "I felt guilty when I had to pick up and hold a weapon and practice killing with it."

When Aguayo and his wife, Helga, saw an article on the Internet about conscientious objector Stephen Funk, they realized that Aguayo was a conscientious objector.

After he applied to be a conscientious objector three years ago, Aguayo was sent to Iraq as a medic. He refused to load his gun. But instead of treating him as a non-combatant, he was given guard duty and placed in dangerous positions with an unloaded weapon.

A week after Aguayo's habeas corpus petition was denied on August 24, 2006, his unit was slated to deploy to Iraq for the second time. On September 1, 2006, Aguayo went AWOL and missed his unit's deployment to Iraq. He turned himself in to the Army the following day.

Rather than court-martialing Aguayo, Army personnel told him he would be going to Iraq anyway, even if they had to handcuff him and shackle him to the plane. Aguayo fled from the military base in Germany and turned himself in once again on September 26, 2006. He was shipped back to Germany where he will be tried by court-martial this week.

In his statement to the Court of Appeals, Aguayo wrote: "In my last deployment, I witnessed how soldiers dehumanize the Iraqi people with words and actions. I saw countless innocent lives which were shortened due to the war. I still struggle with the senselessness of it all – Iraqi civilians losing their lives because they drove too close to a convoy or a check point, soldiers' being shot by mistake by their own buddies, misunderstandings (due to the language barrier) leading to death. This is not acceptable to me. It makes no sense that to better the lives of these civilians they must first endure great human loss. This, too, is clear and convincing evidence to me that all war is evil and harmful."

"I also oppose war," Aguayo added, "because I have seen first-hand the direct result of deployments to war zones. As a result of Operation Iraqi Freedom II, I have seen many veterans whose lives have been shattered. Many men came back with missing parts, and countless physical and emotional scars, such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I have personally seen my comrades come back to commit suicide, drink themselves to death, and develop a strong addiction to drugs. It is obvious to me that these men’s lives were destroyed by war. What participation in war does to our own soldiers is another reason why war is fundamentally immoral and wrong."

Aguayo received positive recommendations from the chaplain and Capt. Sean Foster, who held Aguayo's conscientious objector hearing in Tikrit, Iraq. They both found Aguayo's beliefs to be sincere and recommended he be granted conscientious objector status.

But the Court of Appeals sided with four officers who recommended Aguayo's petition be denied. None of the four interviewed Aguayo. The appellate court mentioned that Aguayo was agnostic and cited a report that said Aguayo lacks a "religious foundation" to be a conscientious objector.

Aguayo, who was born in Mexico, is a naturalized U.S. citizen. On February 23, the Mexican legislature condemned the military proceedings pending against Aguayo. Senator Silvano Aureoles called Aguayo "a prisoner of conscience and one more victim of president George W. Bush's militaristic eagerness."

Augustín Aguayo is represented by National Lawyers Guild lawyers James Klimaski, Peter Goldberger, and James Feldman. For more information on Aguayo's case, see http://www.aguayodefense.org/.

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Why Boumediene Was Wrongly Decided

Last week, in Boumediene v. Bush, two judges on a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the provision of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 that strips the rights of all Guantánamo detainees to have their habeas corpus petitions heard by U.S. federal courts. If that decision is left to stand, the men and boys detained at Guantánamo can be held there for the rest of their lives without ever having a federal judge determine the legality of their detention. In my opinion, this appellate decision will likely be overturned by the Supreme Court next term.

A little background:

In November 2001, President Bush established Military Commissions to try non-citizens accused of war crimes.

In June 2004, the Supreme Court decided Rasul v. Bush, which upheld the right of those detained at Guantánamo to have their petitions for habeas corpus heard by U.S. courts, under the federal habeas statute.

The ink was barely dry on Rasul when Bush created the Combatant Status Review Tribunals, ostensibly to comply with the Rasul ruling. But, as I will explain, setting up these tribunals was really an end-run around Rasul. They were established to determine whether a detainee is an enemy combatant. They are not criminal courts, like the military commissions.

On December 31, 2005, Congress passed the Detainee Treatment Act, which included the famous McCain "anti-torture" amendment. But it also stripped habeas corpus rights from Guantánamo detainees who had not already filed habeas petitions before December 31, 2005. Some 200 detainees had pending petitions.

At the end of last term, the Supreme Court struck down Bush's military commissions in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld because they did not comply with due process guarantees in the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Geneva Conventions.

Then, in October of last year, in another end run, this time around Hamdan, Bush rammed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 through a Congress terrified of appearing soft on terror in the upcoming midterm elections. The Act does many things, but it notably strips statutory habeas corpus rights from all Guantánamo detainees, even those whose petitions were pending on December 31, 2005.

The two-judge majority in Boumediene upheld the Military Commissions Act's stripping of statutory habeas jurisdiction that the Supreme Court had recognized in Rasul. (Congress had passed the original habeas statute, and amended it in the Military Commissions Act). The Boumediene decision found the Act's elimination of habeas to be constitutional.

Art. I of the Constitution contains the Suspension Clause, which says that Congress can suspend the right of habeas corpus only in times of rebellion or invasion when the public safety may require it. As the dissenter in Boumediene pointed out, Congress has only suspended habeas corpus four times before, and made findings of rebellion or invasion in each case. We are not now in a state of invasion or rebellion, and Congress did not make such a finding.

The two-judge majority in Boumediene said: (1) in the absence of a statutory habeas right (which Congress had eliminated in the Military Commissions Act), the Constitution only protects the right of habeas corpus that was recognized at common law in 1789; (2) the law in 1789 did not provide the right of habeas corpus to aliens held by the government outside of the sovereign's territory; and (3) Guantánamo is outside U.S territory for constitutional purposes, even though the U.S. has complete control over it.

This reasoning is erroneous for three reasons:

First, the Supreme Court held in INS v. St. Cyr that the Constitution protects the writ as it existed in 1789 "at the absolute minimum." The Supreme Court in Rasul cited St. Cyr.

Second, although the Boumediene majority relies on the treaty that says Cuba, not the U.S., has sovereignty over Guantánamo, the Supreme Court rejected that argument in Rasul, when it said: "By the express terms of its agreements with Cuba, the United States exercises 'complete jurisdiction and control' over the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base, and may continue to exercise such control permanently if it so chooses. . . Aliens held at the base, no less than American citizens, are entitled to invoke the federal courts' authority under §2241."

Third, although the Rasul Court was analyzing the pre-Military Commissions Act habeas statute, it also cited Johnson v. Eisentrager, which construed the constitutional right of habeas corpus. The Supreme Court in Eisentrager denied habeas jurisdiction to German citizens who had been captured by U.S. forces in China, and then tried and convicted of war crimes by an American military commission in Nanking.

The Eisentrager court cited six factors to determine whether an alien is entitled to constitutional habeas jurisdiction in U.S. courts. These factors were cited in Rasul, which said:
In reversing that determination, this Court [in Eisentrager] summarized the six critical facts in the case:

“We are here confronted with a decision whose basic premise is that these prisoners are entitled, as a constitutional right, to sue in some court of the United States for a writ of habeas corpus. To support that assumption we must hold that a prisoner of our military authorities is constitutionally entitled to the writ, even though he (a) is an enemy alien; (b) has never been or resided in the United States; (c) was captured outside of our territory and there held in military custody as a prisoner of war; (d) was tried and convicted by a Military Commission sitting outside the United States; (e) for offenses against laws of war committed outside the United States; (f) and is at all times imprisoned outside the United States.”

On this set of facts, the [Eisentrager] Court concluded, “no right to the writ of habeas corpus appears.”
The Rasul court said:
Petitioners in these [Guantánamo] cases differ from the Eisentrager detainees in important respects: They are not nationals of countries at war with the United States, and they deny that they have engaged in or plotted acts of aggression against the United States; they have never been afforded access to any tribunal, much less charged with and convicted of wrongdoing; and for more than two years they have been imprisoned in territory over which the United States exercises exclusive jurisdiction and control.

Not only are petitioners differently situated from the Eisentrager detainees, but the Court in Eisentrager made quite clear that all six of the facts critical to its disposition were relevant only to the question of the prisoners’ constitutional entitlement to habeas corpus.
Congress can suspend habeas corpus if there is an adequate substitute for it. In Boumediene, the Bush administration asked the Court of Appeals to review the Combatant Status Review Tribunals. But the court declined, saying it had an inadequate record before it.

The Combatant Status Review Tribunals do not provide a meaningful opportunity to challenge detention. The prisoner is not entitled to an attorney, only a "personal representative," and anything the detainee tells his personal representative can be used against him. After reviewing the cases of 393 detainees, a Seton Hall legal team found that in 96 percent of the cases, the government had not produced any witnesses or presented any documentary evidence to the detainee before the hearing. Detainees were allowed to see only summaries of the classified evidence offered against them, and that evidence was always presumed to be reliable and valid. Requests by detainees for witnesses were rarely granted.

In addition, the personal representatives said nothing in 14 percent of the hearings and made no substantive comments 30 percent of the time. Some personal representatives even advocated for the government's position. In three cases, the detainee was found to be "no longer an enemy combatant," but the military continued to convene tribunals until they were found to be enemy combatants. These detainees were never told of the favorable ruling and there was no indication they were informed or participated in the second or third hearings.

As the dissenter in Boumediene pointed out, the procedure set up in the Detainee Treatment Act for reviewing decisions of the Combatant Status Review Tribunals "is not designed to cure these inadequacies. The court may review only the record developed by the CSRT to assess whether the CSRT has complied with its own standards. Because the detainee still has no means to present evidence rebutting the government's case - even assuming the detainee could learn of it contents - assessing whether the government has more evidence in its favor than the detainee is hardly the proper antidote."

The suspension of habeas corpus will certainly have profound effects on non-citizen detainees. Consider the case of Abu Bakker Qassim, an Uighur from China who was held at Guantánamo for four years. He wrote in the New York Times: "I was locked up and mistreated for being in the wrong place at the wrong time during America's war in Afghanistan. Like hundreds of Guantánamo detainees, I was never a terrorist or a soldier. I was never even on a battlefield. Pakistani bounty hunters sold me and 17 other Uighurs to the United States military like animals for $5,000 a head. The Americans made a terrible mistake."

How did Qassim obtain his release from Guantánamo? "It was only the country's centuries-old commitment to allowing habeas corpus challenges that put that mistake right—or began to. In May, on the eve of a court hearing in my case, the military relented, and I was sent to Albania along with four other Uighurs," Qassim said. He added:
Without my American lawyers and habeas corpus, my situation and that of the other Uighurs would still be a secret. I would be sitting in a metal cage today. Habeas corpus helped me to tell the world that Uighurs are not a threat to the United States or the West, but an ally. Habeas corpus cleared my name—and most important, it let my family know that I was still alive.
Rasul v. Bush was a 6-3 decision. Justices Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer, O'Connor and Kennedy voted with the majority. The dissenters were Justices Scalia, Thomas and Rehnquist.

I predict the Supreme Court will reverse the Court of Appeals decision in Boumediene, probably in a 5-4 vote with Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito voting with the dissent. I doubt whether the Court will decide that Bush has succeeded in placing the detainees beyond the reach of our federal courts by sending them to Guantánamo. It will likely decide that the judicial review of the decisions of Combatant Status Review Tribunals does not provide an adequate substitute for constitutional habeas corpus.

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Fool Us Twice? From Iraq to Iran

It's déja vu. This time the Bush gang wants war with Iran . Following a carefully orchestrated strategy, they have ratcheted up the "threat" from Iran, designed to mislead us into a new war four years after they misled us into Iraq.

Like its insistence that Iraq had WMD, the Bush administration has been hyping claims that Iran seeks nuclear weapons. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), however, has found no evidence that Iran is building nuclear weapons. IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei says there is plenty of time for negotiation with Iran.

Bush has sent two battle carrier groups, replete with nukes, to the Persian Gulf and a third is reportedly preparing to follow. In support of Bush's case that Iran poses a danger to the U.S. , three unnamed American officials ceremoniously trotted out metal parts found in Iraq and claimed Iran supplied them to kill our soldiers in Iraq.

This "evidence" - or "packaging," as the Associated Press calls it - doesn't pass the straight face test with most reputable observers. "The officials offered no evidence to substantiate allegations that the 'highest levels' of the Iranian government had sanctioned support for attacks against U.S. troops," according to Monday's Washington Post.

Saturday's New York Times cited information gleaned from "interrogation reports" from Iranians and Iraqis captured in the recent U.S. raid on the Iranian embassy in northern Iraq . They allegedly indicated money and weapons components are brought into Iraq over the Iranian border at night. If those people indeed provided such information, query what kind of pressure, i.e. torture, might have been applied to encourage their cooperation. Recall the centerpiece of Colin Powell's 2003 lies to the Security Council about ties between Iraq and al Qaeda came from false information tortured out of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi.

Any Iranian weapons in Iraq may belong to the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), a Shiite resistance group the U.S. used to support. There could be old Iranian munitions lying around which are left over from the Iran-Iraq war during the 1980s. A former high level U.S. military officer told me it was not uncommon to find large caches of weapons around Iraq . He cited the 2004 discovery of 37,000 American Colt 45 handguns in a warehouse near the Iranian border on the Iraq side, likely procured "when Saddam was our friend." The United States armed both sides in the Iran-Iraq conflict.

The U.S. National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq , released last week, concluded that Iranian or Syrian involvement is "not likely to be a major driver of violence" in Iraq .

Paul Krugman wrote that even if Iran were providing aid to some factions in Iraq , "you can say the same about Saudi Arabia , which is believed to be a major source of financial support for Sunni insurgents - and Sunnis, not Iranian-backed Shiites, are still responsible for most American combat deaths." Indeed, 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were Saudis. But as Krugman mentions, the Bush administration's "close personal and financial ties to the Saudis" have caused it to downplay "Saudi connections to America 's enemies."

American troops are still fighting in Afghanistan . Yet the Bush administration hasn't complained about the Taliban attacks on Afghanistan that originate in Pakistan , a country with documented nuclear weapons. Of course the Bush administration is cozy with the Pakistani regime.

The government of Israel, which also has nukes, is fueling the call for an invasion of Iran . On February 7, the Los Angeles Times cited Israeli politicians and generals warning of a "second Holocaust" if no one fails to prevent Tehran from acquiring nukes.

Israel would like to start a war with Iran and supports this desire by citing a quote from Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that Israel should be wiped off the map. But this is an erroneous translation of what he said. According to University of Michigan professor Juan Cole and Farsi language analysts, Ahmadinejad was quoting Ayatollah Khomeini, who said the "regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time." Cole said this "does not imply military action or killing anyone at all." Journalist Diana Johnstone points out the quote is not aimed at the Israeli people, but at the Zionist "regime" occupying Jerusalem. "Coming from a Muslim religious leader," Johnstone wrote, "this opinion is doubtless based on objection to Jewish monopoly of a city considered holy by all three of the Abramic monotheisms." Iran has not threatened to invade Israel.

Indeed, only 36 percent of the Jews in Israel told pollsters last month they thought a nuclear attack by Iran posed the "biggest threat" to Israel . Americans concur. Seventy-five percent want negotiations in lieu of war with Iran.

Yet Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards, all beholden to the Israel lobby, have bought into Bush's dangerous rhetoric about Iran.

It would be sheer lunacy to make war on Iran. Three former high-ranking U.S. military officers and a coalition of 13 British think-tanks and faith groups have warned that an attack on Iran would have disastrous consequences.

Bush probably won't ask Congress to bless his Iran war. He will provoke a confrontation and then claim we have to fight back. Last year, the New York Times documented a January 2003 meeting with Prime Minister Tony Blair, where Bush "talked about several ways to provoke a confrontation [with Iraq], including a proposal to paint a United States surveillance plane in the colors of the United Nations in hopes of drawing fire."

A nuclear attack on Iran would violate U.S. obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Any attack would violate the U.N. Charter. All treaties we ratify become part of U.S. law under the Constitution's Supremacy Clause. Twelve European, international, and U.S. legal and human rights groups issued an open letter warning of the illegality of any offensive military action by the U.S. against Iran. (http://www.nlg.org/news/statements/Military_Iran_2007.htm ).

Congress has tied itself in knots over a non-binding resolution on Iraq . If our elected representatives responded to their constituencies instead of the Bush gang's fear mongering, they would stand up to him and pass a modern day Boland Amendment forbidding military action against Iran.

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Mistrial at Court Martial: Watada Beats the Government

When the Army judge declared a mistrial over defense objection in 1st Lt. Ehren Watada's court martial, he probably didn't realize jeopardy attached. That means that under the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Constitution, the government cannot retry Lt. Watada on the same charges of missing movement and conduct unbecoming an officer.

Lt. Watada is the first commissioned officer to publicly refuse orders to deploy to Iraq. He claimed those orders were unlawful because the war is illegal and he would be an accomplice to war crimes if he followed them.

The judge refused to allow me and others to testify as expert defense witnesses on the illegality of the Iraq war and the war crimes the Bush administration is committing there.

The Uniform Code of Military Justice sets forth the duty of military personnel to obey only lawful commands. Article 92 says: "A general order or regulation is lawful unless it is contrary to the Constitution, the law of the United States "

Lt. Watada said at a June 6, 2006 press conference in Tacoma, Washington, "The war in Iraq is in fact illegal. It is my obligation and my duty to refuse any orders to participate in this war." He stated, "An order to take part in an illegal war is unlawful in itself. So my obligation is not to follow the order to go to Iraq."

Citing "deception and manipulation and willful misconduct by the highest levels of my chain of command," Lt. Watada declared there is "no greater betrayal to the American people" than the Iraq war.

The "turning point" for Lt. Watada came when he "saw the pain and suffering of so many soldiers and their families, and innocent Iraqis." He said, "I best serve my soldiers by speaking out against unlawful orders of the highest levels of my chain of command, and making sure our leaders are held accountable." Lt. Watada felt he "had the obligation to step up and do whatever it takes," even if that means facing court martial and imprisonment.

Lt. Watada did face court martial, and four years in prison, until the judge declared a mistrial.

This is what I would have said had I been allowed to testify at Lt. Watada's court martial:

The United States is committing a crime against the peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity in Iraq.

A war of aggression, prosecuted in violation of international treaties, is a crime against the peace. The war in Iraq violates the Charter of the United Nations, which prohibits the use of force. There are only two exceptions to that prohibition: self-defense and approval by the Security Council. A pre-emptive or preventive war is not allowed under the Charter.

Bush's war in Iraq was not undertaken in self-defense. Iraq had not attacked the US or any other country for 12 years. And Saddam Hussein's military capability had been effectively neutered by the Gulf War, 12 years of punishing sanctions, and nearly daily bombing by the US and UK over the "no-fly-zones."

Bush tried mightily to get the Security Council to sanction his war on Iraq. But the Council refused. Bush then cobbled together prior Council resolutions, none of which, individually or collectively, authorized the use of force in Iraq. Although Bush claimed to be enforcing Security Council resolutions, the Charter empowers only the Council to enforce its resolutions.

Grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions constitute war crimes, for which individuals can be punished under the US War Crimes Act. Willful killing, torture and inhuman treatment are grave breaches.

The torture and inhuman treatment of prisoners in US custody at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere in Iraq are grave breaches of Geneva, and therefore, war crimes. The execution of unarmed civilians in Haditha and other Iraqi cities are also war crimes.

Commanders in the chain of command, all the way up to the commander in chief, can be prosecuted for war crimes if they knew or should have known their subordinates were committing war crimes and failed to stop or prevent them. The torture policies and rules of engagement were set at the top. It is George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell who should be on trial - for the commission of war crimes.

Inhumane acts against a civilian population are crimes against humanity and violate the Fourth Geneva Convention. The targeting of civilians and failure to protect civilians and civilian objects are crimes against humanity.

The dropping of 2,000-pound bombs in residential areas of Baghdad during "Shock and Awe" were crimes against humanity. The indiscriminate US attack on Fallujah, which was collective punishment in retaliation for the killing of four Blackwater mercenaries, was a crime against humanity. The destruction of hospitals in Fallujah by the US military, its refusal to let doctors treat patients, and shooting into ambulances were crimes against humanity. Declaring Fallujah a "weapons-free" zone, with orders to shoot anything that moved, was a crime against humanity.

Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson was the chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg Tribunal. He wrote:

"No political or economic situation can justify the crime of aggression. If certain acts in violation of treaties are crimes they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us."

Lt. Ehren Watada was correct when he said the war is illegal and he would be party to war crimes if he deployed to Iraq. The orders to deploy were unlawful and Lt. Watada had a duty to disobey them. Although he faces the possibility of a dishonorable discharge, the judge's grant of a mistrial precludes retrial on the same criminal charges.

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