Young Americans for Liberty – Ole Miss Chapter

Two hundred organizations, including the UM Constitutionalists, After Downing Street, Democrats.com, the Robert Jackson Steering Committee, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the National Lawyers Guild, the Society of American Law Teachers, Human Rights USA, the American Freedom Campaign, and the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, have signed a joint statement urging Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a special prosecutor for former top officials of the Bush Administration.

The complete list of organizations can be found at http://specialprosecutor.us

The complete statement reads as follows:

We urge Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a non-partisan independent Special Counsel to immediately commence a prosecutorial investigation into the most serious alleged crimes of former President George W. Bush, former Vice President Richard B. Cheney, the attorneys formerly employed by the Department of Justice whose memos sought to justify torture, and other former top officials of the Bush Administration.

Our laws, and treaties that under Article VI of our Constitution are the supreme law of the land, require the prosecution of crimes that strong evidence suggests these individuals have committed. Both the former president and the former vice president have confessed to authorizing a torture procedure that is illegal under our law and treaty obligations. The former president has confessed to violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

We see no need for these prosecutions to be extraordinarily lengthy or costly, and no need to wait for the recommendations of a panel or “truth” commission when substantial evidence of the crimes is already in the public domain. We believe the most effective investigation can be conducted by a prosecutor, and we believe such an investigation should begin immediately.

-The UM Constitutionalists

As most of you may have heard, memos concerning the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” have been released to the public by the Department of Justice. We thought it necessary to provide everybody with a copy of these disgraceful documents. Download them here.

I would like to point out that the position the Obama Administration has taken to not prosecute individuals responsible for carrying out these techniques is in direct violation of the UN  Convention Against Torture. The US is a signatory of this convention and ratified it as a treaty, which under the US Constitution gives it the full authority of law within the United States. As Ryan Powers from Think Progress puts it:

Indeed, Article 2 of the convention on torture explains that “no exceptional circumstances whatsoever” can be used to legally justify torture. Further, the convention states that an “order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.”

STANDARD: CIA torturers are according to U.S. President Obama not to be prosecuted. Is that decision supportable?

NOWAK: Absolutely not. The United States has, like all other Contracting Parties to the UN Convention Against Torture, committed itself to investigate instances of torture and to prosecute all cases in which credible evidence of torture is found.

Therefore, President Obama is now in violation of US law. The American people should demand a full investigation of the Bush Administration and the current Obama Administration and have all guilty of war crimes brought to justice. If not, we are setting a dangerous precedent for future presidents.

It has been nearly three months since the Obama Administration took control of the White House. He rode in high on promises of change. Admittedly, he has made a few positive steps. However, it seems for every step forward he makes, he is content with taking two steps backward. Seeing as how the American mainstream media will not do their job, I wanted to bring to light Obama’s actions on civil liberties, which are currently mirroring those of George W. Bush.

            Let’s start off with Obama’s executive order to close down the Guantanamo Bay prison camp. This was a positive step for human rights. Obama opposed the denial of rights to the prisoners kept at Guantanamo. He also supported the verdict of Boumediene v Bush, which stated the denial of Habeas Corpus rights to the prisoners at Guantanamo was unconstitutional. After this ruling dealt a blow to the Bush Administration, Bush still did not stop imprisoning people without charges. He simply began shipping them to our prison camp at Bagram, Afghanistan. Bush asserted that the prisoners at Bagram had no rights of any kind.

Read the rest of this entry »

Dick Cheney

During his interview with ABC last week, Dick Cheney made some interesting comments and confessions. When asked about the interrogation methods used against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, which involved waterboarding, Cheney admitted to knowing about them, supporting them, and, “helping to get the process cleared.” The United States is very familiar with waterboarding, and has treated it as a war crime historically. So what now is going to happen to Cheney? Under the Anti-Torture Statute of the United States , Cheney has admitted to a felony and should very well be indicted.

Michael Ratner, the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, believes Cheney is actually snooping for a presidential pardon. Go here to listen to his interview with the Real News. He believes Cheney could be afraid of getting prosecuted for his atrocious acts, and feels he would get along better with a pardon under his hat. Therefore, his admission was an act to put the pressure on Bush to pardon his vice president during his last days in office.

Will there be enough outrage to provoke somebody to prosecute our leaders when they break the law? I don’t believe Obama will have the guts to do it. He has been more than sketchy in matters dealing with political retribution. Perhaps he would be happy to have a spineless judicial system when he takes office and decides to break the law himself.