The recent decision by the Supreme Court in the case of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, although primarily addressing the issue of military tribunals, also provided some very bad news for the Bush administration. According to
Glenn Greenwald today:
...the Supreme Court in Hamdan deliberately laid at least the theoretical foundation for high officials in the Bush administration to be charged with war crimes. They expressly ruled that the military commissions violate those Conventions, and if any prisoners were to be executed by virtue of commissions which violated Common Article 3, or if detainees are deliberately and systematically mistreated in violation of that provision, that would be a war crime, by definition. I simply don't believe that there are government officials who are subjected to those sorts of suggestions from the U.S. Supreme Court who are not taking them seriously.
(Emphasis added)
Follow me below the fold and see what else Glenn's legal analysis reveals...
The decision ripped the guts out of Bush's justification that the AUMF (Authorization for the Use of Military Force) passed by Congress allows him to do whatever he damned well wants as long as he hangs a "war on terror" toe-tag on it. The Supreme Court has just implicitly determined to be illegal not just war crimes against foreigners, but war crimes against Americans as well:
The Supreme Court unquestionably rejected the very theories which the Bush administration has been using to defend themselves from accusations of criminal conduct. The ruling in Hamdan stripped those defenses away and the lawbreakers in the administration are left standing exposed. There is simply no question that the five-Justice majority in Hamdan would reject with equal vigor, at least, the administration's claim that the AUMF authorized them to eavesdrop in violation of FISA and/or that the President has the inherent authority to violate Congressional law in the area of national security.
That means that the administration has no defenses to fend off charges that they deliberately violated the criminal law -- and continue to do so -- by eavesdropping on Americans without warrants, or torturing people in violation of the Geneva Conventions and/or the McCain Amendment, or violating the National Security Act of 1947 by concealing major intelligence activities from Congress. Those are criminal offenses. And the Supreme Court just expressed unbridled hostility towards their only defenses they have to those crimes. Anyone who suggests that that is a meaningless development and that Bush officials are unaffected by them has embraced a cartoon super-villain version of the administration which is just not real.
So the emperor really does have no clothes with which to shield him and his minions from criminal prosecution. Now even Bush's friends are joining in:
They long ago lost the shield of popularity. The Supreme Court just ruled against them, and in the process, strongly insinuated that they may be war criminals and without any valid defenses to accusations of repeated criminal acts. Even their Congressional allies smell blood and are making threats and demanding concessions. And behind their unprecedentedly fortified walls of secrecy undoubtedly lurk the most incriminating, still-concealed revelations yet, and it is only a matter of time before we learn of those. Bush critics seems to assume that Bush officials are almost divinely protected from any meaningful consequences from their behavior, but it's a very good bet, at this point, that that comforting assumption is not shared by Bush officials.
Please go read the whole article. Then come back here and vote for your choice for Special Prosecutor.