The prosecution of George W. Bush for murder

By Kathy G.

One of the most memorable cinematic experiences I've had in the past several years was the brilliant neorealist Romanian drama, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. The film tells the harrowing tale of a young woman who helps her friend obtain an illegal back alley abortion in Ceausescu-era Romania. In the final scene, the two women are having a somber dinner together. One of the young women starts to talk about the terrifying ordeal they have just experienced, but her friend cuts her off, saying "Let's never talk about this again."

Those are the haunting final words of the film. And yet, of course, the entire film gives the lie to those words, because above all else, it's about the importance of  speaking out, and documenting the horrors of a despotic and criminal political regime. Bearing witness to such crimes is, after all, the crucial first step towards apportioning responsibility for them, and towards creating a just, humane and democratically accountable society.

Ever since I saw that film, I've been haunted by that final scene, and especially by those words: "Let's never talk about this again." Because my greatest fear about the Bush era is that many Americans, and particularly our media and political elites, are going to want to pretend it never happened. That whole business of going to war with Iraq on the basis of brazen, baldfaced lies? The unspeakable torture at Abu Ghraib? The illegal detentions at Guantanamo? The criminal negligence before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina? The unconstitutional surveillance of countless law-abiding American citizens? The corrupt, profiteering, often grossly incompetent war contractors? The U.S. Attorneys scandal? The stolen election that kicked off this whole tragedy? Let's just forget about all that, please.

At this point, it seems highly likely that none of those crimes and scandals will be fully investigated, and few if any of the people responsible for them will be held accountable. For one thing, Barack Obama has made it abundantly clear that he has no interest in getting to the bottom of the high crimes and misdemeanors of the Bush administration. For brother Barack, it's all about "the audacity of hope" and "healing" and "let us transcend the politics of division." It's extremely depressing that Obama the former professor of constitutional law refuses to so much as hint that the Bush regime has provoked a constitutional crisis and that we need to find a way to resolve it.

But if we let this gang of criminals off scot-free, I believe it would be a tragic mistake. It’s vital for the health of our democracy that Bush and company be held accountable in some meaningful way. Otherwise their behavior in office will set a horrible new precedent – “defining deviancy down," in Daniel Patrick Moynihan's words. And next time out those sons of bitches will push the boundaries even further.

We’ve seen it happen in our lifetime. Every two-term Republican President we’ve had from Nixon on has provoked a constitutional crisis: Watergate, Iran-contra, and now the Bush scandals. We seem to have learned nothing from any of these crises – except that the Republicans have learned to be a lot smarter about covering up their crimes. Worse, you see the same people who were discredited in previous Republican criminal regimes coming back again and again. Karl Rove, for example, got his start as a teenage dirty trickster during the Nixon administration. Even people like John Poindexter and Elliot Abrams, who were convicted of crimes connected to the Iran-contra scandal, came back to serve in high-level positions in the Bush administration!

That is seriously fucked up. And I’m sickened by the idea of these bastards once again getting away with it. It reminds me of the lines from that great Watergate-era Bob Dylan song, “Hurricane” – “All the criminals in their coats and their ties / Are free to drink martinis, and watch the sun rise.” Jesus, what a bitter and depressing image. But you just know it’s going to happen.

There are however, several alternatives to head-in-the-sand denial about this. I believe the most appropriate response to the abuses of the Bush administration would be impeachment, and Dennis Kucinich, God bless him, recently submitted articles of impeachment against George W. Bush to the House Judiciary Committee. Unfortunately, though, we've been assured that impeachment is "off the table" -- thanks, Nancy and Harry!

Another possibility, which has been advocated by Mark Schmitt and which I also support, is transitional justice, aka a truth and reconciliation commission. Such a commission would not have the power to indict anyone, but would be able to deliver subpoenas and grant limited immunity, and would be empowered to fully investigate the crimes and misdeeds of the Bush era and make recommendations on how to avoid such abuses in the future. Unfortunately, though, this solution has also garnered little support.

A third option would be to prosecute Bush and other administration officials for war crimes. As Scott Horton recently explained, while this almost certainly will not happen in the U.S., it's likely to happen elsewhere in the world, should indictable officials travel to Europe or other places unlikely to grant them immunity. I support these efforts at international justice as well, but I would strongly prefer that America, rather than some international court or another nation, deal with the crimes of Bush et al. The prosecution of American officials by non-Americans would likely result in a nationalist backlash here in the U. S. of A., which ultimately might raise questions about the legitimacy of the prosecution, and could damage international courts as an institution. On the other hand, though, prosecuting the Bushies might deter future potential war criminals, and may also help Americans realize that what the Bush administration has done has indeed been a grotesque violation of international laws and norms.

Up to now, I thought those three options -- impeachment, a truth and reconciliation commission, or prosecution for war crimes -- were the only alternatives to doing nothing. But recently I became aware of a fourth option. Author and former prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi has written a new book, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, which advocates just that (the murder victims alluded to in the title being the casualties of the Iraq War).

The book, which was published on May 26th, has become a phenomenon. It's currently #24 on Amazon, where it has already garnered 98 customer reviews and an average rating of four stars. It's also been on the New York Times best seller list for three weeks, where it's currently #14.

This is in spite of a virtual black-out in the mainstream media. Bugliosi hasn't snagged any television interviews, and he's been on very few radio shows. The only advertising for the book has been on the internet. To my knowledge, none of the liberal blogs I visit regularly has so much as mentioned the book. Nor have there been any reviews that I know of in any mainstream publications. When I planned this post Sunday night I was ready to write that the book has gotten zero mentions in the mainstream press, but I woke this morning to discover that the New York Times has, at long last, run a story about the book.

And btw, I just love this quote from Newsweek editor John Meachum, about why he thinks the mainstream media has almost completely ignored this book: “I think there’s a kind of Bush-bashing fatigue out there,” says Meacham. Riiiiiight. There have just been, like, so many serious, detailed discussions in the mainstream media about the abuses of the Bush regime, and all the possible legal and public policy responses that could be pursued to hold the administration accountable.

A little about Bugliosi: he is very much a mainstream figure and not a crank. He's most famous for prosecuting Charles Manson for the murders of Sharon Tate and others, and he wrote a famous book about this, Helter Skelter. He's also written other true crime books about subjects like the O.J. Simpson trial (which he argues the prosecution screwed up pretty thoroughly) and the assassination of JFK (he's no conspiracy theorist -- his massive book on that subject argues that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone).

I haven't read Bugliosi's book, but I have read a brief excerpt from it, and also the Times piece and this transcript of a Democracy Now! interview with Bugliosi. In addition, I've viewed a talk Bugliosi gave about the book which apparently is supposed to run on CSPAN, which you can find via Youtube: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, and part 6.   

The gist of Bugliosi's argument is that George W. Bush knowingly led us to war under false pretenses, and thus is criminally responsible for the deaths of the 4,000+ American service men and women who have died in the Iraq conflict (not to mention the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have also died as a result of the war). According to Bugliosi, any district attorney in the country has the legal authority to put Bush on trial for murder, so long as an American soldier from their district died fighting in the war in Iraq.

What should we make of all this? I strongly believe that George W. Bush and most likely Dick Cheney are morally guilty of murder, and that Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell, and others are at the very least guilty of being accessories to that crime. And I for one think Bush and Cheney deserve to spend the rest of their lives behind bars for their unforgivable crime of sending so many to their deaths for no discernible reason other than the egos and greed of their leaders.

But believing that the Bush regime deserves to be held criminally liable in the abstract doesn't mean it would be the right thing to do in reality. For one thing, being morally guilty (which I believe Bush is) is not the same as being guilty under the law.  It also raises uncomfortable questions: if Bush is guilty, can he really be the only one? Is Cheney equally guilty? And what about Rice, Powell, Rumsfeld, and other officials? How about the senators and Congressional representatives who voted to authorize the war? Where would it end?

In addition, in one sense, all it would take to bring Bush to trial is one determined prosecutor. But for a prosecution to be successful, and for the charges to stick, I think there'd need to be a broad national consensus that prosecution is the right thing to do, and right now that certainly doesn't seem to be the case. I seriously doubt that Bush will ever be brought up on charges (although murder of course does not have a statute of limitations, and I suppose it's conceivable that, years from now, public opinion will change about this).

As a practical strategy, then, Bugliosi's book is of little value. But I believe it's useful in other ways. First, Bugliosi does us all a service by carefully, methodically laying out the facts about how the Bush regime sold the war. Those facts are damning, and the brazen cynicism with which Bush & Co. sold the war, as well as the bloodthirsty zeal which drove them, still have the power to shock. Though this information has been publicly available for a while, it's still relatively little known, so I think Bugliosi is doing an admirable job of educating the public here.

Secondly, I appreciate what Bugliosi is doing in terms of a potential Overton window effect. Millions of Americans, myself included, are filled to the brim with rage and disgust at the war and at many other aspects of the Bush regime's conduct in office, but sadly, our fury something our media and political elites don't seem to get. Bugliosi's book expresses some of that outrage for us, and its success might even make some of our elites sit up and take notice of it for a change. And who knows, by making such an extreme argument -- that Bush should be tried for murder -- Bugliosi may make some of the milder alternatives like impeachment, which seem so unlikely right now, look like something closer to serious, viable alternatives. Make he can spark a substantive public discussion about them.

I'll close by posting some of the Youtubes of Bugliosi that I linked to earlier. First,  here's part 4 of his talk, in which Bugliosi lays out some of the overwhelmingly persuasive  evidence that Bush led our country into war under false pretenses.

I found this section of Bugliosi's talk (part 5), on Bush the sociopath, to be especially chilling and powerful. Bugliosi points out that throughout the length of the miserable parade of death and suffering he initiated, "George Bush smiled through it all."

"O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain! . . . That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain" -- rarely have these bitter words wrung more true.

Comments

[stickler]

Sorry, what?

It seems not only possible, but highly likely, that none of those crimes and scandals will be fully investigated, and few if any of the people responsible for them will be held accountable.

Why do you think this?

Was it the pardon of the Watergate criminals (well, most of them) by Gerald Ford?

Or the pardon of the Iran-Contra criminals by the last President named Bush?

No. No way that could happen again. Not with a Democrat as President!

(throws up in mouth a little bit...)

[stickler]

Um. Pretend there are , tags around that quote of our hostess there.

Ahem. Sorry.

[jumped-up monkey]

stickler, there is precedent for a Democratic President covering for Republicans:
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/123107.html.

[ten]

I do not find Bugliosi persuasive or helpful overall. I heard the Democracy Now! interview and found it pretty weak. He also said in an earlier book that Sandra O'Connor, Antonin Scalia, et al. are guilty of treason for their Bush v. Gore votes. This rhetoric, like the murder rhetoric in this instance, distracts from and delegitimates the relevant and needed critique of the government action being considered.

As for Bush, I can see a case for impeachment and a case for war crimes charges. We need to be much more focused than Bugliosi is being, however. Torture policy is a real issue in these contexts. Bringing up Bush's personality and such subjective issues as his emotions or attitude ("smiling through it all"), by contrast, is enormously counterproductive and trivializing. After all, if he were a better actor or simply a more mature person, and thereby managed to maintain a grave mein in all public appearances, would that make the underlying policy choices any less harmful and irresponsible?

Similarly, Bush did go to Congress before the invasion and got a majority in both houses to assent. Are they guilty of murder too? Should John Kerry and Hillary Clinton be indicted? No, Congress didn't have all the White House's intel, but it had, for instance, access to the October 2002 NIE, which did contain (downplayed) dissenting takes on the administration's case. Yet only a handful of members even read the NIE. This is gross negligence, but I doubt that it's murder.

We have a debt to the Iraqi people and to our veterans and we desperately need a foreign policy that will keep us safer, rebuild our ties, and promote peace and liberal democratic reforms. These goals are going to plenty hard to achieve as it is. The problem with Bugliosi is that he could do a lot of good if he used the many valid parts of his mountain of evidence of error and deceit to support those more consensus-oriented goals, but he sets these apocalyptic terms for the debate ("treason" or "murder" charges) that only set him and his goals up to fail, with the larger set of ideas behind them being consistently marginalized. So I would say this sort of thing, rather than being too left-wing, is too sloppy and grandiose. I'm glad that you have some critical angles in your take, Kathy.

[Nell]

Thanks very much for this post, Kathy.

I'm with you in strongly preferring that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice et al. be held to account by U.S. citizens. And you're absolutely right that there will be a powerful urge for the country just to turn its back to the Bush-Cheney crimes.

Under a Democratic administration, the leaderhip of the Democratic Party will exert itself to marginalize accountability efforts just as they've been doing since retaking the Congressional majority. The complicity and collaboration of senior Democrats with some of the worst crimes of this regime is part of the reason.

Another motivation will be the undisputed need to focus on dealing with harsh realities: the ruined economy, the climate crisis, and managing a de-escalation of ("ending") our numerous military occupations and wars. These will be thrown in the face of those who call for justice, much as they have been during the recent intra-party disagreement over the FISA cave-in by the leadership and Obama.

It will be unpleasant; there'll be a lot more accusations of "moral vanity". But just as with impeachment now, we have to keep speaking up and refuse to drop the demand. And we have to grasp what sort of struggle we're really in. The evidence from other regimes is that it can take twenty to thirty years before anything like justice is achieved, or even addressed. That's not an argument for soft-pedaling demands for accountability; backing off the issue only delays the time of reckoning.

Impeachment remains the best option. It's the constitutional remedy, it has enough teeth to compel the evidence that is the point of the exercise, and doing it after the officials have been voted out of office removes much of the partisan taint. Most Americans are unaware that impeachment can take place after officials leave office. Post-tenure impeachment is the only mechanism that could approximate a truth and reconciliation commission in this country.

[Batocchio]

Bugliosi is a smart guy, although I wasn't overwhelmed by his presentation on Democracy Now. Regardless, he makes some good points.

The bigger issue is what you hone in on here - the lack of accountability and lack of desire to pursue it in large scandals. When Ford died, a stampede of journalists insisted the Ford's pardon of Nixon was essential to let the country "move on," and also insisted (despite an article by Bob Woodward proving otherwise) that there was no quid pro quo for Ford and the pardon (although Woodward's one of those in the "pardon was good" camp now). Likewise, the Iran-Contra group got off almost entirely scot-free. The crew we have in power now is in some cases literally the Nixon gang and the Iran-Contra gang, either the conspirators themselves, or their allies and apologists. It's important that justice be served. Barring that, something like the Truth and Reconciliation Committee would be helpful. But the authoritarian conservative crowd currently in power has repeatedly shown they will never stop voluntarily. Sadly, most of the scoundrels in the Bush administration will likely never be prosecuted for war crimes or even suffer financially for their misdeeds. But if they were exposed and permanently discredited, it would limit the harm they and their buddies could do in the future.

[Batocchio]

Oh, and Four Months... is a great film (one of my top 8 from last year).

[HPM]

Wow. G R E A T post. I will have to rent me "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days".

FYI: C-SPAN is airing the Bugliosi talk repeatedly this weekend.

Also, for better quality video and transcripts of much of what Bugliosi says, see http://www.hotpotatomash.com/2008/06/video-exclusi-2.html

[Bert Fonte]

Dear Sir,

Never in my entire life have I felt so much contempt and distrust for an American President and Vice President. What can we do to take back this country and hold this administration accountable for all of its diabolical actions? George W. Bush is a liar, a thief and an abomination to the moral principals that this country was founded upon. How will we ever recover from the past eight years of destruction to our national security and standing in the global community? For the first time in my life I am ashamed to call myself an American Citizen. This is not solely based upon the actions of this president but moreover by a lack of leadership willing to step up to the plate and call us to arms as alerted citizens to take back our country. The terrorists and threat to this nation are not coming from some distant shore to destroy all that our founding fathers intended but are right here living and ruling under our noses. The events of 9/11 spell out the beginning of the end for trust in the U.S. Government. The people of this nation need to revolt but when will this happen? When all liberty is lost? When all respect for the U.S. has deteriorated into nothing? When all the U.S. Treasury bank vaults are empty? Or perhaps when China invades and takes over. The day is coming when all Americans will see the fruits of their apathy. As God is my witness the Karma of this country is about to unfold in ways that no one would ever have anticipated. Who will come to our aid when the tyrants of fear and disorder have staged another “event” giving them power to declare Marshall Law and indefinite power to destroy all that was is and will be? Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us of the dangers of allowing this power to exist and persist yet we continue to let the Military Industrial Complex rule the actions of our leaders. A showdown is brewing and it is not going to be a battle fought on some foreign soil. Wake up people, wake up and take a stand once and for all or be defeated!

[Andrew Wang]

Bush is the worst president in American history. Bush facilitated the 9/11 attacks. Subsequently, Bush lied to Congress and the American people relative to the reasons for invading Iraq. Bush purposefully misled Congress and the American people. Then, Bush murdered more than 4,000 United States service members. And Bush wounded more than 30,000 United States service members. In torturing prisoners of war, Bush patently violated the Geneva Convention. Bush unlawfully wiretapped United States citizens. In using “signing statements” to challenge hundreds of laws passed by Congress, Bush violated the Constitution. Bush has ignored global warming. Bush is guilty of criminal negligence relative to the response to Hurricane Katrina. Bush disobeys our democratic values and Constitution. Bush is a disgrace to the United States.

Bush should be prosecuted for mass murder and war crimes.

Submitted by Andrew Yu-Jen Wang
B.S., Summa Cum Laude, 1996
Messiah College, Grantham, PA