[Peace-discuss] NYTBR: Resist Dan Rather--Slimeball!

Sun Nov 26 15:08:06 UTC 2017

In contrast to Slimeball Dan Rather,  Barbara Walters in her Sunday TV News Program for ABC News gave a  very fair interview to Captain Lawrence Rockwood  to explain to the American People why he tried to stop torture in Haiti just before his court-martial for doing so at Fort Drum New York. We got Rockwood off-no time. How we did it is explained in my book Protesting Power: War, Resistance and Law (Rowman & Littlefield Inc. 2008).
Fab

Francis A. Boyle
Law Building
504 E. Pennsylvania Ave.
Champaign IL 61820 USA
217-333-7954 (phone)
217-244-1478 (fax)
(personal comments only)

From: Boyle, Francis A
Sent: Sunday, November 26, 2017 8:23 AM
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Subject: FW: NYTBR: Resist Dan Rather--Slimeball!

Francis A. Boyle
Law Building
504 E. Pennsylvania Ave.
Champaign IL 61820 USA
217-333-7954 (phone)
217-244-1478 (fax)
(personal comments only)

From: Boyle, Francis A
Sent: Sunday, November 26, 2017 8:19 AM
To: sectns.aals at lists.aals.org<mailto:sectns.aals at lists.aals.org>
Subject: NYTBR: Resist Dan Rather--Slimeball!

On his 60 Minutes TV Program for CBS Sunday Evening News, Dan Rather maliciously inflicted outright character assassination on an Amnesty International Prisoner of Conscience in front of millions of people. Let me repeat that: On his 60 Minutes TV Program for CBS Sunday Evening News Dan Rather maliciously  inflicted outright character assassination on an Amnesty International Prisoner of Conscience in front of millions of people. I helped defend Staff Sergeant Camilo Mejia, who was the very first GI Resister to Bush Jr's genocidal war of aggression against Iraq. Dan  Rather deliberately, gratuitously and viciously trashed S.S. Mejia in a plot and a trap that Rather had set for him  on 60 Minutes. Just before his court-martial at Fort Stewart, S.S. Mejia agreed to appear with Rather on 60 Minutes to explain to the American People why as a matter of good faith and conscience he could not return to combat in Iraq and turn captured insurgents over to be tortured. Thanks to S.S. Mejia, we knew all about the massive U.S. torture scandal in Iraq several months before it became front-page news all over the world. Instead of letting S.S. Mejia have his say, Rather launched  a mean, nasty, vicious diatribe and tirade  against S.S. Mejia, accusing him of being a traitor and abandoning and endangering his colleagues in Iraq. And this by a Chickenhawk Rather who, to the best of my knowledge, had never served in combat unlike S.S. Mejia. Clearly, on 60 Minutes Rather deliberately set out to poison the jury pool against S.S. Mejia at Fort Stewart in violation of Mejia's Constitutional Right to a Fair Trial. To make a long story short, despite Rather's worst efforts, at the end of a Kangaroo Court Proceeding, instead of 2 years, we got S.S. Mejia 8 months and adopted a Prisoner of Conscience by Amnesty International-just like Sakharov et al. May Dan Rather always Live In Infamy for what he did to S.S. Mejia! Rather has nothing worthwhile to say to anyone about anything. Caveat Lector!
Francis A. Boyle
Professor of Law
Board of Directors Amnesty International USA (1988-1992)
LeVine: In my own research on war crimes committed by US forces in Iraq. I counted at least two-dozen classes of offenses systematically committed by the Occupation administration and US or US-allied military forces in the invasion and subsequent period of CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) rule. This includes violations of articles and 17, 18, 33, and 147 of the Geneva Convention covering the killing, hostage-taking and torturing of civilians

Boyle: As I just argued at Fort Stewart Georgia in the court martial proceedings for Sgt. Camilo Mejia for desertion, the accountability here goes directly up the chain of command under the terms of the US Army Field Manual 27-10. Specifically, paragraph 501 makes clear that commanders who have ordered or knew or should have known about war crimes and failed to stop it are themselves guilty of war crimes. If you look then at the public record, it is clear that Gens. Sanchez and Miller ordered war crimes and both should be relieved of command immediately: abuse of prisoners in violation of the Geneva Conventions. As for General Abizaid, the overall commander of US forces in Southwest Asia, he admitted in his Senate hearings that he should have known about the war crimes at Abu Ghraib, so basically he's already incriminated himself under the rules of the US Army Field Manual 27-10 In addition, above Abizaid you have Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz. Again my reading of the public record including the Taguba and Red Cross reports is that they either knew or should have known about all these war crimes. Indeed, if you read the ICRC report, - and as I testified under oath and under cross-examination (and was not contradicted) at the Mejia court-martial proceedings, - the widespread and systematic nature of these abuses rise to the level of crimes against humanity, going all the way up through the chain of command. Culpability also extends to Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence General William G. Boykin and Defense Undersecretary Stephen Cambone, who reports directly to Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith. And through this line it appears to me that Rumsfeld is culpable, because he was at Abu Ghraib last fall. Indeed, Sy Hersch's New Yorker article on Abu Ghraib claims with good substantiation that he was totally aware and even signed off on the use of techniques which are clearly torture. Rumsfeld was given a tour by Brig. General Janet Karpinski, who was supposed to be in charge of the prison-although she said nothing when she was prohibited from accessing certain areas of it-and so she's also accountable. It's important to understand that the Geneva Conventions, the Hague Regulations of 1907, the U.S. Army Field Manual, all mandate that a criminal investigation be opened. And how President Bush, as Commander in Chief would be accountable under Field Manual 27-10 precisely because he is Commander in Chief of the US armed forces under the US Constitution. We know the White House knows this because if you read White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales's memo, he specifically tries to exempt the US from the Geneva Conventions for Guantanamo and Afghanistan. You can see that Gonzalez was afraid of Bush and others being held directly accountable. Moreover, because Powell dissented, we know there was a debate about this, so Bush had to have been aware of the implications of what was being done, which is also backed up by the memos from Ashcroft. These memos have been unearthed by Newsweek. So ultimately what we have here are people at the highest levels of the chain of command guilty of ordering or not preventing torture, which is both an international crime against the Geneva Conventions and the Torture Convention and a domestic crime as well. What we have then is a conspiracy among the aforementioned individuals to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity. Let me add one more thing that's very important to remember: The principles set forth in 27-10 of personal criminal accountability for war crimes goes back to the Nuremburg Charter, Judgments and Principles derived from the post-World War II trials of Nazi war criminals. Similar principles of criminal accountability were applied by the United States to the Japanese Imperial War criminals.

LeVine: In fact, President Bush has compared the war on terror to the war against the Nazis.

Boyle: Then we have even more reason to bring this to people's attention: The Nuremburg Principles were in fact originally the idea of the US Government which then orchestrated the prosecutions in Nuremburg. People need to understand the pedigree and heritage here. These are very grave offenses which the US government a generation ago prosecuted and executed Nazis for committing. And Japanese war criminals too.

LeVine: How can any of the people you mentioned be prosecuted?

Boyle: The military could do it, or the Dept. of Justice, which would have default power to do so if the military didn't. But for this of course we'd need a special prosecutor and that law has been allowed to lapse. Attorney General Ashcroft, who is clearly part of the criminal conspiracy, would never push a war crimes investigations against his colleagues or President Bush.

Francis A. Boyle
Law Building
504 E. Pennsylvania Ave.
Champaign IL 61820 USA
217-333-7954 (phone)
217-244-1478 (fax)
(personal comments only)

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