{"id":112226,"date":"2015-03-08T13:20:08","date_gmt":"2015-03-08T13:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=112226"},"modified":"2015-03-13T09:11:40","modified_gmt":"2015-03-13T09:11:40","slug":"germany-plans-to-put-bush-and-cheney-on-trial-for-war-crimes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=112226","title":{"rendered":"Germany plans to put Bush and Cheney on trial for war crimes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Admin — darkmoon.me March 8, 2015<\/h1>\n

Will Germany, a nation still occupied by US troops after WWII, dare to put Bush and his cronies on trial for torture and other war crimes?<\/h4>\n

Sourced from this article<\/span><\/a><\/span>.<\/em>
\nPresented with pictures, captions and commentary by Lasha Darkmoon<\/em><\/h5>\n

\"Bush<\/a><\/p>\n

LD: \u00a0These six American war criminals have already admitted to authorizing torture. From left to right: President George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet. Even the New York Times<\/em>\u00a0(see here<\/span><\/a><\/span>) has called for their prosecution. Nobel Peace prize winner Barack Obama has refused to take action, since his own war crimes are even greater. Now Germany has decided to step in and start the ball rolling. (LD) \u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

If President Obama<\/strong> won\u2019t do it, someone else will.<\/h3>\n
Thankfully, a human rights group in Berlin, The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights,\u00a0has begun the process of indicting members of the Bush Administration by filing criminal complaints against the architects\u00a0of the Admin\u2019s torture program.<\/h5>\n
Calls for an immediate investigation by the German human rights group\u00a0was started after outrage ensued on the case of a German citizen, Khalid El-Masri, who\u00a0had been\u00a0captured by CIA agents in 2004\u00a0\u00a0because of a\u00a0mistaken identity mix-up and was tortured at a secret prison in Afghanistan.<\/h5>\n
Wolfgang Kaleck, the general secretary of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, said:\u00a0\u201cBy investigating members of the Bush administration, Germany can help to ensure that those responsible for abduction, abuse and illegal detention do not go unpunished.\u201d<\/h5>\n
In an interview with \u201cDemocracy Now<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/span>,\u201d\u00a0Michael Ratner, president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights and chairman of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, said that he believes Cheney, among others, has no defense against accusations of torture and should be indicted:<\/h5>\n
\u201cI strongly disagree that Bush, Cheney, et al., would have a defense,\u201d he said. \u201cThis wasn\u2019t like these memos just appeared independently from the Justice Department.\u00a0These memos were facilitated by the very people \u2014 Cheney etc. \u2014 who we believe should be indicted.\u00a0This was part of a conspiracy so they could get away with torture. But that\u2019s not the subject here now.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cSecondly, whatever we think of those memos,\u201d he added, \u201cthey have no application in Europe. Europe doesn\u2019t accept this \u201cgolden shield\u201d of a legal defense. Either it\u2019s torture or it\u2019s not. Either you did it or you didn\u2019t. And that\u2019s one of the reasons, among others, why we\u2019re going to Europe and why we went to Europe to bring these cases through the European Center.\u201d<\/h5>\n
Ratner then hit the nail on the head regarding America\u2019s dangerous exceptionalism path down the road:<\/h5>\n
\u201cBut, of course, you know, Cheney just showed us exactly why you have to \u2014 have to prosecute torture. Because if you don\u2019t prosecute it, the next guy down the line is going to torture again.\u00a0And that\u2019s what Cheney said: \u2018I would do it again.\u2019\u201d<\/strong><\/h5>\n
\"Cheney<\/a>

Cheney looking like a cornered rat.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u00a7<\/strong><\/p>\n

Khalid El-Masri<\/strong> was on vacation in Skopje, in Macedonia, when he was pulled off of a bus by government agents, sodomized and drugged. He was then taken to a secret base that was identified only as \u201cCobalt\u201d in the CIA torture report. After four months, and after the United States learned of the mistaken identity, they left him there and continued to torture him<\/strong>.<\/h5>\n
The US \u00a0actually held on to him even after realizing that they had been torturing the wrong man. Afterwards, they released him, dropping him off somewhere to resume his life.<\/h5>\n
El-Masri, in the same interview with Democracy Now<\/em>, said this:<\/h5>\n
\u201cI was the only one in this prison in Kabul who was actually treated slightly better than the other inmates. But it was known among the prisoners that other prisoners were constantly tortured with blasts of loud music, exposed to constant onslaughts of loud music. And they were\u2014for up to five days, they were just sort of left hanging from the ceiling, completely naked in ice-cold conditions.<\/h5>\n
This man from Tanzania, whom I mentioned before, had his arm broken in three places. He had injuries, trauma to the head, and his teeth had been damaged. They also locked him up in a suitcase for long periods of time, a foul-smelling suitcase that made him vomit all the time.<\/h5>\n
Other people experienced forms of torture whereby their heads were being pushed down and held under water.\u201d<\/h5>\n
He finished the interview with some pretty damning words that should make George Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld shudder:<\/h5>\n
\u201cWhat with the NSA spying on Germany, and the fact that one of their citizens was tortured when known to be innocent,\u00a0I\u2019m pretty sure that Germany is going to take this very seriously.<\/strong>\u201c<\/h5>\n
LD: The comment about the CIA suitcase torture reminds me of some information I received from a corespondent of mine a few months ago. He said that Israeli advisors were always to be found at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, at Bagram base in Afghanistan, and at all the other American torture camps scattered over the globe.<\/h5>\n
What was particularly appalling, apart from Israeli advisors suggesting ever more ingenious methods of making life unbearable for detainees, most of whom were innocent, was the fact that American doctors were always at hand to advise how much torture could be applied before the victim died in agony. Gerald Thomson, professor of medicine emeritus at Columbia University, notes disapprovingly: \u201cPhysicians were transformed into agents of the military and performed acts that were contrary to medical ethics<\/span><\/a><\/span>.\u201d<\/h5>\n
Who invented the CIA suitcase torture is unknown, but it was probably an Israeli advisor, according to my source, who thought up the idea of smearing the inside of the suitcase with excrement and vomit before ramming the petrified prisoner inside.<\/h5>\n

\"Waterboarding\"<\/a><\/p>\n

LD: Another torture used extensively by the Bush administration is waterboarding<\/span><\/a><\/span>. This\u00a0entails a prisoner being strapped to a board with his feet raised above his head. His face is covered by a wet cloth as interrogators pour water over it to give the sensation of drowning.\u00a0<\/strong><\/h5>\n
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of \u00a09\/11, was waterboarded 183 times. Is it any wonder that he confessed? Later he admitted that he \u201cmade up stories\u201d to stop being tortured. When asked about the brutal ill-treatment of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, President Bush said:\u00a0\u201cYeah, we waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. I\u2019d do it again to save lives<\/span><\/a><\/span>.\u201d \u00a0(LD)<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Source <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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