prison rape and the death penalty

* lindorff:

"So what were the justices doing when they said that Bush had violated the Third Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War? They were calling him a war criminal.

It's pretty clear really.

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What should happen, of course, at this point, is that someone--the Attorney General, or perhaps special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald--should move to indict those who have perpetrated this heinous and shameful crime against humanity, and against the people of the United States. That would mean indictments on war crimes charges of Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Former AG John Ashcroft, former National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, former White House Counsel and now AG Alberto Gonzales, former terrorism prosecutor and now Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, and President and Commander in Chief George Bush, the Decider. Of course, because the president is protected against indictment while in office, his indictment would have to be served after he leaves office.

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This would be an easy hearing. No need to subpoena lots of low-ranking people and grill them about what the president was "really" up to. We know. He was brazenly asserting the right of a dictator: to shove aside the nation's Constitution, and the international treaties his predecessors had negotiated and signed, and to simply ignore the rule of law, declaring that people captured in Afghanistan or Iraq, or kidnapped by U.S. forces in other countries abroad, as part of the bogus "war" on terror, would not have even the minimal rights and protections afforded by the Geneva Conventions. The House Judiciary could just call in Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote quite clearly in his opinion in Hamdan, that the president was in violation of provisions of the Third Geneva Convention.

At that point, the president could be tried in the Senate, where, if the Senators were honest, they'd have to agree that he was a war criminal, and remove him from the White House.

Then he could be added to his indicted cabinet officers, and they could all face war crimes charges together.

I'm not in favor of the death penalty, so I don't think Rumsfeld, Rice, Chertoff & Co. should face capital punishment for their role in this gross crime. But as for Bush and his legal lackey, Alberto Gonzales, I could make an exception. Bush, after all, oversaw and approved the execution of a record 152 people on Texas's death row while serving as governor of that benighted state. Gonzales, as Gov. Bush's legal counsel, had the job of looking over the clemency petitions of most of those men and women, and in only one case was clemency recommended and granted. The blood of all those people, many or most of whom were never afforded fair trials under Texas' notoriously shoddy and biased legal system, which has allowed poor defendants in capital cases to have lawyers who slept or drank their way through their trials, is on Bush's and Gonzales' hands.

i wouldnt make an exception. my secret ingenius plan is:

there are some days when i consider that maybe there could be exceptions to my disgust at the death penalty - thats why opposition to the death penalty must be absolute - but i guess the law is the law. given that, here's what id happily settle for: we pretend that rove gets executed but secretly shuffle him off to some prison somewhere with a few guys called Butch, and heres the key, we dont tell blinky or cheney or libby or hadley or rice or bolton or negroponte or (mr) miller or blair or any of the others and they spend the rest of their days wondering when their day will come. we could tell rove that his clemency would depend on his acting skills. good compromise?

(i have no idea who i was referring to re "(mr) miller")

(and i'll also disavow myself of the prison rape joke becuase i'm biting my tongue bigger than that)