I began this blog by listing violations of the UN Charter, the Nuremberg Principles, the Geneva and Hague Conventions during George W. Bush's presidency. This blog will cover violations of the U.S. Constitution, U.S. statutes, long-standing legal practice and indiiscriminate use of weapons of mass destruction.
III. Violations of the U.S. Constitution, U.S. Statutes and Long-Standing Legal Practice
1) The invasion of Iraq without a declaration of war violated the U.S.Constitution, which gives the Congress the sole right to declare war.
2) The detention of a U.S. citizen, Jose Padilla, without charges and without access to a lawyer for a considerable time, violated due process provisions of the U.S. Constitution.
3) Wiretapping without a court order violated the FISA Act of 1978. Ignorance of the law is not a factor, since there is an oft-repeated audio in which George W. Bush assures U.S. citizens thast no one can wiretap without a court order.
4) The use of presidential signing statements was once a purely ceremonial affair without any legislative intent. Ronald Reagan was the first presidient to try to give signing statements a legislative intent and to urge judges to use such statements as a factor in legal rulings. President Bush greatly expanded upon the scope and number of such statements, as brought out by a Boston Globe story specifying 750 of such statements.
The U.S. Supreme Copurt has ruled that the president may participate in the legislative process only by proposing legislation and vetoing/approving bills.
5) Although the firing of eight U.S. attorneys was within President Bush's discretion, as frequently claimed, the fact that no explanations have been provided for individual firings; the fact that those who may have played roles in the firings can't be questioned due to claims of executive privilege; the fact that documents related to the firings are being withheld from Congress; and the fact that pertinent emails have been lost, raises the strong suspicion that the firings were due to the Bush administration's belief that the eight were running their offices in a manner that was insufficiently partisan.
6) The current case of an Interior Department undersecretary doctoring scientific documents is just the latest skirmish in a long-running war against science conducted by the Bush administration, in which the revision of scientific information to downgrade the threat of global warming has been the most repeated offense.
IV. Weapons of Mass and Indiscriminate Destruction
President George W. Bush has inveighed frequently against weapons of mass detrauction but he has not been held to account for the weapons of mass and indiscriminate destruction used during his presiidency.
1) The 15,000 pound Daisy-Cutter was ued in Afghanistan beginning in the first week of November 2001 to try to dislodge Taliban troops dug-in to stop a Northern Alliance advance on Kabul. Later, the Daisy-Cutter, along with the B-52 bomber, was used to pulverize caves and tunnels in the White Mountains to prevent their use by Taliban and foreign troops.
The Daisy-Cuitter can incinerate an area equivalent to five football fields.
2) The use of the B-52 bomber to carpet-bomb dug-in Taliban was first advocated by Senator John McCain. The imprecise nature of B-52 bombing was emphasized when a 2,000 pound bomb killed a number of U.S. and anti-Taliban troops on December 5, 2001. B-52s were used in the heavy bombing of the White Mountains, raising serious comcerns about long-term ecological damage.
3) Cluster bombs were heavily used in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Tragically, the boomlets used in Afghanistan were the same color as the food packages being dropped by another arm of the government. The U.S. military claims only a one percent failure rate on the most recent version of the boomlets but failure rates on the older versions are much higher.
Cluster bombs are not banned by international law but there is a strong movement underway by as many as 40 nations to ban them due to their deadly effect on civilian populations.
4) Depleted uranium, with its long-term radiation effect, has become a commonly used munition by the U.S. military due to its superior armor-piercing capability.
5) The U.S. military first denied using white phosphorous or any other chemical in Iraq. It later said that the chemical was used strictly to illuminate insurgent positions in Fallujah. Finally, after U.S. troops in the Fallujah offensive spoke out, the Pentagon acknowledged that white phosphorous was used in combat to drive insugents from their positions so they could be killed by heavy explosives.
Italian RAI state television showed video images of white phosphorous being used in Fallujah; said it was used "in a massive and indiscriminate way" against civilians; and reported on civilians in hospitals with phosphorous burns -- phosphorous can burn to the bone.
Protocol three of the 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCCW), prohibits the use of white phosphorous against civilians and military targets located within a concentration of civilians. The U.S. has ratified only protocols one and two. Ironically, before the invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration warned that use of chemical weapons by the Iraqis could bring the use of nuclear weapons by the United States.
6) President Bush has not ruled out using nuclear weapons against buried nuclear facilities in Iran. Using Hazard Prediction and Assessment Capability software, developed by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, Physicians for Social Responsibility has calculated that using a B83 nuclear bomb, adapted for bunker busting, to attack the nuclear facilities at Ishahan, Iran, would kill three million people with one explosion.
Part III of this blog will focus on grey areas of conduct.
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