Massachusetts Law School Plans Conference on Bush War Crimes

The Massachusetts School of Law at Andover will be holding a conference to plan the prosecution of President Bush and other high administration officials for war crimes on September 13-14, 2008.

"This is not intended to be a mere discussion of violations of law that have occurred," said convener Lawrence Velvel, dean and cofounder of the school. "It is, rather, intended to be a planning conference at which plans will be laid and necessary organizational structures set up, to pursue the guilty as long as necessary and, if need be, to the ends of the Earth."

The MSL press release goes on to state, "Velvel said past practice has been to allow U.S. officials responsible for war crimes in Viet Nam and elsewhere to enjoy immunity from prosecution upon leaving office. 'President Johnson retired to his Texas ranch and his Defense Secretary Robert McNamara was named to head the World Bank; Richard Nixon retired to San Clemente and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was allowed to grow richer and richer,' Velvel said.

"He noted in the years since the prosecution and punishment of German and Japanese leaders after World War Two those nation's leaders changed their countries' aggressor cultures. One cannot discount contributory cause and effect here, he said.

"The conference will take up such issues as the nature of domestic and international crimes committed; which high-level Bush officials, including Federal judges and Members of Congress, are chargeable with war crimes; which foreign and domestic tribunals can be used to prosecute them; and the setting up of an umbrella coordinating committee with representatives of legal groups concerned about the war crimes such as the Center for Constitutional Rights, ACLU, National Lawyers Guild, among others."



Meanwhile, with Congressional testimony on these matters continuing, the issuance of new, highly credible reports of Bush administration officials, and most likely, the president himself, being the "bad apples" he said disgusted him over four years ago, when the Abu Ghraib torture scandals became public, the American people, by and large, remain passive about what all this means.

And, meanwhile, the list of Bush's egregious failures grows and grows. Here's my article on Hugh's List of Bush Crimes and Misdeeds, written last November. At that time, the list contained 281 items. It now contains 361.

In November, I made a scroll of Hugh's list, as it then existed. To update the scroll, which was then about 60 feet long, it would take another 32 feet of paper.