by Vincent Bugliosi. $26.95. Vanguard Press.
Vincent Bugliosi, who put Charles Manson away, is probably the world’s most successful prosecuting attorney. He knows all about bringing a charge of murder and getting a conviction, and in this book he argues that George W. Bush, along with Dick Cheney, Condoleeza Rice and perhaps other members of the Bush administration are guilty of the crimes of murder and conspiracy to commit murder under the laws of the U.S.A. He describes how he could prosecute them if he had standing to bring an action, and points out that any district attorney in any state or county from which any soldier was shipped to Iraq and was killed there does have standing. Moreover, any one of them can bring an action at any time since there is no statute of limitations on murder.
Now, do you think there is any chance that any one of these sworn law enforcers will actually issue an arrest warrant and have the cops haul one or more of these malefactors in for the customary fingerprinting, mug shots and residence in a cell?
I don’t. And that makes me wonder what kind of a country we’re living in.
Robert Nowall says:
The title alone put me off. And his previous book, a substantial tome on the Kennedy assassination, was so sound…
December 10, 2009, 7:52 amSMD says:
Unfortunately, I don’t think it would ever happen, but I wish it would. I don’t say that because I’m anti-Bush, but because what that administration did has done lasting damage to the reputation of my country. They not only broke the law, but new they were doing so and covered it all up so they wouldn’t be caught. The U.S. is always first to try other country’s leaders for war crimes, and so we should try these people for doing horrible things to people who may or may not have been enemies (a distinction that, to me, is meaningless…because we’re all human beings and doing bad to bad people is still doing bad to ourselves).
But, meh. It’ll never happen and there will never be justice for the thousands of U.S. soldiers who went and died for a lie. That’s the true tragedy of it all…families who have lost loved ones now have to live with knowing it was in vain…
December 10, 2009, 8:42 amБобсън says:
I hope to see it happen one of these days…Pathologically optimistic I know..
December 10, 2009, 11:18 amKirk Snavely says:
Last year I watched on the internet as Bugliosi testified before the House Judiciary Committee regarding the possibility of impeaching Bush and his cronies (or something to that effect). He was riled up, and that may have hurt his chances of being taken seriously by the Republicans on the committee, at least that was my impression from their blase and smug reaction to Bugliosi. Too bad there are not more people like the chairman (Conyers) on that committee.
December 10, 2009, 11:25 amleslie deVries says:
He’s a strong writer, and I’d like to read this, but I too hold no great hopes that we will ever seen them in the Hague. And let’s not forget Don Rumsfeld and his daily Bible briefings!
December 10, 2009, 1:55 pmJeff says:
That just wouldn’t be polite. We’re supposed to look forward, not back, etc.
December 11, 2009, 8:52 amJD Rhoades says:
Every President has blood on his hands. You open that door, it\’s not going to be so easy to close it. As attractive as the idea is of seeing that sumbitch Bush in the dock, the next ting you\’d see would be some grandstanding prosecutor indicting Clinton over Bosnia or Somalia. Then Bush the First over the First Gulf War. And as soon as Obama leaves office, someone\’ll indict him for something. And on and on.
December 14, 2009, 11:54 amStefan Jones says:
I was heartened to read that “22 million” White House emails that had believed lost were retrieved.
Even if we don’t actually see Rumsfeld, Cheney, Addision, etc. see jail time, it would be wonderful to have on record things like:
* Acknowledgement that were no WMDs, and plans to hornswoggle the public anyway.
* Confirmation that Cheney was determined to topple Saddam from day one, told oil company executives about his plans, and wet himself with joy on 9/11 because he knew he had his excuse.
Anything like this, even if it wasn’t legally actionable, would destroy the moral standing of these bastards, so no one would take them seriously when they pontificated of Fox News, etc.
December 14, 2009, 3:47 pmRBH says:
JD Rhodes wrote
“You open that door, it\\’s not going to be so easy to close it.”
It shouldn’t be closed.
December 17, 2009, 3:18 pmSebastian Meyer says:
There is a similar work, albeit fictional, by Nicolas Kent. He wrote the play “Called To Account. The Indictment Of Anthony Charles Lynton Blair For The Crime Of Aggression Against Iraq - A Hearing,” which quite cleverly spins an alternate history in which Blair and Co did not get away with lying to a country to get policy they wanted enacted pushed through.
There is also a radio drama versrion of the play, which aired on the BBC, which is quite good.
The question remains though: WHY aren’t these guys held to account? Are they, to paraphrase the excuse to bail out banks, “too big to fail?”
January 1, 2010, 3:59 pm