Indicting Bush

Soon heading out of office, Bush and his advisers should be tried as the war criminals they are, writes Ayman El-Amir*

18-24 Dec, 2008

As President George W Bush prepares to conclude eight years of controversial presidency and leave the White House, a host of political ghosts will follow him and his key lieutenants for the misdeeds they committed against the American people and other nations. It has now become clear that the invasion and destruction of Iraq was motivated by greed and political ambition; the war in Afghanistan turned from revenge to a military misadventure. President Bush and his top political aides have lied to the American people and the world, violated every precept of international law, wrecked two nations and cost the American people heavy losses in dollars and bodies. It is now the time of reckoning and they should be prosecuted for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The question now is not if but by whom should they be taken to account.

In a recent interview with the ABC television network, President Bush professed that "the biggest regret" of his presidency had been "the intelligence failure in Iraq". But he declined to say whether he would have ordered the invasion of Iraq if he had known that there were no weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). However, a report by the US Senate Intelligence Committee in June concluded that both President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney misrepresented intelligence reports assessing Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction, of its pursuit of a nuclear weapons programme and of links with terrorist organisations, including Al-Qaeda. The report showed clearly that intelligence assessments did not support his serious claims about Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programmes. Nor did it support Cheney's claim on 29 August 2002 that, "there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt that he is amassing them to use them against our friends, our allies and against us." Those were the WMDs that were never found and that are now presumed destroyed years before the 2003 invasion.

The pegs on which Bush, Cheney and former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld hung their justification for the invasion were proved to be a premeditated tweaking of intelligence coming from discredited sources. A CNN report revealed that the principal source of information about Iraq's WMDs was a certain Rafid Ahmed Elwan Al-Janabi, codenamed "Curveball" by the CIA, an Iraqi refugee who had once worked for the Iraqi weapons industry but left in 1999 for Germany where he now lives undercover. He was the source President Bush cited in his 2003 State of the Union address as part of the build-up for the invasion. Al-Janabi, however, denied that he provided US intelligence with any information about Iraq's possession of WMDs, and suggested that the reports may have been transmitted by German intelligence. It would seem that instead of trying to verify intelligence reports, President Bush and his associates pushed doubtful information beyond the limits of credibility to force a case for war. Prior to the invasion, UN Observation and Verification Mission in Iraq (UNMOVIQ) and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors failed to turn over any evidence of WMDs and informed the Security Council accordingly. And the council denied the Bush administration's warriors legitimacy to carry out the invasion. As a New York Times editorial noted at the time the summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee report was released, "the report shows clearly that President Bush should have known that important claims he made about Iraq did not conform to intelligence reports. In other cases, he could have learned the truth if he had asked better questions or encouraged more honest answers."

President Bush and his war lieutenants who have directly or indirectly planned and executed the invasion of Iraq have intentionally misled the American people, committed men and money to an illegal war and unnecessarily put the lives of tens of thousands of Americans in harm's way, resulting in more than 4,000 deaths and 35,000 injuries. These and other offences fall within the purview of the American justice system and the judgement of the American public. In August 1974, former president Richard Nixon resigned under threat of impeachment by Congress because he was proven to have lied to the American people about the extent of his role in the Watergate scandal. In the case of President Bush, the analogy is rather incompatible because he is leaving office in one month's time anyway and, more importantly, because Congress was accomplice to the crime of the invasion of Iraq since it disingenuously approved the war. After all, George W Bush was exercising his presidential prerogative as commander-in- chief by launching a military operation to preempt a perceived threat to the nation with the support of a predominantly Republican Congress. On the other hand, civil suits against the Bush clique may take years of litigation and could go all the way to the US Supreme Court. But for a nation that has just surprised the world by electing its first black president, nothing is beyond the realm of possibility. It is unlikely that the incoming president, Barack Obama, could issue blanket immunity from prosecution covering all actions of President Bush during his tenure. Similar action by former president Gerald Ford in the case of former president Richard Nixon went down as a black mark on Ford's legacy.

From the international perspective, President Bush is no less indictable for war crimes or crimes against humanity than President Omar Al-Bashir of Sudan, if only International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo could muster enough nerve to launch an investigation. In the case of the Sudanese president, Moreno-Ocampo argued that he had the powers to initiate an indictment procedure on his own without any formal complaint by any signatory member of the ICC. When it comes to the case of President Bush and his administration officials, Moreno-Ocampo will find plenty of grounds for indictment, not least of which the destruction of a country and the death of an estimated 350,000- 1,200,000 of its population and the displacement of approximately five million more. The fabrication of evidence to justify the invasion of Iraq on the grounds of ridding it of WMDs was later adjusted to mean ridding Iraq of the rule of Saddam. US human rights' abuses in Abu Ghraib prison and Guantanamo Bay detention camp, the employment of a mercenary army, Blackwater USA, the destruction and division of Iraq are only part of a long list of charges that Moreno-Ocampo could deem prosecutable war crimes and crimes against humanity, should he launch an investigation.

It is improbable that the Obama administration would cooperate with the ICC for the prosecution of George W Bush or his war lieutenants. The US has rejected the jurisdiction of the ICC as far its own officials and nationals are concerned. To ensure their impunity from prosecution for whatever offence they may commit on foreign soil, the Bush administration coerced 100 countries into signing so-called Bilateral Immunity Agreements (BIA) by which the signatory country is enjoined from handing over US nationals to the ICC for whatever crime they may have committed anywhere in the world and were indicted by the ICC. Coercion included cutting off military aid and economic assistance programmes to more than 26 countries and the threat of doing the same to other countries that refused to sign BIAs. Of course the US could indict and try its own nationals for offences they could commit on foreign soil, but the US justice system, particularly military justice, has proved to be extremely lenient when dealing with crimes committed in Iraq, and disregardful to those committed in Afghanistan. So, the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld war triumvirate will never be hauled before the ICC, but investigation and indictment would go a long way towards confirming international condemnation of the first crime against humanity committed in the 21st century. The matter is then left to the US justice system and those who believe in it. As for the Bush legacy and his achievements in Iraq, the American public should read more deeply into the sentiment of the Iraqi public as demonstrated by the shoe that flew into Bush's face when he made his recent farewell call on Baghdad.

* The writer is former Al-Ahram correspondent in Washington, DC. He also served as director of United Nations Radio and Television in New York.

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