"Retroactive Laws Invoked to Protect Administration Officials from War Crimes Prosecution"

Retroactive laws... Is that possible? I didn't know that laws could take effect retroactively. Isn't that like losing the game, then changing the rules to alter the outcome into a win? Life doesn't work like that, and as far as I know, neither does the justice system.

Whether or not the Bush Administration is successful in seeking protection from war crime prosecution, we still have a job to do as citizens of the USA. We need to hold those guilty of crimes against the state, and crimes against humanity accountable for their actions.

Here's what PCR says.

Bush Turns His Terror War on the Homeland

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

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Benjamin Ferenccz, a chief prosecutor of Nazi war crimes at Nuremberg, recently said that President Bush should be tried as a war criminal side by side with Saddam Hussein for starting aggressive wars, Hussein for his 1990 invasion of Kuwait and Bush for his 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Under the Nuremberg standard, Bush is definitely a war criminal. The US Supreme Court also exposed Bush to war crime charges under both the US War Crimes Act of 1996 and the Geneva Conventions when the Court ruled in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld against the Bush administration's military tribunals and inhumane treatment of detainees.

President Bush and his Attorney General agree that under existing laws and treaties Bush is a war criminal together with many members of his government. To make his war crimes legal after the fact, Bush has instructed the Justice (sic) Department to draft changes to the War Crimes Act and to US treaty obligations under the Geneva Conventions.

One of Bush's changes would deny protection of the Geneva Conventions to anyone in any American court.

Bush's other change would protect from prosecution any US government official or military personnel guilty of violating Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. Article 3 prohibits "at any time and in any place whatsoever outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment." As civil libertarian Nat Hentoff observes, this change would also undo Senator John McCain's amendment against torture.

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link: http://www.counterpunch....