It's been a very long time coming, and President Obama's Justice Department tried its best to prevent this day from happening, but an American court will finally get to decide on whether the invasion of Iraq was a war crime.



things may soon change as former President George W. Bush may be forced to stand trial over the war crimes his administration committed in Iraq. The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in California recently confirmed that Judges Susan Graber and Andrew Hurwitz will hear oral arguments in the case of Saleh v. Bush, beginning tomorrow December 12th. Other members of Bush’s administration, such as Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz, are also named as defendants in the case. The case was brought against Bush by Sundus Shaker Saleh, an Iraqi woman who charges Bush and high-ranking officials in his administration with breaking international and US law by planning and executing the invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq. Saleh maintains that Bush and his colleagues are guilty of the “crime of aggression,” which was defined as the “supreme international crime” at the 1946 Nuremberg Trials. In the case, Saleh is appealing the immunity provided to Bush and the other defendants by California’s Ninth Circuit court in 2014, after they were urged to do so by President Obama and the Department of Justice. Saleh previously tried to take Bush to court in 2013 until the Department of Justice intervened. The California Court dismissed her case in December 2014, citing the Westfall Act of 1988, which immunizes former federal officials in civil lawsuits if a court determines that the official was acting within the legitimate scope of his or her position. However, this time around, Saleh argues that the invasion of Iraq fell outside the legitimate scope of employment of former President Bush and his administration. Plenty of evidence since the invasion took place has shown that the administration knowingly lied to justify and execute the war by falsely claiming Iraq under Saddam Hussein possessed “weapons of mass destruction.”

The hearing could happen any day now.

That isn't the Bush Administration's only war crimes problem.



US armed forces and the CIA may have committed war crimes by torturing detainees in Afghanistan, the international criminal court’s chief prosecutor has said in a report, raising the possibility that American citizens could be indicted even though Washington has not joined the global court.

“Members of US armed forces appear to have subjected at least 61 detained persons to torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity on the territory of Afghanistan between 1 May 2003 and 31 December 2014,” according to the report issued by prosecutor Fatou Bensouda’s office on Monday.

The report adds that CIA operatives may have subjected at least 27 detainees in Afghanistan, Poland, Romania and Lithuania to “torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity and/or rape” between December 2002 and March 2008.

Most of the alleged abuse happened in 2003-04, the report says.

Prosecutors said they would decide “imminently” whether to seek authorisation to open a full-scale investigation in Afghanistan that could lead to war crimes charges.

So to sum this up, the Bush Administration (and/or people acting on their orders) could theoretically be tried and convicted for war crimes in two different courts, for two different cases.

Will it happen? Unlikely, but there is hope.

After all, it's already happened in 2014.



It’s official; George W Bush is a war criminal.

In what is the first ever conviction of its kind anywhere in the world, the former US President and seven key members of his administration were yesterday (Fri) found guilty of war crimes.

Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and their legal advisers Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, William Haynes, Jay Bybee and John Yoo were tried in absentia in Malaysia.

The trial held in Kuala Lumpur heard harrowing witness accounts from victims of torture who suffered at the hands of US soldiers and contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan.

They included testimony from British man Moazzam Begg, an ex-Guantanamo detainee and Iraqi woman Jameelah Abbas Hameedi who was tortured in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.

At the end of the week-long hearing, the five-panel tribunal unanimously delivered guilty verdicts against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and their key legal advisors who were all convicted as war criminals for torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment.

Now before Democrats start feeling morally superior, consider this.

