War Criminal  
Heinous, hideous idiot.

The charge that the U.S. attack on Iraq was a war crime was raised even before the war began. More than 1,000 law professors and U.S. legal institutions organized in opposition to the U.S. war crime of launching an "aggressive war in violation of the UN Charter The Preamble of which begins: "We the people of the United Nations, determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind..." " against Iraq. Violation of international law was also a central theme in worldwide demonstrations against the war. The attack on the illegality of the war has been revived by the leak of the Downing Street memo; 130 members of Congress joined Rep. John Conyers in demanding that the Bush administration come clean about the invasion-supported by a half million citizen signatures gathered in barely a week. "Scootergate" is fundamentally about the cover-up of White House lies justifying the war.

Illegal detention and torture are also war crimes. Starting with the exposure of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, cascading revelations have established that these cases exemplify a pattern of abuse authorized at the highest levels of government. Human rights groups like the Center for Constitutional Rights, the American Civil Liberties Union, and Human Rights First sued in U.S. and foreign courts against Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and others for breaching the U.S. Constitution and the Geneva Conventions. The Senate's 90-9 vote to restore the military's traditional prohibition against torture and inhumane treatment of prisoners-prompting the Bush administration to threaten a veto-sets the stage for a major confrontation over adherence to both the Geneva Conventions and the U.S. Constitution.

Despite massive cover-ups, the evidence is emerging: the Bush administration planned an illegal war of aggression against Iraq, conned the American people and their representatives into supporting it, conducted an illegal occupation marked by massive violation of Iraqi human rights, and justified and promoted systematic torture. Now the White House seeks opportunities for further criminal attacks against Iran, Syria, and other countries around the world, issuing threats to use death squads and nuclear weapons at will. These acts violate American law, international law, and the basic values of the American people. They are crimes against peace and crimes against humanity. They are outlawed by the Geneva Conventions, the UN Charter, and treaties against torture and other human rights abuses. They are war crimes, and those who ordered and condoned them are war criminals.