Vermont Candidate Vows to Prosecute Bush
by Jeff Davis
A recent news article reports “Lots of political candidates make campaign promises. But not like Charlotte Dennett’s. Dennett, 61, the Progressive Party’s candidate for Vermont Attorney General, said Thursday she will prosecute President Bush for murder if she’s elected Nov. 4. Dennett, an attorney and investigative journalist, says Bush must be held accountable for the deaths of thousands of people in Iraq — U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians. She believes the Vermont attorney general would have jurisdiction to do so.”
Technically any district attorney could do so, by empaneling a grand jury and seeking an indictment. The most specific law prohibiting many of the most outrageous crimes, Bush and Cheney are responsible for, is the 1996 War Crimes Act. This act applies to politicians, soldiers and anyone else whose actions cause the torture of a prisoner detained by US forces.
One source notes “The War Crimes Act of 1996 was passed with overwhelming majorities by the United States Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton. The law defines a war crime to include a ‘grave breach of the Geneva Conventions’, specifically noting that ‘grave breach’ should have the meaning defined in any convention (related to the laws of war) to which the U.S. is a party. The definition of ‘grave breach’ in some of the Geneva Conventions have text that extend additional protections, but all the Conventions share the following text in common: ‘… committed against persons or property protected by the Convention: willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments, willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health.’ The law applies if either the victim or the perpetrator is a national of the United States or a member of the U.S. armed forces. The penalty may be life imprisonment or death. The death penalty is only invoked if the conduct resulted in the death of one or more victims.” (more…)