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.
by
Whitney Webb
For
centuries, the US has committed war crimes around the world and
rarely suffered negative consequences as a result. Some of the US
most notable war criminals, such as Henry Kissinger and Barack Obama,
have received numerous accolades, including the Nobel Peace Prize,
despite their dark legacies. However, 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 real reason, however, was that Hussein had stopped selling Iraqi
oil in dollars by switching to euros, threatening US hegemony in the
region.
“We are
pleased that the Ninth Circuit will hear argument. To my knowledge,
this is the first time a court will entertain arguments that the Iraq
War was illegal under domestic and international law,” Saleh’s
attorney D. Inder Comar said. “This is also the first time since
World War II that a court is being asked to scrutinize whether the
war itself was an illegal act of aggression — a special war crime
that was defined at the Nuremberg Trials in 1946.”
The oral
arguments, set to begin tomorrow, will be live streamed and recorded
on the Ninth Circuit’s YouTube channel – that is, unless last
minute intervention prevents the oral arguments from taking place.
The Court will begin hearing arguments at 9 AM PST, though the Saleh
v. Bush case is last on the docket and will likely take place later
in the morning. If the case advances, it could create a legal
precedent that would allow other US and foreign presidents and
officials to be charged for their crimes, such as former UK Prime
Minister Tony Blair who also had a hand in the war crimes committed
in Iraq. Though justice demands that George W. Bush be brought to
trial for war crimes, one cannot help, but hold lingering doubts that
he will ever see the inside of a court room as, time and again, the
“Deep State” almost always intervenes to protect its own.
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