ProsecuteBushCheney.org – 2009-03-13 09:51:06
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/taxonomy/term/15
WHAT YOU CAN DO:
Prosecutions:
Federal:
• Add your organization or individual name to joint statement requesting a Special Prosecutor. Ask organizations you’re in touch with to sign on. The demand for prosecution has been supported by many members of Congress.
• Sign a petition asking Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate and prosecute any and all government officials who have participated in war crimes. Sign now.
• Collect signatures in the real world by printing out this PDF. Please enter the data you collect on the petition online and/or mail the completed (or partially completed) forms to JDS, 4407 Garrison Street NW, Washington DC 20016.
• Phone and Email and fax the Office of the Attorney General at 202-514-2001 AskDOJ@usdoj.gov fax:202-307-6777 to request a Special Prosecutor to investigate and prosecute any and all government officials who have participated in war crimes.
In June 2008, 56 Democratic Congress members, led by Congressman John Conyers, wrote to Attorney General Mukasey asking for a Special Prosecutor. Conyers and Congressman Jerrold Nadler wrote to Mukasey again in December 2008. Please ask them to re-send these letters to the new Attorney General, Eric Holder. Conyers 202-225-5126, Nadler 202-225-5635. Nadler says he’s drafting a new letter.
Congressman John Conyers has proposed extending statutes of limitations on Bush-Cheney crimes. Help make this happen.
• Contact the State Department’s Office of War Crimes Issues and urge them to ask Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate and prosecute any and all government officials who have participated in war crimes.
Tips and Info. on Contacting Congress.
State and Local:
Bush and others can be indicted at the state or district level for murder. Please take these steps.
International:
The International Criminal Court can also indict. Please request it.
Foreign:
Our friends at the Center for Constitutional Rights are coordinating with attorneys pursuing prosecutions in other countries.
Impeachment:
While Bush and Cheney can and should still be impeached, a more likely success would be the impeachment of Jay Bybee. Please ask your Congress member to pursue it: 202-224-3121.
Production of Information:
Overwhelming evidence of probable cause for prosecutions is in the public realm, in some cases including public confessions and other evidence of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. No one should be denied a fair trial, but no trials should be delayed which are already compelled by the evidence. A prosecutorial investigation would be the most effective tool for producing additional evidence.
The facts on Bush and Cheney are well known, and those on their chief co-conspirators somewhat less so. Making these facts better known and producing more of them is a worthwhile task, secondary to pursuing prosecutions.
• Purchase The 35 Articles of Impeachment and the Case for Prosecution.
• Ask the Justice Department not to coverup torture With “state secrets” claims, as it is doing.
Phone and Email the Office of Attorney General Eric Holder at 202-514-2001 AskDOJ@usdoj.gov
In the House and Senate, Congress members Nadler, Petri, Conyers, Delahunt, and Lofgren, and Senators Leahy, Specter, Feingold, McCaskill, Whitehouse and Kennedy have just reintroduced the State Secrets Protection Act. Ask your Congress member and senators to sign on and to encourage the Attorney General to appoint a Special Prosecutor: 202-224-3121.
Senator Russ Feingold has requested a classified briefing to explain the “state secrets” claim. Encourage him to pursue the matter and to encourage the Attorney General to appoint a Special Prosecutor: Feingold, (202) 224-5323.
President Obama has promised transparency, but has not released even these incriminating memos that we already know about. Ask him to do so: 202-456-1111.
• Ask Congress to reissue the subpoenas that were refused during the 110th Congress, and to enforce them through inherent contempt. Ask John Conyers to lock up Karl Rove.
Senators Sheldon Whitehouse, Russ Feingold, Patrick Leahy, and Jack Reed, as well as Congressmen John Conyers and Jerrold Nadler, have made statements in 2009 in support of some form of accountability, and Conyers has explicitly advocated for a Special Prosecutor as well as introducing a bill to create an investigative commission.
Such a commission might be counterproductive, as argued by Jonathan Turley, Peter Dyer, David Swanson, Bob Fertik, and Martin Garbus. The Justice Department itself has argued for “state secrets” blocks on prosecutions on the grounds that commissions can substitute for enforcing laws. The American public prefers criminal prosecutions to commission investigations.
More on Conyers’ proposal for a commission and the lengthy report he released when making the proposal go here. If you think your Congress member should sign on to H.R. 104, give them a call: 202-224-3121.
Indirect Pressure:
States and localities and political parties and organizations can pass resolutions. Here’s how.
Make a citizen’s arrest of a war criminal.
Taking Them to Court:
Organizations and individuals can file other types of law suits. Please do so.
Mandamus: You can ask a judge to order a prosecution. It’s been tried in Minnesota with this writ, yielding this refusal.
• Filing Complaints With State Licensing Authorities:
Many of the people described on the citizen’s arrest page are lawyers or psychologists, and we should file complaints with licensing agencies.
Restoring the Structure of the Rule of Law:
Congresswoman Barbara Lee has introduced a resolution rejecting as unconstitutional the treaty that President George W. Bush made without consulting Congress to establish three more years of war in Iraq. Ask your Congress member to sign onto H.Res. 72: 202-224-3121.
Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin has announced her intention to reintroduce a resolution urging the reversal of a number of Bush-Cheney abuses of power. We should be prepared to support this, and we should ask members to sign on as original cosponsors: 202-224-3121. Likely cosponsors are members of the progressive caucus.
We also need to:
• Demand that President Obama reverse all of President Bush’s signing statements that altered laws, and demand that Congress ban the use of funds for any activities created in violation of the law by presidential signing statements.
• Amend the Constitution to clearly ban the use of presidential pardons to pardon crimes authorized by the president.
• Amend the War Powers Act and the Constition to include the requirement that Congressional authorizations of war include time limits of no more than 12 months, after which Congress must vote again to extend the war or end it.
• Make war profiteering by any war maker a major felony. This would apply to any employee of the federal government or anyone who had within the past decade been an employee of the federal government.
• Legislate a requirement that, in any war, the military aged children and grandchildren of the president, the vice president, all cabinet officials, and all Congress members serve on the front lines in the most dangerous combat positions — no exceptions, no exemptions.
• Prohibit the use of mercenaries or any armed contractors, as well as the use of any military force on American soil except when directly engaged in defensive war against a foreign nation.
• Repeal the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, the Military Commissions Act of 2006, the 2008 FISA “modernization” act, the original Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and the PATRIOT Act.
• Ban secret budgets, secret laws, and secret agencies.
• Change the Senate rules to eliminate the filibuster.
• Amend the Constitution to eliminate the Senate.
• End all rendition.
• Amend the Constitution to make the ban on ex-post-facto laws include any laws that would retroactively grant immunity for crimes.
• Amend the Constitution to bar the vice president from exercising executive power.
• Amend the Constitution to clarify the Congressional power of inherent contempt.
• Amend the Constitution to include the right to vote and to have one’s vote counted publicly at the polling place.
• Give Washington, D.C., voting representation in Congress.
• Amend the Constitution to ban private financing of campaigns, create public financing, and provide free air time to candidates.
• Sign and ratify the Rome treaty to join the International Criminal Court.
Spreading the Word:
Be a media activist. Be the media and submit your reports, videos, photos here.
• Join After Downing Street.
• Join the Progressive Democrats of America Issue Organizing Team on Accountability.
• Join the National Accountability Network.
• Join the United for Peace and Justice Working Group on Accountability and Prosecution.
• Join the Peace Team.
• Join High Road for Human Rights.
The Robert Jackson Steering Committee was formed at a September 2008 conference in Andover, Mass. Watch video.
Read the news below at http://prosecutebushcheney.org
For People Unclear on the Concept:
The crimes and abuses:
ignoring and failing to respond to threats of terrorism,
misspending funds,
misleading Congress,
creating false propaganda,
invading Iraq in violation of Constitution, UN Charter, and HJRes 114,
establishing bases and seeking to control resources,
allowing energy companies to secretly make policy,
providing immunity to mercenaries,
wasting funds on war profiteers,
detention without charge,
rendition,
torture,
murder,
imprisoning children,
creating secret laws,
using military domestically,
spying without warrant,
rewriting laws with signing statements,
undermining preparedness for natural disasters and
destroying economy through military waste,
politicizing the Justice Department,
ordering obstruction of justice,
blocking prosecutions with bogus claims of “state secrets,”
et cetera, et cetera.
