Is "The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder" About to Become a Reality?
BY RUSS WELLEN
10.23.2008 | POLITICS
Bob Woodward in a Slate roundtable on the new film, W.:
I think one of the best scenes in the movie is when Bush makes it clear to Cheney that he's the boss -- that Cheney can push and argue and have his say, but Bush is the boss. … President Bush made these decisions on his own. The issue for history in the coming years and decades will be further examination of how Bush exercised that free will.
More citizens from Vermont, per capita, have been killed in Iraq than from any other state in the union. If its citizens care to hold the primary perpetrator of this injustice responsible, they need only elect the progressive party candidate for state attorney general this year. It turns out that Charlotte Dennett has pledged that, if elected, she will appoint Vincent Bugliosi, author of The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, as special prosecutor.
Bugliosi has been accompanying Ms. Dennett on appearances before newspaper editorial boards and in radio interviews. In a press release issued by the campaign, he said, "I have never received such a passionate response as I have to this book. … Most Americans are deeply offended that George W. Bush has not been held accountable for his many crimes. . . the most egregious of which is the murder of 4,000 American soldiers and over 100,000 Iraqi civilians. My book lays out the framework of how he can be brought to justice in any state in this country."
When her opponent, sitting attorney general William Sorrell, scoffed at the notion, Ms. Dennett, doubtful that he read Bugliosi's book even though it had been forwarded to him, spelled things out:
With respect to the separate crime of murder, the general rule is that a state only has jurisdiction over crimes physically committed in that state. However. … where the crime occurs outside the territorial jurisdiction of the state, but the crime has a harmful effect on the people of the state, then that state has jurisdiction. Clearly the war in Iraq has had a harmful effect on Vermont. … Moreover, Vermont has shared in the prodigious [financial] cost of the war to this nation. … Finally, Vermonters, as Americans, have endured the loss of prestige in the eyes of the world community..
In light of that loss of life, Vermont native President Calvin Coolidge's words -- engraved on the Vermont statehouse wall -- as quoted by Ms. Dennett, are especially poignant:
If the spirit of liberty should vanish in other parts of the Union and support of our institutions should languish, it could all be replenished from the generous store held by the people of this brave little state of Vermont.
If you care to aid the campaign to hold Bush accountable, David Swanson of After Downing Street outlines ways we can help.
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| Russ Wellen is an editor at Freezerbox who specializes in foreign affairs and nuclear deproliferation. |
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