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03/17/2008 @ 11:43 pm

Ralph Nader: George Bush a 'recidivist

war criminal'
Filed by Mike Sheehan

Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader,

reflecting on the quick exit of former New York governor
Eliot Spitzer, wonders aloud in a new essay how
President George W. Bush has escaped the same fate
despite Bush's role in considerably more damning and
damaging crimes.
In the piece entitled "Country of Laws," Nader blasts
Bush for fictionalizing his Iraq war actions and for saying
that he'll leave office with no regrets. While Spitzer
resigned within days of his admission to indiscretions,
"Bush remains," writes Nader, "disgracing his office for
longtime repeated violations of the Constitution, federal
laws and international treaties to which the U.S. is a
solemn signatory."
Nader contrasts Spitzer's legal and personal transgressions, and the price the now
ex-governor is rapidly paying for them, with Bush, who "violated federal laws against
torture, against spying on Americans without judicial approval, against due process of
law and habeas corpus in arresting Americans without charges, imprisoning them
and limited their access to attorneys." He adds that Bush has "committed a massive
war of aggression, under false pretenses, violating again and again treaties such as
the Geneva Conventions, the UN Charter, federal statutes and the Constitution."
Despite this, and the human, financial and infrastructural cost of the war, Bush is, as
Nader writes, "effectively immune from federal criminal and civil laws because no
American has standing to sue him and the Attorney General, who does, is his
handpicked cabinet member.
"Moreover," continues Nader, "the courts have consistently refused to take cases
involving the conduct of foreign and military policy by the president and the Vice
President regardless of the seriousness of the violation."
Nader says that judges readily and repeatedly dismiss such cases as "political" and
say Congress is the way to pursue grievances, specifically via its authority to
impeach. Yet only Rep. Kucinich (D-OH) has publicly called for impeachment, Nader
notes. (Nader curiously fails to acknowledge that in December 2006, now-former Rep.
Cynthia McKinney--a rival 2008 White House candidate running on the Green Party
ticket--introduced articles of impeachment against President Bush as one of her final
legislative acts before leaving Congress.)
Meanwhile, rues Nader, "the American people have no authority to challenge [Bush's]
governmental crimes, which are committed in their name, and are rendered
defenseless except for elections, which the two Party duopoly has rigged,
commercialized, and trivialized. Even in this electoral arena, a collective vote of
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ouster of the incumbents does not bring public officials to justice, just to another
position usually in the high paying corporate world."
Nader says that Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney will leave office as "fugitives
from justice without any sheriffs, prosecutors or courts willing to uphold the rule of
law."
What lessons are to be learned from the differential treatment of Spitzer, asks Nader,
and Bush, "a president who behaves like King George III did in 1776 and commits the
exact kinds of multiple violations that Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and other
founders of our Republic envisioned for invoking the impeachment provision of their
carefully crafted checks and balances in the Constitution?" Nader mockingly says
that Bush and Cheney only need to stay out of a few towns in Vermont and avoid
shoe-tapping in airport men's rooms.
Concludes Nader, "We certainly can do better as a country of laws, not men."
The complete post by Nader can be seen at his official website.