Prosecute the Bush Administration - Ideas for Change in America

What do you think is the most effective way to turn this idea into real policy? Add your suggestions here for how you think we should run an advocacy campaign to advance the idea – including the overall strategy, messaging, targets, and tactics.

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Write your local news media organizations, both television and radio, encouraging them to do indepth hard hitting investigative reporting. Also write Op Ed letters to local newspapers and magazines that cover politics.

Suggested by Sheila Gray on 03/20/2009 @ 03:25PM PT
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From America magazine:

Truth and Prosecution
The editors | MARCH 23, 2009

The Department of Justice has begun to release documents disclosing the Bush administration's legal justification for setting aside existing laws in the prosecution of the so-called war on terror. The revelations have included heretofore unknown claims for the discretion of the executive branch to violate the rights of Americans at home, including the military's search, detention and trial of civilians without appeal in the United States. As Scott Horton wrote in the December 2008 issue of Harper's, "No prior administration had been so systematically or brazenly lawless." In the meantime, both House and Senate are moving ahead on investigations of authoritarian rulings and policies of the Bush years. The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, has begun an effort to establish a truth commission to examine the treatment of alleged terrorists; and the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Congressman John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, has already issued a report on abuses that will serve as a basis for further probes. He has already succeeded in compelling the former Bush aides Karl Rove and Harriet E. Miers by subpoena to testify on the role politics may have played in the firing and hiring of U.S. attorneys.

President Obama has been wise to keep his distance from this necessary process of political cleansing, allowing longtime civil servants to release the records and make recommendations for prosecution. While we are not recovering from protracted civil conflict, as are many countries that have conducted truth commissions, there is a public interest in refraining from inflaming partisan tensions, especially when the great recession demands bipartisan unity in restoring economic well-being to the country. For the long term, however, there is also an undeniable public interest in holding accountable officials who would unilaterally abrogate civil liberties without due process and in setting obstacles to tyranny of the executive in any future crisis. Only on this course will we remain, as John Adams said, "a nation of laws and not of men."

The political class as a whole, and Congress in particular, will be negligent if they fail to bring to light crimes against liberty. There is no rush to judgment. Pundits point out that no one who is president will diminish the potential authority of the presidency, even though in another position he or she might regard a claim or practice abusive. Congress, for its part, is not enthusiastic. There is a proper fear of provoking rancorous partisanship at a time when it can do the greatest harm to national economic recovery. In addition, there may be a large measure of reluctance to admit the shameful negligence by Congress through lack of oversight, a supine relationship to the executive branch and the casual passage of ill-considered legislation like the Patriot Act.

But Congress should not continue to exempt itself from guaranteeing and defending the rights of Americans. Re-examination and judgment of policies and practices that seem to amount to internal subversion must be political as well as judicial. It is not enough for principled civil servants to recommend prosecution for the most egregious offenders. Political leaders must take responsibility for bringing the truth to light, for correcting past errors and for establishing accountability on the part of those who either violated the rights of American citizens or conspired to do so, as well as for those who chose to abuse the human rights of innocent foreign nationals.

In conducting its inquiries, Congress faces difficult choices over whether to grant immunity from prosecution to suspected wrongdoers. Such grants will entail sacrificing some measure of justice and deterrence for the sake of full disclosure. In the interest of civic peace, prosecutions should be few, restricted to key policymakers and their primary legal advisers. Immunity may be given to others who can shed light on the dark secrets of the last eight years but who did not bear primary responsibility for the alleged offenses. The Abu Ghraib trials, in which the foot soldiers were punished while the commanders and policymakers escaped punishment, are the wrong model. Prosecutions, disbarment and other mechanisms of accountability are needed at the top levels of government decision making. Such accountability is needed to provide a deterrent to legalized coups in the future.

Finally, responsibility for the breach of Americans' rights falls more widely, with the Congress, the media and the public. As we have done before in these pages, we recommend that at an appropriate time a national commission be formed to assess broader responsibility for the Bush era offenses. "If the people wish to retain sovereignty," as Mr. Horton wrote, "they must also reclaim responsibility for actions committed in their name."

Suggested by John Farley on 03/18/2009 @ 12:54PM PT
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Call your Senators and congressmen and women. Talk to friends and family and get them involved, keep after it. Do not let up. We must all work together to get his done for the good of our country Cindy Neese

Suggested by cindy neese on 03/18/2009 @ 10:31AM PT
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Call your Senators and congressmen and women. Talk to friends and family and get them involved, keep after it. Do not let up. We must all work together to get his done for the good of our country Cindy Neese

Suggested by cindy neese on 03/18/2009 @ 10:30AM PT
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File a complaint with the International Court in The Hague.

Suggested by Perry Levin on 03/17/2009 @ 10:51PM PT
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Please write letters to your local prosecuting attorney and state Attorney General, assuring them they have political backing to issue a public statement that if Bush or Cheney come into their jurisdiction an arrest warrant will be issued for prosecution of war crimes. Refer them to this book (http://www.prosecutionofbush.com/).

Suggested by Vernon Huffman on 03/17/2009 @ 10:08PM PT
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I would think putting pressure on congress and calling for a special prosecutor, not a "truth committee", I seems we become more involved in how other countries should run themselves and can't even hold ours accountable for basically killing american young men and women and don't even mention the "collateral damage." Gotta love the word games?

Suggested by Mary Powell on 03/09/2009 @ 04:21PM PT
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Coordinate all the orgs better so that we do not receive a bunch of petitions we have already signed. It is a waste of time (esp on dial-up!!!!) to go fill out a petition form only to find you have already signed it somewhere else. This is esp infuriating when one has spent some time and thought to composing a comment, only to have it rejected ..."Oops!! You already signed this petition!" ... Oops?!? ... who's oops is that?

It also takes time to sign up for a password to so many dif orgs (or find your password if you are already signed up but are not organized enough to have all of your passwords handy at any unexpected moment's notice) ...

But when one signs up, then there is an overwhelming amount of daily email that clogs up inboxes and it is impossible to accomplish anything until one has spent time clearing it out. The more times a petition is sent to the same person, the less effective it becomes and it actually impedes constructive actions in general.

Also, if a person has signed a petition already, please do not keep sending the same petition day after day. Surely there is an easy way to program the system so that once a person signs, the system recognizes this and defaults to a new petition to send [but allows access to the old petition for the purposes of further study and spreading the word].

Also, it seems like all the separate petitions from each org are basically the same. It seems like a waste of time, energy and resources to have so many different petitions for the same thing. I sign them all (so far none of them have seemed objectionable or unPC on any level) and post as many as possible so that more people see them. But these clog up the works too, and perhaps confuse people.

I do not understand why more people choose one or another over all the others ... there are so many. I don't understand why some people do not choose to sign all of them (not including people who do not have enough time to sign all). I think these kinds of things bear researching a bit for making more efficient and effective petitions and campaign practices.
I think time is one of the key considerations here. I also think the picture is important tho I do not know exactly what is more popular ... what draws more people.

Of course there are always a series of targets where the basic petition is edited to suit the individuals. This needs to be made more clear. I have noticed that far more people sign petitions to Obama than to their Congressmen. Obama can't save us without the help of Congress.

Time periods also need to be more clear so that we do not waste time going to a site where the peitition has already expired.

To my view, the underlying problem is corporate personhood ... and the Bush-Cheney admin is like a bunch of toxic boils that need popping. These boils are only a symptom of the molto constipato m.o. of the profit motive of these so-called "legal persons" aka Corporations which are not people. It is very important to these personhoods to keep a lid on their roles. I believe this is important to be aware of, understand and take into consideration in any campaign to prosecute their flunkies.

To ensure that this never happens again, I think more than prosecution of Bush-Cheney is necessary, otherwise it is like no more than a meagre band-aid on a life-threatening wounding of Democracy and Freedom.

Suggested by Ani L. Schwartz on 03/07/2009 @ 09:47PM PT
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I heard on the news today that an office within the Justice Dept. has issued a report about the unethical legal opinions created by some of the lawyers who advised Bush about some issues - like torture, etc.

The report is apparently going to be send to Bar Associations to review whether the attorneys who wrote the legal opinions should be debarred. Interesting news. Hope it is true.

I. Casillas

Suggested by Ida Casillas on 02/16/2009 @ 11:01PM PT
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The former members of the Bush administration should be investigated, prosecuted and, if found guilty, punished in some way. There are so many areas in which those people subverted our Constitution and the rule of law. Mr. Bush and the neocons espoused their ideal of spreading democracy throughout the Arab world. We would have been so much better served if they had been concerned about democracy here at home.

Americans can not support a two tiered justice system so the trail of evidence must be followed wherever it leads. The high and low offenders must both be prosecuted although their sentences need not be equal. (We didn't accept the "just following orders" defense at the Nuremberg trials so we shouldn't be espousing it now.) Patrick Fitzgerald may not be the best prosecutor for this job. Perhaps David Inglesias' Republican credentials would make him better suited for the job as he could not be accused of having a Democratic bias.

Suggested by Ann O'Connell on 01/30/2009 @ 10:13PM PT
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