Lillibet, do you really think, based on your readings and analysis, these men will come to questioned by a world court?
Why do you think the Obama Administration has done nothing to ensure that these human rights violators - Mssrs Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al - see the inside a court building?
I think that the march to the Hague will happen one of two ways. Either the public in the US and UK will make it impossible to avoid going to the Hague, or another nation will force the issue.
Thus far, our own Justice Department, now filled with former defense lawyers, has shown that barring a case that has no possible, scintilla of evidence showing a not guilty, then nothing will be done. The current crop at Justice take no chances, and we've seen this time and again. Recently, in an unrelated stream of cases, Justice has given a pass to Goldman Sachs. Holder actually claimed there was no 'evidence' sufficient to commence a prosecution, and with time running out, filed nothing that would have stopped the clock. By the time the statute of limitations runs out, in the near future, Goldman Sachs and other similar banks/investment firms, will know their bad deeds are just fine with law enforcement.
For example, in matters criminal but not war crimes, we have an article by Matt Taibbi regarding Goldman Sachs:
In the notorious Hudson transaction, for instance, Goldman claimed, in writing, that it was fully "aligned" with the interests of its client, Morgan Stanley, because it owned a $6 million slice of the deal. What Goldman left out is that it had a $2 billion short position against the same deal.
If that isn’t fraud, Mr. Holder, just what exactly is fraud?
Still, it wasn’t surprising that Holder didn’t pursue criminal charges against Goldman. And that’s not just because Holder has repeatedly proven himself to be a spineless bureaucrat and obsequious political creature masquerading as a cop, and not just because rumors continue to circulate that the Obama administration – supposedly in the interests of staving off market panic – made a conscious decision sometime in early 2009 to give all of Wall Street a pass on pre-crisis offenses.
Goldman Non-Prosecution: AG Eric Holder Has No Balls. The reason for no one showing up at the Hague is the same reason that so much criminal activity has gone unpunished in this country.
Yet, the public could raise its own voice, and with enough shouting in the streets, ears would unplug and cases would be filed.
The problem with staffing a prosecutors office with defense lawyers is that defense lawyers think that if they can find the hole in a case, even a small one, that small hole will doom the entire case. This isn't true for two reasons.
First, not all defense lawyers will spot the hole. Plain and simple, not all lawyers are created equal in the brains department. And juries, even if they hear of the hole in the case,might not think it is of such weight that it forms reasonable doubt regarding all charges.
The other reason to not staff the prosecutors office with defense lawyers is that the defense bar is filled with wusses when it comes to prosecution. They are so afraid to lose, which risk is low because prosecutors win about 90 percent of the time at trial, they won't file a single case.
Such has been the last four years.
In England, the House of Commons is exquisitely sensitive to pressure from constituents. On that side of the ocean, the pressure can be brought to file a case.
Or, another nation could bring it to the Hague, which would mean neither the US or UK would have anything to do with making the case to prosecute.
When prosecutors forget they are almost always able to indict the ham sandwich, enforcement of laws becomes a joke. Failing to prosecute means laws can be flouted.
Finally, after Clinton was indicted, then impeached, for a private act that had no business being raised to the level of impeachment, the Republicans ensured that going forward, impeachment would be off the table for every president, at least until those living through the Clinton debacle were all long in the ground. They reduced impeachment to a political sideshow.
It's going to take leaders like Tutu to make leaders accountable for war crimes. There are no such leaders within the partisan US government, where party matters more than law or honor. I hold no illusions that our system will change, but I do hold hope that somewhere there is a leader willing to stand up to the political machine of the US. Failing that, there is no law that will function to keep heinous acts from becoming business as usual.
That is, more than the situation today.
