You look to the future and see eventual arrests of those you advise. One recommendation is obvious:

• deliver a false flag attack greater than 9/11,
• plant evidence to blame Iran and domestic terrorist “leaders” (who are also the most effective at exposing the 1%’s crimes),
• implement NDAA 2012 to “disappear” domestic threats to the 1%’s control, now and ongoingly as needed,
• initiate war on Iran.

Because the G-5 nations are all involved in support of War Crimes and looting (US, UK, France, Germany, Italy), a false flag attack killing G-5 members at the NATO Summit in Chicago May 20, 21 is the preferred target in order to propagandize “outrage” and greater dictatorial control in all those nations. If any of the G-5 nations wanted to expose the War Crimes, they would have simply stated war law makes it illegal for a nation to use armed attacks unless attacked first by another nation’s government. Because these nations do not defend war law, we know they have political agendas consistent with war-murders.

I’ve written about the likely plans of US criminal 1% “leaders” to use a false flag attack to initiate war on Iran (as have many others), and independent writers are now warning of a false flag attack at the Chicago NATO Summit (for example, here). These blogs/articles are widely re-posted, as the links show.

The endgame is to either arrest the 1% criminals or to allow their further “leadership” to remove opposition to their policies that annually kill in the millions, harm billions, and loot trillions of the 99%’s wealth.

If this was a test to determine your future, and the future you receive reflects the quality of your choice, are you ready for your choice to be evaluated?

Americans can direct their heroism here:

Because of the tremendous sacrifices of all our families through two world wars, the US authored war law into treaty status; US “Supreme Law” in Article 6 of the US Constitution. War law is crystal-clear: a nation can never use its military in armed attack unless another nation’s government attacks first. This means the US armed attacks/wars on all current nations are unlawful Wars of Aggression, the worst crime a nation can commit.

Peer-reviewed professional and independent studies conclude that the US war-murders (direct and indirect) ~500/day since 2001. Shockingly, this is lower than the US annual war-murder average since WW2 of ~1,000 to 1,500/day (20-30 million total; 300-500,000/year since 1945).

The US has $4 – $6 trillion in long-term costs for its wars since 2001; a daily average cost of ~$1 billion to $1.6 billion. This costs the  average US household of $50,000/year income a sum of $40 – $60,000 (if your household earns multiples of $50,000/year, you can do the math for your family’s share). These are only the US costs; damages to those we attacked are multiples of our costs.

Americans can avenge the millions killed, billions hurt, and trillions of our dollars looted for this evil.

Justice calls for immediate arrests of obvious War Criminals.

What will you think, say, and do?

If you will be known for your choices, who do you choose to be?

Choose well. You may just have your choice.

This is the basic history and government lesson that all our families sacrificed to teach us through two world wars. The US is in obvious violating of this essential law, both now and in the US war-murders of 20 to 30 million human beings since World War 2 (further history of unlawful US wars going back to stealing half of Mexico here).

Do you really want peace? 

Isn’t it therefore obvious to demand the arrests of obvious US War Criminals of both parties, and the lying sacks of spin in corporate media?

Without arrests, the wars will continue to kill millions, harm billions, and loot trillions of our dollars.

Do you want peace enough to think, speak, and act for the arrests of this obvious criminal class?

The criminal 1% violate the US Constitution in other ways subject to prosecution, and US military are already empowered through their Oath of Enlistment to refuse unlawful orders with officers authorized to arrest those who issue them.

David Wilcock and Benjamin Fulford write about imminent arrests of 1% “leadership” for financial fraud. I hope that this is true and happens. Supporting evidence is major banking resignations from 116 at the beginning of March, to 450 a month ago, and now over 600.

If the arrests David and Ben explain do not happen, I see two alternatives to arrest and remove the 1% criminals. The first is for the easily understood crime of waging unlawful Wars of Aggression. The 99% understand this is what prosecution of Nazi leadership was about.

The other easy alternative is arrests for economic fraud from having debt for what we use for money.

This is more difficult to understand than one war law, and not nearly as understood as a natural lesson from two world wars, but can be understood with a few moment’s attenion: This debt-system creates increasing and unpayable aggregate debt; the fraud is representing this as “good” for the 99%. 

The alternative to a national “debt supply” is a debt-free money supply. Monetary and credit reform can be understood with three simple areas of facts taught in basic economics:

1. The US does not have a money supply; we have its Orwellian opposite as a debt supply. This is because the US leading banks won legal right through passage of the 1913 Federal Reserve Act to have private banks and the Fed create debt for what we use as money, and then charge the 99% for its use.
2. The policy choice of a debt supply compounded with interest causes ever-increasing aggregate debt that can never be repaid. It can’t be repaid because this is what we use for money. The US national debt now pushing $16 trillion has a gross annual interest payment over $400 billion a year; ~$4,000 per US family of $50,000 annual income (if your household earns $100,000, then your gross annual interest payment is ~$8,000 every year).
3. Monetary reform creates debt-free money that extinguishes the debt (details here), and allows government to become employer of last resort for infrastructure investment (hard and soft). This creates full-employment, optimal infrastructure, and falling prices because infrastructure historically creates more value to the economy than cost. Credit reform allows for public loans (interest directly pays for public goods/services) as another monetary tool for stable money supply (credit reform details here).

A generic search provided 8 million results from the initial AP “news”, such as this one, showing the extent of corporate media’s echo chamber.

Let’s compare this typical corporate media “reporting” with revealing objective data:

The US waged unlawful war on Iran for 35 consecutive years with the overthrow of their democracy from 1953 to 1979, and then supported Iraq’s War of Aggression from 1980-1988 that war-murdered ~ one million Iranians.

US corporate media lies in omission of this history, then lie in omission that US war-murder threats are both criminal and ignore that all inspections find Iran’s treaty-guaranteed programs for nuclear energy and medical isotopes fully accountable. They lie in omission by failing to report that Iran is in compliance with all treaty terms, and that the US is in violation for not eliminating its nuclear arsenal per treaty terms. Corporate media also lie in omission (such as here) by not reporting that the Non-Proliferation Treaty does not have any authority to enter military bases. To make this last point clear, imagine if Iran demanded access to US military bases to prove what we know, the US has expanded technology and efficiency of their nuclear arsenal in Orwellian opposite of treaty terms. Would the US comply and US media demand such access?

Corporate media lie in commission by stating Iran’s president threatened Israel, when the crystal-clear content and context is stating Israel is wiping the Palestinians off the map.

US corporate media lie in omission that US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are in direct violation of war law and UN Security Council Resolutions, and that all “reasons” for those wars are disclosed by US government agency reports as known lies as they were told. This is immediate and vital history when considering the same actors’ rhetoric with a new war target.

These 1% political/corporate media lies are typical for US Wars of Aggression going back to stealing half of Mexico in 1846 (Occupy This: US History exposes the 1%’s crimes then and now (6-part series) and the briefer US war history in 2 minutes: arrest US War Criminals to stop war on Iran). Because analogies help bridge understanding when based on the facts: Analogy: US wars on Iraq, Iran as US criminal gangster “business”, an analogy if the US were the victim of empire, and the analogy of Star Wars as a false flag attack story.

The “emperor has no clothes” obvious solution for the 99% is to have 1% criminals in government and corporate media arrested for their roles in ongoing unlawful Wars of Aggression that have war-murdered 20-30 million human beings and cost American taxpayers tens of trillions of our dollars since WW2.

Readers: please note the counters for “like” and sharing are constantly reset to zero for my articles, and comments are disappeared. This is usual for people who present facts that refute the 1%’s war and looting lies and crimes. Look-up Operation Mockingbird and “Mass media information center” at www.wanttoknow.info 

Supreme Court Chief Justice Marshall’s crystal-clear wording is below.

This definitive legal ruling empowers Americans acting upon or enforcing such non-laws to reject them in full confidence of their Oaths to support and defend the US Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

The 3-minute video asks police, military, and other law enforcement:

When you signed-up to serve the US Constitution, was your Oath sincere?

US military are authorized by their Oath of Enlistment and training to refuse unlawful orders, with officers authorized to arrest those who issue them. Given that US wars are unlawful because the US is treaty-bound to only use our military if under attack by another nation’s government, all current war orders are unlawful and should be refused. Military of civilian “leadership” who issue such orders should be arrested to immediately stop War Crimes.

Our peaceful and lawful 2nd American Revolution points to other “emperor has no clothes” obvious void laws and criminal acts:

• assassination of Americans upon the non-reviewable dictate of the president,
• control-drown/waterboarding anyone dictated as a “terrorist” despite all US and international case law finding this to be torture,
• NDAA 2012 and 2006 Military Commissions Act that state a president can dictate any person as a “terrorist suspect,” and then disappear them without challenge,
• presidential executive order saying the US government can seize any resource, any person, at any time for “national defense.”
• US agencies’ official reports that show all “reasons” for war on Iraq were known to be false as they were told that are unacknowledged by the 1% and not prosecuted.
• all “reasons” for war on Iran are easily and objectively proven as also false as they are being told in the present, yet the 1% continue to lie for war.
• tripling of the US national debt since 2001 while we ignore obvious solutions to create money for full-employment and infrastructure investment (here, here, for examples). Pushing Americans into debt-slavery rather than using money is financial fraud.
• the King Family civil trial found the US government guilty for the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. The King family’s conclusion of motive was to prevent Martin’s “Occupy DC” for the summer of 1968 until the Vietnam War was ended and that funding directed to ending poverty. The 1% never acknowledge this.

Here is the US Supreme Court’s ruling (my parenthetical notes and emphases):

“The powers of the Legislature are defined and limited; and that those limits may not be mistaken or forgotten, the Constitution is written. To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing, if these limits may at any time be passed by those intended to be restrained? The distinction between a government with limited and unlimited powers is abolished if those limits do not confine the persons on whom they are imposed …

Between these alternatives (limited and unlimited government) there is no middle ground. The Constitution is either a superior, paramount law, unchangeable by ordinary means, or it is on a level with ordinary legislative acts, and, like other acts, is alterable when the legislature shall please to alter it.

If the former part of the alternative be true, then a legislative act contrary to the Constitution is not law; if the latter part be true, then written Constitutions are absurd attempts on the part of the people to limit a power in its own nature illimitable.

Certainly all those who have framed written Constitutions contemplate them as forming the fundamental and paramount law of the nation, and consequently the theory of every such government must be that an act of the Legislature repugnant to the Constitution is void.

… So, if a law be in opposition to the Constitution, if both the law and the Constitution apply to a particular case, … those, then, who controvert the principle that the Constitution is to be considered in court as a paramount law are reduced to the necessity of maintaining that courts must close their eyes on the Constitution, and see only the law.

This doctrine would subvert the very foundation of all written Constitutions. It would declare that an act which, according to the principles and theory of our government, is entirely void, is yet, in practice, completely obligatory. It would declare that, if the Legislature shall do what is expressly forbidden, such act, notwithstanding the express prohibition, is in reality effectual. It would be giving to the Legislature a practical and real omnipotence with the same breath which professes to restrict their powers within narrow limits. It is prescribing limits, and declaring that those limits may be passed at pleasure.

That it thus reduces to nothing what we have deemed the greatest improvement on political institutions — a written Constitution, would of itself be sufficient, in America where written Constitutions have been viewed with so much reverence, for rejecting the construction. But the peculiar expressions of the Constitution of the United States furnish additional arguments in favour of its rejection.

… Why otherwise does it direct … an oath to support it? This oath certainly applies in an especial manner to their conduct in their official character. How immoral to impose it on them if they were to be used as the instruments, and the knowing instruments, for violating what they swear to support!

The oath of office, too, imposed by the Legislature, is completely demonstrative of the legislative opinion on this subject. It is in these words:

I do solemnly swear that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich; and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge all the duties incumbent on me as according to the best of my abilities and understanding, agreeably to the Constitution and laws of the United States.

Why does a judge swear to discharge his duties agreeably to the Constitution of the United States if that Constitution forms no rule for his government?

… If such be the real state of things, this is worse than solemn mockery. To prescribe or to take this oath becomes equally a crime.

It is also not entirely unworthy of observation that, in declaring what shall be the supreme law of the land, the Constitution itself is first mentioned, and not the laws of the United States generally, but those only which shall be made in pursuance of the Constitution, have that rank.

Thus, the particular phraseology of the Constitution of the United States confirms and strengthens the principle, supposed to be essential to all written Constitutions, that a law repugnant to the Constitution is void, and that courts, as well as other departments, are bound by that instrument (the US Constitution).”

And as Abraham Lincoln stated:

“The people — the people — are the rightful masters of both Congresses, and courts — not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert it.” -  “Abraham Lincoln, [September 16-17, 1859] (Notes for Speech in Kansas and Ohio),” Page 2.

 “The people — the people — are the rightful masters of both Congresses, and courts — not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert it.” -  “Abraham Lincoln, [September 16-17, 1859] (Notes for Speech in Kansas and Ohio),” Page 2.

As Occupy and related lawful actions approach the endgame of the criminal 1%’s surrenders and/or arrests, it’s important for Americans to understand three things:

1. This 2nd American Revolution simply enforces existing and basic American laws to prevent War Crimes, stop economic looting, and uphold ideals and law in US foundational documents of the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution.
2. The criminality of the 1% centering in war and money is “emperor has no clothes” obvious with no rational defense possible; the crimes are Orwellian and only possible with cooperation of oligarchic control in political “leadership,” banking/finance to pay the 1%‘s minions, and corporate media to lie and distract the 99%.
3. Peace instead of war, obvious economic solutions for money and public credit instead of debt slavery to banksters (including full-employment for infrastructure), and the unleashing of suppressed technology will quickly end poverty, initiate abundant creativity, and transform this beautiful planet to nourish success for 100% of its inhabitants.

The 2nd American Revolution has petitioned our government to act within the decency of law. In return, the American 99% receive:

• assassination of Americans upon the non-reviewable dictate of the president,
• control-drown/waterboarding anyone dictated as a “terrorist” despite all US and international case law finding this to be torture,
• NDAA 2012 and 2006 Military Commissions Act that state a president can dictate any person as a “terrorist suspect,” and then disappear them without challenge,
• presidential executive order saying the US government can seize any resource, any person, at any time for “national defense.”

• US wars and armed attacks that expand into more and more countries, despite treaties after both world wars that make use of military unlawful unless a country’s government attacks first (Kellogg-Briand and UN Charter).
• US agencies’ official reports that show all “reasons” for war on Iraq were known to be false as they were told that are unacknowledged by the 1% and not prosecuted.
• all “reasons” for war on Iran are easily and objectively proven as also false as they are being told in the present, yet the 1% continue to press for war.
• tripling of the US national debt since 2001 while we ignore obvious solutions to create money for full-employment and infrastructure investment (here, here, for examples).
• the King Family civil trial found the US government guilty for the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. The King family’s conclusion of motive was to prevent Martin’s “Occupy DC” for the summer of 1968 until the Vietnam War was ended and that funding directed to ending poverty. The 1% never acknowledge this.

These are the simple reasons for the arrests of the criminal 1% that are coming, and similar to the majority of the original Declaration of Independence listing their government’s violations of law despite petitions to uphold the laws. Enjoy the reading by many of the US leading actors (first 14 minutes – this was the highest quality I found).

The 1% lie about wars, then do exactly what war law exists to prevent: offensive and illegal Wars of Aggression. They lie year after year as the wars kill millions and cost Americans trillions of their dollars.

The 1% lie about economics, banking, stock market “trading,” and cartel looting while suppressing breakthroughs that would tremendously benefit 100% of Earth’s inhabitants. This costs Americans trillions every year.

The 1% corporate media lie by omission, commission, and distraction, as Pulitzer Prize-winner Chris Hedges explains in this 5-minute video.

Arrests end the lies and crimes, murders, damages, and looting.

The arrests are for obvious leaders in “emperor has no clothes” obvious crimes.

Will you demand the arrests?

Will you ask law and military enforcement to do the job they want to do, exist to do, and you’re paying them to do?

The alternative is what history shows us: ongoing lies, wars, looting.

What will you think? What will you say? What will you do?

My offer to help the 1% criminals for Truth & Reconciliation stands. I will advocate their pensioned and peaceful “retirement” in exchange for peaceful surrender and return of the 99%’s stolen assets. I invite their “Scrooge conversions” to reclaim their hearts and love.

Love.

It’s what 99% of the minions serving the 1% want, and will have with the intellectual integrity and moral courage to stand with 100% of Earth’s inhabitants to have.

Will YOU demand love, truth, and justice?

This is important, why you’re here, and you know it.

That is the same question for Americans today: tyranny or justice.

Americans have a tremendous advantage in this comparison: all we have to do is enforce existing law to arrest our oligarchic criminals, with the universally-supported Oaths to support and defend the US Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Shakespeare’s powerful prose speaks to us today:

The US conducts murderous and lawless wars:

…each new morn
New widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrows
Strike heaven on the face,

Many US citizens once trusted their government:

This tyrant, whose sole name blisters our tongues,
Was once thought honest…

Honest US citizens are abundant, although some have fallen to serve these unlawful wars and related crimes with pretense of honesty:

Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell;
Though all things foul would wear the brows of grace,
Yet grace must still look so.

Honest US citizens know that the current unlawful US wars would be impossible if enough Americans demanded government under the law. Moreover, honest Americans value honest rule of law than plunder of war:

Bleed, bleed, poor country!
Great tyranny! lay thou thy basis sure,
For goodness dare not cheque thee: wear thou
thy wrongs;
The title is affeer’d! Fare thee well, lord:
I would not be the villain that thou think’st
For the whole space that’s in the tyrant’s grasp,
And the rich East to boot.

The unlawful acts of US government only increase:

I think our country sinks beneath the yoke;
It weeps, it bleeds; and each new day a gash
Is added to her wounds…I grant him bloody,
Luxurious, avaricious, false, deceitful,
Sudden, malicious, smacking of every sin
That has a name…

Americans do not recognize our own country anymore. Only fools smile about these lie-filled Wars of Aggression:

Alas, poor country!
Almost afraid to know itself. It cannot
Be call’d our mother, but our grave; where nothing,
But who knows nothing, is once seen to smile;
Where sighs and groans and shrieks that rend the air
Are made, not mark’d; where violent sorrow seems
A modern ecstasy;

Americans will come to recognize the murders and plunder done under our flag, will feel this deeply, and respond for justice: 

MALCOLM

Be comforted:
Let’s make us medicines of our great revenge,
To cure this deadly grief… Dispute it like a man.

MACDUFF

I shall do so;
But I must also feel it as a man:
I cannot but remember such things were,
That were most precious to me. Did heaven look on,
And would not take their part? Sinful Macduff,
They were all struck for thee! naught that I am,
Not for their own demerits, but for mine,
Fell slaughter on their souls. Heaven rest them now!

MALCOLM

Be this the whetstone of your sword: let grief
Convert to anger; blunt not the heart, enrage it….
Come, go we to the king; our power is ready;
Our lack is nothing but our leave; Macbeth
Is ripe for shaking, and the powers above
Put on their instruments. Receive what cheer you may:
The night is long that never finds the day.

The peaceful revolution of the 99% is literal: a peaceful “turn-around” from the lawless government we have today in War Crimes and economic fraud to policies for the success of 100% of Earth’s inhabitants. This is the work of Occupy.

Americans with Oaths of Enlistment and Office are sworn to protect and defend the US Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic. I advocate for Truth and Reconciliation as a policy response to the criminals in “leadership” of both political parties, our economy, and corporate media that are criminally complicit to cover-up those crimes both before and after the facts.

The Tragedy of Macbeth concludes with the death of the government’s tyrant. I advocate for a choice between Truth and Reconciliation or full criminal and civil prosecution for today’s US tyrants.

The video and paper I wrote for the conference frame my contribution regarding credit and monetary reform for a sustainable economy: a 1% “leadership” commits massive “emperor has no clothes” obvious crimes centering in money and war. These oligarchic 1% parasites designed our credit and monetary systems for their own enrichment, and will never willingly engage in the factual communication that exposes how they transfer the 99%’s wealth to themselves.

With just a little attention and education by the 99%, we also recognize criminal complicity from a cartel of corporate media to lie and distract from the crimes’ central facts. The 1%’s strategy seems to follow Gandhi’s observation that first they ignore you, then they laugh at you; they must avoid the fight that factually crushes them.

The conference paper includes links to two other papers that might help:

1. One frames broader economic and policy issues in support of Occupy: Why Occupy? A government/economics teacher explains

2. The other documents easily-verified histories of US War Crimes: Occupy This: US History exposes the 1%’s crimes then and now 

Regarding credit and monetary reform for a sustainable economy:

The 99% must achieve factual command of the basic facts how money and credit are created, or else continue their debt-damned existence under an oligarchic and Robber Baron-era structure.

Monetary and credit reform can be understood with three simple areas of facts that are taught in basic economics and easily verified:

1. The US does not have a money supply; we have its Orwellian opposite as a debt supply. This is because the US leading banks won legal right through passage of the 1913 Federal Reserve Act to have private banks and the Fed create debt for what we use as money, and then charge the 99% for its use.
2. The policy choice of a debt supply compounded with interest causes ever-increasing aggregate debt that can never be repaid. It can’t be repaid because this is what we use for money. The US national debt now pushing $16 trillion has a gross annual interest payment over $400 billion a year; ~$4,000 per US family of $50,000 annual income (if your household earns $100,000, then your gross annual interest payment is ~$8,000 every year).
3. Monetary reform creates debt-free money that extinguishes the debt (details here), and allows government to become employer of last resort for infrastructure investment (hard and soft). This creates full-employment, optimal infrastructure, and falling prices because infrastructure historically creates more value to the economy than cost. Credit reform allows for public loans (interest directly pays for public goods/services) as another monetary tool for stable money supply.

Obviously, monetary and credit reform benefits 100% of humanity because it guarantees full employment, optimal infrastructure, and no government debt/interest cost. The current parasitic system benefits a 1% banking oligarchy that causes cyclical unemployment and poverty, decays infrastructure (especially as debt and interest costs accelerate as they do today), and enslaves the 99% to permanent and escalating debt.

Americans cannot be responsible citizens without understanding this fundamental structure of money.

“My colleagues were entitled to ignore my views,” he [Zelikow] continued. “They did more than that: The [2006] White House attempted to collect and destroy all copies of my memo. I expect that one or two are still at least in the State Department’s archives.” Phillip D. Zelikow, State Department Counselor, 2005-2007, to Congress, May 13, 2009

Former legal counsel to the Department of State, Phillip Zelikow, produced a convincing and elegant argument for the immediate cessation of anything that looked like torture in February 2006. The government declassified the memo last week and National Security Archive released it on April 3.

The failure to follow Zelikow’s clear statement of the law, withholding the memo without justification, and the failure to prosecute those responsible for the previous acts represent evidence of crimes.

Zelikow’s memo

Phillip Zelikow is the ultimate establishment insider. He took leave from his academic appointments at the University of Virginia to assist in the 2001 presidential transition. He helped Condoleezza Rice develop the doctrine of preemptive war after 9/11, and served as executive director of the 9/11 Commission. In that role, Zelikow shielded the Bush administration from responsibility for their epic failures associated with the attack.

When it came to blatant violations of laws that any rational person could understand, Zelikow had finally reached his limit.

Zelikow began by noting that prior to the McCain Amendment, Justice and State had agreed on the conduct of CIA interrogations outside the United States. Through some distorted logic, the government concluded that it could violate the UN Convention Against Torture even though it clearly prohibits enhanced interrogations activities committed by signatories wherever they may occur.

“The situation has now changed. As a matter of policy, the U.S government publicly extended the prohibitions against cruel, inhuman, degrading treatment to all conduct worldwide. And then, as a matter of law, the McCain Amendment extended the application of Article 15 of the Convention Against Torture to conduct by U.S. officials anywhere in the world.” Phillip Zelikow, The McCain Amendment and U.S. Obligations under Article 16 of the Convention Against Torture, Feb 15, 2006

There was no argument on the geographical reach on the McCain amendment’s ban on “cruel, inhuman, and degrading” treatment of any prisoners of the U.S. government anywhere. The amendment is clear: “Nothing in this section shall be construed to impose any geographical limitation on the applicability of the prohibition against cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment under this section.” McCain Amendment No. 1977, October 2005

Zelikow made a point of writing that the new standards “apply directly to the enhanced interrogation techniques employed by the CIA.” From the date of this memo, the political and permanent employees of the State and Justice Departments knew clearly that enhanced interrogations had been thoroughly stripped of any legal justification.

Zelikow elaborated on restrictions created by the cruel and unusual standard for prisoner treatment by pointing out that courts “used terms like serious deprivation of human needs or conditions which deprive inmates of the minimal civilized measure of life necessities.“ The standard also restricted the use of “methods of interrogation that shock the conscience.” Citing U.S. Supreme Court cases, shocking the conscience includes holding prisoners incommunicado, prolonged questioning, and threatening to kill the prisoner.

This was drawn directly from the McCain Amendment with incorporates the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution as the criteria for against cruel, inhuman, degrading. Zelikow’s memo drives home the restrictions on prisoner treatment and abuse: “Under American law there is no precedent for excusing treatment that is intrinsically cruel even if the state asserts a compelling need to use it.”

Zelikow didn’t have to write this memo or even get seriously involved in the prisoner treatment issue. He was counsel to the Secretary of State and Justice had the lead on this issue. However, his conscience must have been shocked when he saw the administration’s plan to defy the law in such a blatant way. The Bush signing statement attached to the law was meaningless since the Amendment could only be modified by Congress.

The Bush administration had no intention of following the law. By November 2006, the American Civil Liberties Union unearthed orders by Bush for the very practices that were outlawed as clearly outlined by Zelikow’s memo.

Criminal acts arising from the Zelikow memo

Zelikow’s memo was an argument to dissuade illegal behavior that he saw endorsed by the 2006 Department of Justice. The memo is also a clear description of the law. It outlines the case for prosecuting those involved at any point after their acts to defy the law.

The memo makes clear that successive Justice Departments to this day have ignored their obligation to prosecute those responsible for outlawed interrogations. This would make all those responsible but failing to prosecute eligible for charges under the honest services fraud law of 1988. That law makes it a federal crime for government officials to fail to do their jobs since citizens have an “intangible right to honest services” (in this case, the expectation that federal officials violating prisoner treatment laws be prosecute).

Finally, Zelikow’s charge that the Bush administration hid and tried to destroy his memo shows a conspiracy to withhold evidence. Withholding or destroying evidence can be used as a proof of guilt in criminal and civil cases.

We would be unwise to lose any sleep over the prospects of prosecutions. This is all part of the looking forward policy used by President Obama as an excuse to avoid investigating the Bush administration (and now his own) for any violations of law from prisoner interrogation to the lies that were used to manipulate the people into briefly tolerating the Iraq invasion and occupation .

END

Also see National Security Archive, April 3, 2012 The Zelikow Memo: Internal Critique of Bush Torture Memos Declassified

Phillip D. Zelikow statement to Congress, May 13, 2009

Murder Trumps Torture Says Bugliosi – an Interview, Michael Collins, April 8, 2009

This article may be reproduced with attribution of authorship and a link to the article.

The Money Party