This Week In Accountability, August 13, 2011

Posted by CODEPINK Staff

This Week In Accountability, August 13, 2011

Human Rights Watch released a report stating that Bush and Cheney should be prosecuted for crimes of torture and indicated that President Obama has violated the law for not moving forward in prosecution. Watch the Real News Network interview with Michael Ratner, President at the Center for Constitutional Rights.

In preparation for the release of former Vice President Dick Cheney's new book, "In My Time", CODEPINK activists are taking action at local bookstores and moving his book to where it really belongs -- the New Crime section. It's scheduled to be released on August 30th. It's legal. It's fun. And it will make a difference in how people look at Cheney's book and our history. Join the Facebook group.

With the 10th anniversary of 9/11 less than a month away, NYC will be the destination of choice for major US war criminals, including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and John Yoo. Accountability activists, including CODEPINK are gearing up to protest the former Bush administration officials who brought us torture, indefinite detention, and trillion-dollar wars that have claimed countless Afghani, Iraqi and US lives. The activists feel they should be indicted and prosecuted for their crimes, not honored as speakers and special guests at symposia, memorials and fancy dinners. The brutality of the “war on terror” and the US wars of aggression are condemned both by the court of global public opinion and by international law, including the Geneva Conventions and the Convention against Torture.

U.S. Navy veteran and military contractor who is suing Donald Rumsfeld was interviewed on Democracy Now with Amy Goodman. Donald Vance describes in detail his situation in Iraq and the case against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, which has been allowed in court to move forward.

Human Rights First senior associate Daphne Eviatar released a statement questioning the security of the U.S., ten years after 9/11. Eviatar writes, "We’re fighting three wars far from home. We’re on the brink of yet another financial crisis. We’re holding thousands of faceless prisoners indefinitely without charge around the world, and lack a solid plan for what to do with them." She goes on to discuss the blank check given to the executive branch to pursue the "war on terror" and the cost to house a single prisoner of $700,000 at Guantanamo.

The Center for Justice and Accountability waged a suit claiming that psychologist John Francis Leso helped developed torture tactics that were eventually used on detainees held at Guantanamo. The suit was brought on by another psychologist named Steven Reisner, but the New York State courts ruled that Reisner could not force an investigation.