Bushies at Nuremberg?

It looks like Europeans are serious about trying members of the Bush administration for war crimes. It has already been reported that both former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and former VP Dick Cheney have changed European travel plans at least once after being warned by

legal aides there was a chance they’d be arrested if they set foot on European soil. Now, it’s Douglas Feith’s turn.

The former undersecretary of defense under Bush “directed” U.S. reconstruction efforts in Iraq, which wound up wasting, and even outright losing, billions of dollars; and, earlie

r, was a key player in providing legal cover to Bush policies under which prisoners were tortured. It’s the latter charge that Spanish human rights lawyers are pursuing; their case has been sent to prosecutors for review by Judge Baltasar Garzon, the guy who ordered the arrest of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in the late 1990s. The charges are also directed at David Addington, Cheney’s former chief of staff; Jay Bybee, one of the authors of the infamous “torture memo”; John Yoo, another torture fan; and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Feith, for his part, is “shocked” and “baffled” by the charges. Feith’s reaction makes sense when you remember that in Bob Woodward’s book Plan of Attack, the guy in charge in Iraq, Gen. Tommy Franks, referred to Feith as “the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth.” Coincidentally to the potential war crimes charges, we have received a photo via the national subconscious — and the Internet — of members of the Bush administration in a Nuremberg Trial setting (see above). Dougie Feith is in the center of the front row, next to former UN ambassador John Bolton. Enjoy.

This article appears in Mar 31 – Apr 7, 2009.