Originally posted by: Julius Shark
Is President Bush a traitor?
I believe George W. Bush and almost his entire administration are traitors, but it's conjectural whether they could be convicted of treason in a U.S. court of law.
TREASON
In law,
treason is the crime of disloyalty to one's nation. A person who betrays the nation of their citizenship and/or reneges on an oath of loyalty and in some way willfully cooperates with an enemy, is considered to be a traitor. Oran's Dictionary of the Law (1983) defines treason as: "...[a]...citizen's actions to help a foreign government overthrow, make war against, or seriously injure the [parent nation]." In many nations, it is also often considered treason to attempt or conspire to overthrow the government, even if no foreign country is aided or involved by such an endeavour.
The Constitution of the United States, Art. III defines treason against the United States to consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid or comfort.
Here's another definition:
(tre'z?n)
n.
- Violation of allegiance toward one's country or sovereign, especially the betrayal of one's country by waging war against it or by consciously and purposely acting to aid its enemies.
- A betrayal of trust or confidence.
If you don't consider offering only a continuous string of ever changing lies as justification for taking the nation into a war that has squandered thousands of American lives and trillions of dollars in current and future debt, or illegal, unconstitutional unwarranted spying against American citizens to be
a betrayal of trust or confidence, please tell us what it is. :shocked:
Article II, Section I of the U.S. Constitution provides that each president shall recite the following oath:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
The Vice President also swears of affirms a similar oath. Since the day Bush and Cheney took office, they and their henchmen have waged an aggressive war against the rights guaranteed to all American citizens under the U.S. Constitution.
Instead of upholding and defending the Constitution, and well before the FISA law was rewritten, your Traitor In Chief and his gang were
shredding the rights guaranteed to every American citizen by that document with illegal domestic spying.
AT&T Whistle-Blower's Evidence
05.17.06
Former AT&T technician Mark Klein is the key witness in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's class-action lawsuit against the company, which alleges that AT&T illegally cooperated in an illegal National Security Agency domestic-surveillance program.
In this recently surfaced statement, Klein details his discovery of an alleged surveillance operation in an AT&T office in San Francisco, and offers his interpretation of company documents that he believes support his case.
In 2003 AT&T built "secret rooms" hidden deep in the bowels of its central offices in various cities, housing computer gear for a government spy operation which taps into the company's popular WorldNet service and the entire internet. These installations enable the government to look at every individual message on the internet and analyze exactly what people are doing. Documents showing the hardwire installation in San Francisco suggest that there are similar locations being installed in numerous other cities.
The physical arrangement, the timing of its construction, the government-imposed secrecy surrounding it, and other factors all strongly suggest that its origins are rooted in the Defense Department's Total Information Awareness (TIA) program which brought forth vigorous protests from defenders of constitutionally protected civil liberties last year:
"As the director of the effort, Vice Adm. John M. Poindexter, has described the system in Pentagon documents and in speeches, it will provide intelligence analysts and law enforcement officials with instant access to information from internet mail and calling records to credit card and banking transactions and travel documents, without a search warrant." The New York Times, 9 November 2002
To mollify critics, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) spokesmen have repeatedly asserted that they are only conducting "research" using "artificial synthetic data" or information from "normal DOD intelligence channels" and hence there are "no U.S. citizen privacy implications" (Department of Defense, Office of the Inspector General report on TIA, December 12, 2003). They also changed the name of the program to "Terrorism Information Awareness" to make it more politically palatable. But feeling the heat, Congress made a big show of allegedly cutting off funding for TIA in late 2003, and the political fallout resulted in Adm. Poindexter's abrupt resignation last August. However, the fine print reveals that Congress eliminated funding only for "the majority of the TIA components," allowing several "components" to continue (DOD, ibid). The essential hardware elements of a TIA-type spy program are being surreptitiously slipped into "real world" telecommunications offices.
In San Francisco the "secret room" is Room 641A at 611 Folsom Street, the site of a large SBC phone building, three floors of which are occupied by AT&T. High-speed fiber-optic circuits come in on the 8th floor and run down to the 7th floor where they connect to routers for AT&T's WorldNet service, part of the latter's vital "Common Backbone." In order to snoop on these circuits, a special cabinet was installed and cabled to the "secret room" on the 6th floor to monitor the information going through the circuits. (The location code of the cabinet is 070177.04, which denotes the 7th floor, aisle 177 and bay 04.) The "secret room" itself is roughly 24-by-48 feet, containing perhaps a dozen cabinets including such equipment as Sun servers and two Juniper routers, plus an industrial-size air conditioner.
The normal work force of unionized technicians in the office are forbidden to enter the "secret room," which has a special combination lock on the main door. The telltale sign of an illicit government spy operation is the fact that only people with security clearance from the National Security Agency can enter this room. In practice this has meant that only one management-level technician works in there. Ironically, the one who set up the room was laid off in late 2003 in one of the company's endless "downsizings," but he was quickly replaced by another.
Plans for the "secret room" were fully drawn up by December 2002, curiously only four months after Darpa started awarding contracts for TIA. One 60-page document, identified as coming from "AT&T Labs Connectivity & Net Services" and authored by the labs' consultant Mathew F. Casamassima, is titled Study Group 3, LGX/Splitter Wiring, San Francisco and dated 12/10/02. (See sample PDF 1-4.) This document addresses the special problem of trying to spy on fiber-optic circuits. Unlike copper wire circuits which emit electromagnetic fields that can be tapped into without disturbing the circuits, fiber-optic circuits do not "leak" their light signals. In order to monitor such communications, one has to physically cut into the fiber somehow and divert a portion of the light signal to see the information.
How is that not a violation of their oath of office
to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States? How is that not a
violation of allegiance toward one's country or
the betrayal of one's country by waging war against it or by consciously and purposely acting to aid its enemies? Even if you don't believe that in so doing, they have committed treason, they have most definitely violated their oaths of office. :|
I further believe they are guilty of murder, torture and other war crimes and crimes against humanity, as well as lesser felonies including lying to Congress and obstruction of justice.
MURDER
The Bush administration should be charged with murder under two different theories of the crime:
1.
Callous, Reckless or Wanton Disregard or Depraved Indifference
Under Federal and most state statutes, one definition of murder is committing an act in callous, reckless or wanton disregard or depraved indifference for the safety of others that, in fact, causes the death of another. One foreseeable consequence of war is death... in fact, many deaths. For example, under
New York State Law:
MURDER SECOND DEGREE
(A-I Felony)
(Depraved Indifference Murder)
PENAL LAW 125.25(2)
(Committed on or after Sept. 1, 1967)
(Revised December 12, 2006)
Under our law, a person is guilty of Murder in the Second Degree when, under circumstances evincing a depraved indifference to human life, he or she recklessly engages in conduct which creates a grave risk of death to another person, and thereby causes the death of that person [or of a third person.
The deaths of every American in Iraq are direct, foreseeable consequences of the Bushwhackos' felonious LIES to Congress. In his published statement, George McGovern said:
All of this has been done without the declaration of war from Congress that the Constitution clearly requires, in defiance of the U.N. Charter and in violation of international law. This reckless disregard for life and property, as well as constitutional law, has been accompanied by the abuse of prisoners, including systematic torture, in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions of 1949.
All of those American casualties did not occur in one cataclysmic event. They happened over the years we since the Bushwhackos started their illegal war. If you question whether their actions constitute callous, reckless or wanton disregard or depraved indifference for the safety of others, it begs the question of how many times, and over what period, can one consider excusing those ongoing, repeated acts that continue to raise the number of dead and wounded Americans on a daily basis. At what point does it shock the conscience sufficiently to cross the threshold from being 4,218 cases of mere
negligent homicide, which is another criminal offense? :shocked:
2.
The Felony-Murder Rule
A RULE OF LAW that holds that if a killing occurs during the commission or attempted commission of a felony (a major crime), the person or persons responsible for the felony can be charged with murder.
Generally an intent to kill is not necessary for felony-murder. The rule becomes operative when there is a killing during or a death soon after the felony, and there is some causal connection between the felony and the killing.
The felony-murder rule originated in England under the COMMON LAW. Initially it was strictly applied, encompassing any death that occurred during the course of a felony, regardless of who caused it. Therefore, if a police officer attempting to stop a ROBBERY accidentally shot and killed an innocent passerby, the robber could be charged with murder.
Today most jurisdictions have limited the rule by requiring that the felony must be a dangerous one or that the killing is foreseeable, or both. Statutes that restrict the application of the rule to dangerous felonies usually enumerate the crimes. BURGLARY, KIDNAPPING, rape, and robbery are typical felonies that invoke the rule. Under a number of statutes, the felony must be a proximate cause of the death. In other words, the killing must have been a natural and direct consequence of the felony.
Another of their crimes,
lying to Congress, is a felony regardless of whether such lies are told under oath that directly supports charging them with murder under Felony Murder statutes. The Bush administration lied to Congress to pimp their war. Starting any war is obviously dangerous, and as stated, death is a foreseeable consequence of war. The deaths of every American in Iraq were direct, foreseeable consequences of the administration's felonious lies to Congress.
I hope you don't dispute that the Bushies lied to Congress. If you do, I can cite lots of them, including names and dates.
WAR CRIMES
George W. Bush, Dickwad Cheney, Alberto Gonzales and others authorized and encouraged American intelligence agencies to commit gross violations of human rights, including torture, in violation of international laws and obligations under the Geneva Conventions, which Berto the Clown Gonzales derided as "quaint."
OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE
The Bushwhackos have continually withheld evidence from Congress regarding Whitehouse involvement with anything and everything from Alberto Gonzales' communications to their involvement with outing covert CIA operative, Valerie Plame, to their direct involvement with the CIA's use of torture and the subsequent destruction of the tapes showing them in the act of committing that torture.
Originally posted by: Julius Shark
If he is, will we use the same standard to determine if President Elect Obama is a traitor?
I would hope so, but first, Obama would have to commit any of those crimes. George W. Bush and his criminal cabal already have done so, and they should be held to account for them.