The War Crimes Act of 1996, a federal statute set forth at 18 U.S.C. § 2441, makes it a federal crime for any U.S. national, whether military or civilian, to violate the Geneva Convention by engaging in murder, torture, or inhuman treatment.
The statute applies not only to those who carry out the acts, but also to those who ORDER IT, know about it, or fail to take steps to stop it. The statute applies to everyone, no matter how high and mighty.
18 U.S.C. § 2441 has no statute of limitations, which means that a war crimes complaint can be filed at any time.
The penalty may be life imprisonment or -- if a single prisoner dies due to torture -- death. Given that there are numerous, documented cases of prisoners being tortured to death by U.S. soldiers in both Iraq and Afghanistan (see for example this report), that means that the death penalty would be appropriate for anyone found guilty of carrying out, ordering, or sanctioning such conduct.
The US is also a signatory to the 1984 UN Convention Against Torture, which bans inflicting "severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental". Such practices are also a crime under US federal law.
Under the War Crimes Act, violations of the Geneva Conventions are felonies, in some cases punishable by death. When the Supreme Court ruled that the Geneva Convention applied to al Qaeda and Taliban detainees
The Bush administration told a federal judge that terrorism suspects held in secret CIA prisons should not be allowed to reveal details of the alternative interrogation methods that their captors used to get them to talk.
In 2005 Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as chief of staff to Colin Powell from 2002 to 2005, said. that Cheney led the argument "that essentially wanted to do away with all restrictions" and chided him for his demand that the CIA be exempted from a ban on "cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment of detainees "it was certainly a domestic crime to advocate terror and I would suspect that it is ... an international crime as well"
Also...On the invasion of Iraq
There are only two legal justifications for attacking another country: self-defence, or if the Security Council authorises you to do so The war was contrary to international law and it was contrary to international law whether or not they find weapons of mass destruction. The illegality was based on the absence of a Security Council resolution authorising the use of force before the war began, it seemed that one of the main casualties of war was the whole fabric of international law and convention did the Security Council authorise the use of force, and the answer to that is no. And [second] were we misled about the presence of weapons of mass destruction
Lawrence Wilkerson had said That the White House had manipulated pre-war intelligence on Iraq to make its case for the invasion That the vice-president must have sincerely believed Iraq could be a spawning ground for terrorism because "otherwise I have to declare him a moron, an idiot or a nefarious bastard".
------sorry for the confused aimless way this was compiled, but my keyboard has failed and I am left with using the on-screen-keyboard.-----
