BuzzFlash Reviews

BUZZFLASH REVIEWS

“Michael Haas's book on the Bush administration's war crimes is a carefully researched, fact-based assessment of many of the crimes committed by George Bush and his people, both domestically and internationally. America will not find its way again in the world until the Bush administration has been held accountable for them. Haas's identification of these crimes is an important step in advancing that goal.”
–Vincent Bugliosi, author, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder (2008)

“This important and timely book, making use of evidence that is wholly within the public domain, establishes beyond any doubt that George W. Bush should and must be charged with the commission of war crimes--and not just one war crime--but 269 war crimes. It is a handbook of Bush war crimes that must be used by all of us: activists, politicians and anyone who cares about a better world. The Bush administration has taken us, as Cheney said it would, "to the dark side." Haas's book gives us the hope at least that the criminals in the Bush administration and Bush himself can be brought to justice.”
–Michael Ratner, President, Center for Constitutional Rights

From the Publisher:

This compilation is the first to cite a comprehensive list of specific war crimes in four categories-illegality of the decision to go to war, misconduct during war, mistreatment of prisoners of war, and misgovernment in the American occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Haas accuses President Bush of conduct bordering on treason because he reenacted several complaints stated in the Declaration of Independence against England, ignored the Constitution and federal laws, trampled on the American tradition of developing international law to bring order to world politics, and in effect made a Faustian pact with Osama Bin Laden that the intelligence community blames for an increase in world terrorism. Osama Bin Laden remains alive, he reports, because Bush preferred to go after oil-rich Iraq rather than tracking down Al Qaeda leaders, whose uncaptured presence was useful to him in justifying a "war on terror" pursued on a military rather than a criminal basis without restraint from constitutional checks and balances.

The worst war crime cited is the murder of at least 45 prisoners, some but not all by torture. Other heinous crimes include the brutal treatment of thousands of children, some 64 of whom have been detained at Guantánamo. Sources document the use of illegal weapons in the war from cluster bombs to daisy cutters, napalm, white phosphorus, and depleted uranium weapons, some of which have injured and killed American soldiers as well as thousands of innocent civilians. Children playing in areas of Iraq where depleted uranium weapons have been used, but not reported on request from the World Health Organization, have developed leukemia and other serious diseases.

"Bush's violations of the Constitution as well as domestic and international law have besmirched the reputation of the United States," Haas writes. "In so doing, they have accomplished a goal of which the Al Qaeda terrorists only dreamed-to transform the United States into a rogue nation feared by the rest of the world and loved by almost none."

BUZZFLASH REVIEWS