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Stanford Antiwar Alumni, Students Call for Condi War Crimes Probe

by: Marjorie Cohn, t r u t h o u t | Post

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Stanford antiwar alumnus Lenny Siegel, with hammer in hand, is joined by Marjorie Cohn. They nailed a petition to the office door of Stanford's president, demanding that Condoleezza Rice, who has returned to the campus this year, be held accountable for violations of the law. (Photo: R. Robertson)

    During the Vietnam War, Stanford students succeeded in banning secret military research from campus. Last weekend, 150 activist alumni and present Stanford students targeted Condoleezza Rice for authorizing torture and misleading Americans into the illegal Iraq war.

    Veterans of the Stanford anti-Vietnam War movement had gathered for a 40th anniversary reunion during the weekend. The gathering featured panels on foreign policy, the economy, political and social movements, science and technology, media, energy and the environment, and strategies for aging activists.

    On Sunday, surrounded by alumni and students, Lenny Siegel and I nailed a petition to the University president's office door. The petition, circulated by Stanford Say No to War, reads:

    "We the undersigned students, faculty, staff, alumni, and other concerned members of the Stanford community, believe that high officials of the U.S. Government, including our former Provost, current Political Science Professor, and Hoover Institution Senior Fellow, Condoleezza Rice, should be held accountable for any serious violations of the Law (including ratified treaties, statutes, and/or the U.S. Constitution) through investigation and, if the facts warrant, prosecution, by appropriate legal authorities."

    I stated, "By nailing this petition to the door of the president's office, we are telling Stanford that the university should not have war criminals on its faculty. There is prima facie evidence that Rice approved torture and misled the country into the Iraq war. Stanford has an obligation to investigate those charges."

    After the petition nailing, I cited the law and evidence of Condoleezza Rice's responsibility for war crimes - including torture - and for selling the illegal Iraq war:

    Watch the video here.

    As national security adviser, Rice authorized waterboarding in July 2002, according to a newly released report of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Less than two months later, she hyped the impending US invasion of Iraq, saying, "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." Her ominous warning was part of the Bush administration's campaign to sell the Iraq war, in spite of the UN International Atomic Energy Agency's assurances that Saddam Hussein did not possess nuclear weapons.

    A week before the nailing of the petition, Rice made some Nixonian admissions in response to questions from Stanford students during a campus dinner designed to burnish Rice's image on campus.

    In October 1968, Stanford antiwar activists had nailed a document to the door of the trustees' office which demanded that Stanford "halt all military and economic projects concerned with Southeast Asia."

  

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Marjorie Cohn is president of the National Lawyers Guild and a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law. She is the author of "Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law" and co-author of "Rules of Disengagement: The Politics and Honor of Military Dissent." Her anthology, "The United States of Torture: America's Past and Present Policy of Interrogation and Abuse," will be published next year by NYU Press. See www.marjoriecohn.com.

Comments

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I'm still amazed that no one

I'm still amazed that no one in the Obama administration is going after people who broke US laws and international treaties. This is unthinkable unless Obama and his crowd don't want anyone coming after them if they do the same. (Illegal detainment without representation.)

Nothing surprises me! Wait,

Nothing surprises me! Wait, one thing! Why aren't the college kids out protesting? Because they're too busy spending time on Facebook, listening to their ipods, talking on their cell phones. What is happening in this country is criminal. From Wall Street to the White House. Obama is a sell out. He knows, he can only go so far, why? Because he's black, but more importantly, he's part of the corporate/lobbyist system. The students need to break that, we as citizen's need to break that. It will happen, once this country goes into a very Depression, and it's coming very soon!

Condi Rice brought political

Condi Rice brought political jive talk to a new high. If its OK with the President then its legal. If the US does not publically investigate all this torture America will never recover in the court of World Opinion.

The President has a conflict

The President has a conflict of interest. As a member of the Democratic party he does not want to call Democratic Congressional leaders who were complicit in war crimes--Iraq, Afghanistan, torture, murder, illegal weapons, mass punishment of civilian populations, and so on--to account for their criminal acts. How can this be dealt with in a legal manner? The Congress is controlled by wealthy lobby groups, further neutralizing a potential source of justice. It would appear that the senior levels of the federal administrative and congressional branches will be ineffective in furthering the cause of justice that must go forward for America to right its wayward course. What does that leave?

"amazed?" why are you

"amazed?" why are you amazed, it's all in a days work on the set of "East of the West Wing", the reality show that is really real, so real it stinks like the real thing, so real the acting is over the top of real. It's Bush , no! it's Obama! no, it's..it's ..no not Monty Python..it's Rupertman and his trusty side-kick Silvio. Wherever there's reality, they're there getting real, getting real on you-tube, getting real on email, getting real all over. Man don't be amazed, be media-crazed, get with it man, get "real".

Marjorie Cohn Esq. knows her

Marjorie Cohn Esq. knows her business. This article is clear. We learn. We demand the gov't follow the law.

It starts to make sense when

It starts to make sense when it's reported that Pelosi was briefed on Waterboarding years ago. other Dems knew about it, too, but kept their mouths shut. No wonder Pelosi took impeachment off the table! And, if Obama pushes for innvestigations into war crimes, a lot of Dems are going to go down. Only in America!!!!!

I live in Palo Alto and am a

I live in Palo Alto and am a returning Stanford graduate student. I would like to add my name to the petition and maybe you could set up an online version that could be ongoing?

Even more crimes - aren't we

Even more crimes - aren't we forgetting there was never a probe into Dr. Rice's activities as head of press relations for Chevron during the time they admitted to smuggling oil out of Iraq? Aiding Saddam Hussein by selling oil for him outside of the UN sanctioned Oil-for-Food program, Rice was a high-level exec for the energy giant while they were dealing in black market oil with a "rogue state". In fact, this was probably her entry into Bush's White House. By the time Chevron fessed up and paid the smuggling fines, Rice was Secretary of State and her involvement was downplayed, but what was it? But wait there's more. Another compelling claim comes from the current director of Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), an international human rights activism group who says correspondences between it's US headquarters and Columbia office were intercepted by the State Dept. This may have something to do with Bush's support for anti-labor interests in Columbia - in fact, the FOR's Bogota offices were ransacked, removing evidence of human rights abuses by paramilitary squads and leaving serious questions behind.