United States war crimes

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

United States war crimes are the violations of the laws and customs of war of which the United
States Armed Forces are accused of committing since the signing of the Hague Conventions of
1899 and 1907. These have included the summary execution of captured enemy combatants,
the mistreatment of prisoners during interrogation (torture), and the use of violence
against civilian non-combatants.
War crimes can be prosecuted in the United States through the War Crimes Act of 1996.
However, the U.S. Government, which strongly opposes the International Criminal Court (ICC)
treaty, believing it is seriously flawed,[1] does not accept ICC jurisdiction over its nationals.[2][3]

Contents
[hide]

 1Mexican–American War
 2Philippine–American War
 3World War II
o 3.1Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
o 3.2Pacific theater
 3.2.1Rape
o 3.3European theater
 3.3.1Rape
 4Korean War
o 4.1No Gun Ri Massacre
 5Vietnam War
o 5.1My Lai Massacre
 6War on Terror
o 6.1Activities and incidents characterized as war crimes
o 6.2Command responsibility
 7See also
 8References
 9Further reading
o 9.1General
o 9.2By nation
 10External links

Mexican–American War[edit]
When Zachary Taylor began leading American soldiers into Mexico the U.S troops under the
watchful eye of Taylor at first adhered to the rules of war for the most part and almost exclusively
engaged only with enemy soldiers. This gained them some popularity with Mexican civilians who
held the occupying Americans in a degree of high regard compared to the Mexican Army who left
their wounded to be captured by the enemy as they retreated from the area. Though in June
1846, this changed when American reinforcements entered into the area and began raiding local
farms.
Many soldiers on garrison duty began committing crimes against civilians such as robbery, rape
and murder in order to cure their boredom. This crime wave resulted in American soldiers
murdering at least 20 civilians during the first month of occupation. Taylor showed little concern
with the crimes his soldiers had been committing and made no attempt to discipline the soldiers
responsible for them. This lead to public opinion turning against the American troops and
resulted in many Mexicans taking up arms and forming guerrilla bands which attacked patrols of
U.S soldiers. The attacks continued to get more prevalent especially after the Battle of
Monterrey.[4]
During this time anti-catholic sentiment and racism fueled more attacks on civilians. It was
estimated that during this time US troops killed at least 100 civilians, with the majority of them
being killed by Col. John C. Hays' 1st Texas Mounted Volunteers. In response to the violence,
Mexicans killed an American soldier outside of Monterrey. American troops under the command
of Capt. Mabry B. "Mustang" Gray responded to the event by rounding up and executed twenty-
four unarmed Mexican civilians.
In the coming months the boredom of occupation duties led to additional violence against
civilians. In November 1846, a detachment from the 1st Kentucky regiment murdered a young
Mexican boy, apparently for sport, afterwards Taylor again refused to bring charges against any
of the soldiers involved.
The most infamous group of soldiers during this time were the ones serving under Joseph Lane.
After Captain Samuel Hamilton Walkerwas killed in a skirmish, Lance ordered his men to avenge
the dead Texas Ranger by sacking the town of Huamantla. The soldiers quickly became drunk
after raiding a liquor store and began targeting the towns people. Reports described the soldiers
raping scores of women many of which were young girls and murdering dozens of Mexican
civilian while they burned down homes.[5] Though news of the American rampage was
overshadowed by news of the death of Captain Walker and lead to no repercussions against
Lane or any of the soldiers involved in the massacre.[6]

Philippine–American War[edit]
See also: United States Senate Committee on the Philippines and Philippine–American War

Jacob Smith's retaliation during the Samar campaign

Following the end of the Spanish–American War in 1898, Spain ceded the Philippines to the
United States as part of the peace settlement. This triggered a more than a decade-long conflict
between the United States Armed Forces and the First Philippine Republic under
President Emilio Aguinaldo.
War crimes committed by the United States Army include the March across Samar, which led to
the court martial and forcible retirement of Brigadier General Jacob H. Smith.[1]

World War II[edit]

See also: United States war crimes during World War II
Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki[edit]
See Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
For discussion of war crime aspects, see Debate over the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki §§ Bombings as war crimes and International law, and Ryuichi Shimoda v. The
State (holding that "the attacks upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki caused such severe and
indiscriminate suffering that they did violate the most basic legal principles governing the conduct
of war"). See also Hague Convention (IV) Articles 23, 25, & 27; Nuremberg Principle VI (b) [war
crimes], (c) [crimes against humanity].
Pacific theater[edit]
On January 26, 1943, the submarine USS Wahoo fired on survivors in lifeboats from the
Japanese transport Buyo Maru. Vice AdmiralCharles A. Lockwood asserted that the survivors
were Japanese soldiers who had turned machinegun and rifle fire on the Wahoo after she
surfaced, and that such resistance was common in submarine warfare.[7] According to the
submarine's executive officer, the fire was intended to force the Japanese soldiers to abandon
their boats and none of them were deliberately targeted.[8] Historian Clay Blair stated that the
submarine's crew fired first and the shipwrecked survivors returned fire with handguns.[9] The
survivors were later determined to have included Allied POWs of the Indian 2nd Battalion, 16th
Punjab Regiment, who were guarded by Japanese Army Forces from the 26th Field Ordnance
Depot.[10] Of 1,126 men originally aboard Buyo Maru, 195 Indians and 87 Japanese died, some
killed during the torpedoing of the ship and some killed by the shootings afterwards.[11]
During and after the Battle of the Bismarck Sea (March 3–5, 1943), U.S. PT boats and Allied
aircraft attacked Japanese rescue vessels as well as approximately 1,000 survivors from eight
sunken Japanese troop transport ships.[12] The stated justification was that the Japanese
personnel were close to their military destination and would be promptly returned to service in the
battle.[12] Many of the Allied aircrew accepted the attacks as necessary, while others were
sickened.[13]
American servicemen in the Pacific War sometimes deliberately killed Japanese soldiers who
had surrendered, according to Richard Aldrich, a professor of history at Nottingham University.
Aldrich published a study of diaries kept by United States and Australian soldiers, wherein it was
stated that they sometimes massacred prisoners of war.[14] According to John Dower, in "many
instances ... Japanese who did become prisoners were killed on the spot or en route to prison
compounds."[15] According to Professor Aldrich, it was common practice for U.S. troops not to
take prisoners.[16] His analysis is supported by British historian Niall Ferguson,[17] who also says
that, in 1943, "a secret [U.S.] intelligence report noted that only the promise of ice cream and
three days leave would ... induce American troops not to kill surrendering Japanese."[18]
Ferguson states that such practices played a role in the ratio of Japanese prisoners to dead
being 1:100 in late 1944. That same year, efforts were taken by Allied high commanders to
suppress "take no prisoners" attitudes[18] among their personnel (because it hampered
intelligence gathering), and to encourage Japanese soldiers to surrender. Ferguson adds that
measures by Allied commanders to improve the ratio of Japanese prisoners to Japanese dead
resulted in it reaching 1:7, by mid-1945. Nevertheless, "taking no prisoners" was still "standard
practice" among U.S. troops at the Battle of Okinawa, in April–June 1945.[19] Ferguson also
suggests that "it was not only the fear of disciplinary action or of dishonor that deterred German
and Japanese soldiers from surrendering. More important for most soldiers was the perception
that prisoners would be killed by the enemy anyway, and so one might as well fight on."[20]
Ulrich Straus, a U.S. Japanologist, suggests that Allied troops on the front line intensely hated
Japanese military personnel and were "not easily persuaded" to take or protect prisoners,
because they believed, not entirely incorrectly, that Allied personnel who surrendered got "no
mercy" from the Japanese.[21] Allied troops were told that Japanese soldiers were inclined to feign
surrender in order to make surprise attacks,[21] a practice which was outlawed by the Hague
Convention of 1907.[22] Therefore, according to Straus, "Senior officers opposed the taking of
prisoners on the grounds that it needlessly exposed American troops to risks ..."[21] When
prisoners were taken at Guadalcanal, Army interrogator Captain Burden noted that many times
POWs were shot during transport because "it was too much bother to take [them] in".[23]
U.S. historian James J. Weingartner attributes the very low number of Japanese in U.S. prisoner
of war compounds to two important factors, namely (1) a Japanese reluctance to surrender, and
(2) a widespread American "conviction that the Japanese were 'animals' or 'subhuman' and
unworthy of the normal treatment accorded to prisoners of war.[24] The latter reason is supported
by Ferguson, who says that "Allied troops often saw the Japanese in the same way that
Germans regarded Russians — as Untermenschen" (i.e., "subhuman").[25]
Rape[edit]
Main article: Rape during the occupation of Japan
It has been claimed that some U.S. military personnel raped Okinawan women during the Battle
of Okinawa in 1945.[26]
Based on several years of research, Okinawan historian Oshiro Masayasu (former director of the
Okinawa Prefectural Historical Archives) writes:
Soon after the U.S. Marines landed, all the women of a village on Motobu Peninsula fell into the
hands of American soldiers. At the time, there were only women, children, and old people in the
village, as all the young men had been mobilized for the war. Soon after landing, the Marines
"mopped up" the entire village, but found no signs of Japanese forces. Taking advantage of the
situation, they started 'hunting for women' in broad daylight, and women who were hiding in the
village or nearby air raid shelters were dragged out one after another.[27]
According to interviews carried out by the New York Times and published by them in 2000,
several elderly people from an Okinawan village confessed that after the United States had won
the Battle of Okinawa, three armed marines kept coming to the village every week to force the
villagers to gather all the local women, who were then carried off into the hills and raped. The
article goes deeper into the matter and claims that the villagers' tale — true or not — is part of a
"dark, long-kept secret" the unraveling of which "refocused attention on what historians say is
one of the most widely ignored crimes of the war": 'the widespread rape of Okinawan women by
American servicemen."[28] Although Japanese reports of rape were largely ignored at the time,
academic estimates have been that as many as 10,000 Okinawan women may have been raped.
It has been claimed that the rape was so prevalent that most Okinawans over age 65 around the
year 2000 either knew or had heard of a woman who was raped in the aftermath of the war.[29]
Professor of East Asian Studies and expert on Okinawa, Steve Rabson, said: "I have read many
accounts of such rapes in Okinawan newspapers and books, but few people know about them or
are willing to talk about them."[29] He notes that plenty of old local books, diaries, articles and
other documents refer to rapes by American soldiers of various races and backgrounds. An
explanation given for why the US military has no record of any rapes is that few Okinawan
women reported abuse, mostly out of fear and embarrassment. According to an Okinawan police
spokesman: "Victimized women feel too ashamed to make it public."[29] Those who did report
them are believed by historians to have been ignored by the U.S. military police. Many people
wondered why it never came to light after the inevitable American-Japanese babies the many
women must have given birth to. In interviews, historians and Okinawan elders said that some of
those Okinawan women who were raped and did not commit suicide did give birth to biracial
children, but that many of them were immediately killed or left behind out of shame, disgust or
fearful trauma. More often, however, rape victims underwent crude abortions with the help of
village midwives. A large scale effort to determine the possible extent of these crimes has never
been conducted. Over five decades after the war had ended, in the late-1990s, the women who
were believed to have been raped still overwhelmingly refused to give public statements, instead
speaking through relatives and a number of historians and scholars.[29]
There is substantial evidence that the U.S. had at least some knowledge of what was going on.
Samuel Saxton, a retired captain, explained that the American veterans and witnesses may have
intentionally kept the rape a secret, largely out of shame: "It would be unfair for the public to get
the impression that we were all a bunch of rapists after we worked so hard to serve our
country."[29] Military officials formally denied the mass rapes, and all surviving related veterans
refused the New York Times request for an interview. Masaie Ishihara, a sociology professor,
supports this: "There is a lot of historical amnesia out there, many people don't want to
acknowledge what really happened."[29] Author George Feifer noted in his book Tennozan: The
Battle of Okinawa and the Atomic Bomb, that by 1946 there had been fewer than 10 reported
cases of rape in Okinawa. He explained it was "partly because of shame and disgrace, partly
because Americans were victors and occupiers. In all there were probably thousands of
incidents, but the victims' silence kept rape another dirty secret of the campaign."[30]
Some other authors have noted that Japanese civilians "were often surprised at the
comparatively humane treatment they received from the American enemy."[31][32] According
to Islands of Discontent: Okinawan Responses to Japanese and American Power by Mark
Selden, the Americans "did not pursue a policy of torture, rape, and murder of civilians as
Japanese military officials had warned."[33]
There were also 1,336 reported rapes during the first 10 days of the occupation of Kanagawa
prefecture after the Japanese surrender.[26]
European theater[edit]

SS concentration camp guards being executed at Dachau concentration camp on its day of liberation
(U.S. Army soldier photograph/National Archives)

In the Laconia massacre, U.S. aircraft attacked Germans rescuing survivors from the sinking
British troopship in the Atlantic Ocean. Pilots of a United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) B-24
Liberator bomber, despite knowing the U-boat's location, intentions, and the presence of British
seamen, killed dozens of Laconia's survivors with bombs and strafing attacks, forcing U-156 to
cast its remaining survivors into the sea and crash dive to avoid being destroyed.
The "Canicattì massacre" involved the killing of Italian civilians by Lieutenant Colonel George
Herbert McCaffrey. A confidential inquiry was made, but McCaffrey was never charged with any
offense relating to the massacre. He died in 1954. This fact remained virtually unknown in the
U.S. until 2005, when Joseph S. Salemi of New York University, whose father witnessed it,
reported it.[34]
In the "Biscari massacre", which consisted of two instances of mass murder, U.S. troops of
the 45th Infantry Division killed roughly 75 prisoners of war, mostly Italian.[35][36]
According to an article in Der Spiegel by Klaus Wiegrefe, many personal memoirs
of Alliedsoldiers have been wilfully ignored by historians until now because they were at odds
with the "greatest generation" mythology surrounding World War II. However, this has recently
started to change, with books such as The Day of Battle, by Rick Atkinson, in which he describes
Allied war crimes in Italy, and D-Day: The Battle for Normandy, by Antony Beevor.[37] Beevor's
latest work suggests that Allied war crimes in Normandy were much more extensive "than was
previously realized".[38]
Historian Peter Lieb has found that many U.S. and Canadian units were ordered not to take
enemy prisoners during the D-Day landings in Normandy. If this view is correct, it may explain
the fate of 64 German prisoners (out of the 130 captured) who did not make it to the POW
collecting point on Omaha Beach on the day of the landings.[37]
Near the French village of Audouville-la-Hubert, 30 Wehrmacht prisoners were massacred by
U.S. paratroopers.[38]
In the aftermath of the 1944 Malmedy massacre, in which 80 American POWs were murdered by
their German captors, a written order from the headquarters of the 328th U.S. Army Infantry
Regiment, dated 21 December 1944, stated: "No SS troops or paratroopers will be taken
prisoner but [rather they] will be shot on sight."[39] Major-General Raymond Hufft (U.S. Army) gave
instructions to his troops not to take prisoners when they crossed the Rhine in 1945. "After the
war, when he reflected on the war crimes he authorized, he admitted, 'if the Germans had won, I
would have been on trial at Nuremberg instead of them.'"[40] Stephen Ambrose related: "I've
interviewed well over 1000 combat veterans. Only one of them said he shot a prisoner... Perhaps
as many as one-third of the veterans...however, related incidents in which they saw other GIs
shooting unarmed German prisoners who had their hands up."[41]
"Operation Teardrop" involved eight surviving captured crewmen from the sunken German
submarine U-546 being tortured by U.S. military personnel. Historian Philip K. Lundeberg has
written that the beating and torture of U-546's survivors was a singular atrocity motivated by the
interrogators' need to quickly get information on what the U.S. believed were potential missile
attacks on the continental U.S. by German submarines.[42]
The "Dachau massacre" involved the killing of German prisoners of war and surrendering SS
soldiers at the Dachau concentration camp.[43]
Among American WWII veterans who admitted to having committed war crimes was
former Mafia hitman Frank Sheeran. In interviews with his biographer Charles Brandt, Sheeran
recalled his war service with the Thunderbird Division as the time when he first developed a
callousness to the taking of human life. By his own admission, Sheeran participated in numerous
massacres and summary executions of German POWs, acts which violated the Hague
Conventions of 1899 and 1907 and the 1929 Geneva Convention on POWs. In his interviews
with Brandt, Sheeran divided such massacres into four different categories.
1. Revenge killings in the heat of battle. Sheeran told Brandt that, when a German soldier
had just killed his close friends and then tried to surrender, he would often "send him to
hell, too." He described often witnessing similar behavior by fellow GIs.[44]
2. Orders from unit commanders during a mission. When describing his first murder for
organized crime, Sheeran recalled: "It was just like when an officer would tell you to take
a couple of German prisoners back behind the line and for you to 'hurry back'. You did
what you had to do."[45]
3. The Dachau massacre and other reprisal killings of concentration camp guards and
trustee inmates.[46]
4. Calculated attempts to dehumanize and degrade German POWs. While Sheeran's unit
was climbing the Harz Mountains, they came upon a Wehrmacht mule train carrying food
and drink up the mountainside. The female cooks were first allowed to leave unmolested,
then Sheeran and his fellow GI's "ate what we wanted and soiled the rest with our
waste." Then the Wehrmacht mule drivers were given shovels and ordered to "dig their
own shallow graves." Sheeran later joked that they did so without complaint, likely hoping
that he and his buddies would change their minds. But the mule drivers were shot and
buried in the holes they had dug. Sheeran explained that by then, "I had no hesitation in
doing what I had to do."[47]
Rape[edit]
Main articles: Rape during the liberation of France and Rape during the
occupation of Germany
Secret wartime files made public only in 2006 reveal that American GIs
committed 400 sexual offenses in Europe, including 126 rapes in England,
between 1942 and 1945.[48] A study by Robert J. Lilly estimates that a total of
14,000 civilian women in England, France and Germany were raped by
American GIs during World War II.[49][50] It is estimated that there were around
3,500 rapes by American servicemen in France between June 1944 and the end
of the war and one historian has claimed that sexual violence against women in
liberated France was common.[51]

Korean War[edit]
No Gun Ri Massacre[edit]
The No Gun Ri Massacre refers to an incident of mass killing of an
undetermined number of South Korean refugees by U.S. soldiers of the 7th
Cavalry Regiment (and in a U.S. air attack) between 26–29 July 1950 at a
railroad bridge near the village of Nogeun-ri, 100 miles (160 km) southeast
of Seoul. In 2005, the South Korean government certified the names of 163
dead or missing (mostly women, children, and old men) and 55 wounded. It said
that many other victims' names were not reported.[52] Over the years survivors'
estimates of the dead have ranged from 300 to 500. This episode early in
the Korean War gained widespread attention when the Associated Press (AP)
published a series of articles in 1999 that subsequently won a Pulitzer Prize for
Investigative Reporting.[53]

Vietnam War[edit]
The Vietnam War Crimes Working Group Files is a collection of (formerly secret)
documents compiled by Pentagon investigators in the early 1970s, confirming
that atrocities by U.S. forces during the Vietnam War were more extensive than
had been officially acknowledged.[54][55] The documents are housed by the United
States National Archives and Records Administration, and detail 320 alleged
incidents that were substantiated by United States Army investigators (not
including the 1968 My Lai Massacre). (See also Winter Soldier Investigation).
My Lai Massacre[edit]
Main article: My Lai Massacre
The My Lai Massacre was the mass murder of 347 to 504 unarmed citizens in
South Vietnam, almost entirely civilians, most of them women and children,
conducted by U.S. soldiers from the Company C of the 1st Battalion, 20th
Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade of the 23rd (Americal) Infantry Division, on 16
March 1968. Some of the victims were raped, beaten, tortured, or maimed, and
some of the bodies were found mutilated. The massacre took place in the
hamlets of Mỹ Lai and My Khe of Sơn Mỹ village during the Vietnam War.[56][57] Of
the 26 U.S. soldiers initially charged with criminal offenses or war crimes for
actions at My Lai, only William Calley was convicted. Initially sentenced to life in
prison, Calley had his sentence reduced to ten years, then was released after
only three and a half years under house arrest. The incident prompted
widespread outrage around the world, and reduced U.S. domestic support for
the Vietnam War. Three American Servicemen (Hugh Thompson, Jr., Glenn
Andreotta, and Lawrence Colburn), who made an effort to halt the massacre and
protect the wounded, were sharply criticized by U.S. Congressmen, and
received hate mail, death threats, and mutilated animals on their
doorsteps.[58] Thirty years after the event their efforts were honored.[59]

War on Terror[edit]
Main article: War on Terror
In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, the U.S.
Government adopted several new measures in the classification and treatment
of prisoners captured in the War on Terror, including applying the status
of unlawful combatant to some prisoners, conducting extraordinary renditions,
and using torture ("enhanced interrogation techniques"). Human Rights
Watch and others described the measures as being illegal under the Geneva
Conventions.[60]
Activities and incidents characterized as war crimes[edit]
This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

 Civilian casualties from US drone strikes, in particular

in Pakistan and Yemen[61]
 Kunduz hospital airstrike
Command responsibility[edit]
A presidential memorandum of February 7, 2002, authorized U.S. interrogators
of prisoners captured during the War in Afghanistan to deny the prisoners basic
protections required by the Geneva Conventions, and thus according to Jordan
J. Paust, professor of law and formerly a member of the faculty of the Judge
Advocate General's School, "necessarily authorized and ordered violations of
the Geneva Conventions, which are war crimes."[62] Based on the president's
memorandum, U.S. personnel carried out cruel and inhumane treatmenton
captured enemy fighters,[63] which necessarily means that the president's
memorandum was a plan to violate the Geneva Convention, and such a plan
constitutes a war crime under the Geneva Conventions, according to Professor
Paust.[64]
U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and others have argued that detainees
should be considered "unlawful combatants" and as such not be protected by
the Geneva Conventions in multiple memoranda regarding these perceived legal
gray areas.[65]
Gonzales' statement that denying coverage under the Geneva Conventions
"substantially reduces the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War
Crimes Act" suggests, to some authors, an awareness by those involved in
crafting policies in this area that U.S. officials are involved in acts that could be
seen to be war crimes.[66] The U.S. Supreme Court challenged the premise on
which this argument is based in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, in which it ruled
that Common Article Three of the Geneva Conventions applies to detainees in
Guantanamo Bay and that the military tribunals used to try these suspects were
in violation of U.S. and international law.[67]
Human Rights Watch claimed in 2005 that the principle of "command
responsibility" could make high-ranking officials within the Bush
administration guilty of the numerous war crimes committed during the War on
Terror, either with their knowledge or by persons under their control.[68] On April
14, 2006, Human Rights Watch said that Secretary Donald Rumsfeld could be
criminally liable for his alleged involvement in the abuse of Mohammed al-
Qahtani.[69] On November 14, 2006, invoking universal jurisdiction, legal
proceedings were started in Germany – for their alleged involvement of prisoner
abuse – against Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales, John Yoo, George
Tenet and others.[70]
The Military Commissions Act of 2006 is seen by some as an amnesty law for
crimes committed in the War on Terror by retroactively rewriting the War Crimes
Act[71] and by abolishing habeas corpus, effectively making it impossible for
detainees to challenge crimes committed against them.[72]
Luis Moreno-Ocampo told The Sunday Telegraph in 2007 that he was willing to
start an inquiry by the International Criminal Court (ICC), and possibly a trial, for
war crimes committed in Iraq involving British Prime Minister Tony Blair and
American President George W. Bush.[73] Though under the Rome Statute, the
ICC has no jurisdiction over Bush, since the U.S. is not a State Party to the
relevant treaty—unless Bush were accused of crimes inside a State Party, or
the UN Security Council (where the U.S. has a veto) requested an investigation.
However, Blair does fall under ICC jurisdiction as Britain is a State Party.[74]
Shortly before the end of President Bush's second term in 2009, newsmedia in
countries other than the U.S. began publishing the views of those who believe
that under the United Nations Convention Against Torture, the U.S. is obligated
to hold those responsible for prisoner abuse to account under criminal
law.[75] One proponent of this view was the United Nations Special Rapporteur on
torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment
(Professor Manfred Nowak) who, on January 20, 2009, remarked on German
television that former president George W. Bush had lost his head of state
immunity and under international law the U.S. would now be mandated to
start criminal proceedings against all those involved in these violations of the UN
Convention Against Torture.[76] Law professor Dietmar Herz explained Nowak's
comments by opining that under U.S. and international law former President
Bush is criminally responsible for adopting torture as an interrogation tool.