I helped elect President Obama.

[Summer Hathaway]

37. I have read the book

and am a great admirer of Bugliosi.

Do I believe that Bush/Cheney et al are guilty of war crimes? Absolutely, unequivocally, without hesitation.

Could I prove it, beyond all reasonable doubt, in a court of law? No - and I don't think anyone could.

That is not because the crime wasn't committed - it's because the Bush administration covered their tracks (along with their asses) extremely well. And they did so because they KNEW their actions could be used against them after-the-fact.

I've no doubt that DU, like every other Dem website during the Bush admin, was full of comments about anything even remotely linking their actions to prosecutable crimes being shredded within an hour of being committed to paper. And I think we can all safely assume that discussions among the inner circle about "we KNOW we're committing a crime here, but we're going to do it anyway" were not discussed in front of the bus-boys who cleared the lunch dishes.

The Bush Admin relied on two very important realities: the fact that if one turned on the other and admitted the truth, they'd ALL go down, and the fact that if they were indicted on charges of war crimes, by the time they got to trial (which would be YEARS, after all the pre-trial legal wrangling was dispensed with), any witnesses who might be in a position to testify to their knowledge aforethought of deliberate wrong-doing could have their testimony easily dismissed on the basis that so much time had passed, memories were "foggy" and prone to be inaccurate as a result.

Proving beyond all doubt that a former president and his cohorts KNEW they were breaking the law and did so anyway would be a very high bar to meet - and claims of "protecting the nation" after the attacks of 9/11 would be weighed and measured as part of the defense of same.

Bringing a former president to trial for war crimes is not a Law & Order episode, concluded in sixty minutes with commercials. The pre-trial obstruction by the defense would tie-up the courts for years - the interests of "national security" would be raised over and over in an attempt to keep the truth from being accessed and exposed.

And while those years-long legal arguments were being pursued, our 'friends in the liberal media' would be reminding the public of how many of their taxpayer dollars were being used to prosecute a former prez and his 'well-meaning colleagues' at a time when the nation can ill afford such an expenditure - and if you don't think that would have an impact on public perception, you are truly naive.

It is one thing to know with every fiber of your being that war crimes were committed - proving it in a court of law is a different thing entirely.

The law requires solid evidence that they knowingly committed war crimes, and that evidence does not exist - not because such crimes didn't happen, but because all evidence of same was carefully destroyed.