pmac666 wrote:
Yeah but woulnt they need a actual crime against US law first?
What would that be?
Obama ordered drone strikes against alleged terrorists who were U.S. citizens.
It's execution without trial. American law does allow its government to murder foreigners on thin pretexts, but it does require a trial for its own citizens.
He could, at least in theory, be prosecuted. And yeah, your point is well taken. Bush slaughtering 100,000 Iraqis on the basis of fabricated claims of WMDs and similar fairy tales is far, far worse. But the issue is not how severe a war crime has to be before public opinion allows a prosecuation to go forward. The issue before the Supreme Court is just whether a former president can be prosecuted for them. On that question (to get back to the original subject) Dreeben should have simply given a whole-hearted and unequivocal "Yes!"
The examples that Dreeben was questioned on include:
- Could Roosevelt have been prosecuted for illegally incarcerating Japanese-Americans?
- Could Bush be prosecuted for invading Iraq based on falsified intelligence?
- Could Obama be prosecuted for illegal drone strikes on American citizens?
- Could Biden be prosecuted for his handling of the border crisis?
On the latter, I'm not sure exactly what law they are alleging that Biden has broken, but the first three were clearly illegal. They weren't prosecuted because they involved fairly popular presidents and prosecuting them would have led to a huge public backlash, but they could have been prosecuted, and Dreeben should have said so.
His case rests on the basic principle that in a democracy, nobody, NOBODY, is above the law, and he should have been reiterating that at every breath, instead of getting lost on side arguments about whether there was enough evidence to charge Obama. He let Gorsuch and Kavanaugh bog him down with those, and he sounded like he was equivocating.