Retire Bush or Jail Him?

The Nation is running a fascinating contest: in 25 words or less suggest what George W. Bush should do in his retirement. The contest is going on until December 31st, so there is still time to enter. Winners will be announced on January 12th. Click here to read the contest rules.

The contest entries will be judged by a prestigious panel: Victor Navasky, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Richard Lingeman.

And the prize is an original drawing by Edward Sorel, depicting the winning retirement idea.

My husband suggests that Bush should eat shit and die.

So far, these last weeks of the Bush-Cheney administration are leading to the inevitable: that Bush and Cheney should be tried for war crimes and other federal crimes. Cheney has admitted on television that he authorized torture, i.e. waterboarding of suspects. The Senate Armed Services Committee has pointed a bi-partisan finger at Donald Rumsfeld and other Bush administration officials for bringing the SERE program to Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, leading to the top-down policy of torture and prisoner abuse. Now, according to Marty Waas, a secret FBI report reveals the true role Dick Cheney played in the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame. Cheney admitted to federal investigators that he rewrote talking points for the press in July 2003 that made it much more likely that the role of then-covert CIA-officer Valerie Plame in sending her husband on a CIA-sponsored mission to Africa would come to light.

What role did Bush play? It appears that Cheney is daring the incoming administration to investigate and possibly prosecute him, unless he is counting on a preemptive pardon. Was Bush the decider, or merely a puppet of Cheney?

With the film Frost/Nixon playing, we are reminded of the arrogant statement made by Richard Nixon during the series of post-retirement interviews that if an act is committed by the president of the United States, it can't be illegal.

Maybe it's time to find out just how false that statement is.