Crime against peace – planning and carrying out a war of aggression.
Complicity in the commission of a war crime – wanton destruction of cities and villages, devastation not justified by military necessity, ill-treatment of civilian population of or in occupied territory.
Complicity in the commission of a war crime – torture, ill-treatment of detainees. Approved waterboarding and other torture methods.
Signed an order (Feb. 7, 2002) stating that terrorists were not entitled to protections under the Geneva Conventions.
Primary Association:
George W. Bush Presidential Center at Southern Methodist University 6425 Boaz Lane, Dallas TX 75205 214-768-2000
George Walker Bush served as the 43rd President of the United States from 2001 to 2009. He was the 46th Governor of Texas from 1995 to 2000 before being sworn in as President on January 20, 2001.
Bush is the eldest son of 41st U.S. President George H. W. Bush and Barbara Bush. After graduating from Yale University, Bush worked in his family's oil businesses. He married Laura Welch in 1977 and unsuccessfully ran for the United States House of Representatives shortly thereafter. He later co-owned the Texas Rangers baseball team before defeating Ann Richards to become Governor of Texas in 1994. In a close and controversial election, Bush became President in 2000 as the Republican candidate, receiving a majority of the electoral votes, but losing the popular vote to then Vice-President Al Gore.
Eight months into his first term as President, the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks occurred and Bush announced a global War on Terrorism, ordered an invasion of Afghanistan that same year and an invasion of Iraq in 2003.
In his second term, Bush received increasingly heated criticism. In 2005, the Bush administration was forced to deal with widespread criticism of its handling of Hurricane Katrina. In December 2007, the United States entered the second-longest post-World War II recession, and his administration took more direct control of the economy, enacting multiple economic stimulus packages.
President Bush presided over the torture administration. He issued a still-secret order authorizing the CIA to establish secret detention facilities overseas and to interrogate detainees. Over the legal and policy objections of State Department officials, Bush also determined that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to suspected Taliban and al Qaeda detainees in U.S. custody, a legal maneuver that set the stage for future torture. Through his subordinates, including the National Security Council Principals Committee, who met in the White House to discuss the use of particular interrogation techniques to be used on particular detainees, he authorized the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” by the CIA and other harsh techniques by the military. Asked about those meetings on national television, Bush affirmed that he knew and approved of them … In his subsequent memoir, Bush acknowledged that he personally approved waterboarding and continued to insist that it and other brutal methods were not torture.*