Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Misleaders To Be Punished

From the Better Late Than Never Department:

Bill Seeks to Punish Those Who Mislead into War: "U.S. Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., introduced legislation that would impose fines or prison time on presidents or executive-branch officials who 'knowingly and willfully' mislead Congress to gain authorization to use U.S. military forces. The Executive Accountability Act was introduced last week and is co-sponsored by Rep. Neil Abercrombie, D-HI. If passed, the act would apply only to current and future presidential administrations and executive branches. The act calls for fines or up to 10 years in prison for leaders found guilty of misleading Congress in order to get authorization to go to war."

2 comments:

JK said...

jeez. Ok, so I am following your blog because I am a political idiot, and I want to learn more. I don't have much time to do research of my own, so I appreciate your posts with links that I can go to.
So, anyway...are there really people that knowingly mislead others into war?? Don't most people truely WANT to avoid it? And isn't deciding to go to war a decision made only by the president? I don't believe that one man would make a decision like that lightly...and then he is going to be punished for it later?
Confused...

Bob Harrison said...

I fairly certain this bill is at aimed preventing "cherry picking" of intelligence by leaders who are trying to build a case for war. Over time, there have been many leaders who mislead their people into war, World War II being the prime example, because, neither them nor their family usually get anywhere near the killing. Of course, the current idea is probably keyed to the Iraq and the erroneous intelligence presented as fact to justify the war. Hope that helps.