As some of you may recall, I’ve been developing a platform for a new political party. Well, perhaps that was too ambitious. I don’t know, but here’s a start.

I like the idea of a quiet place for sane discussion. Pour yourself a cup of coffee and read on. Comments and discussion are welcome in this virtual coffee shop.

War and International Justice

Because the Cold War is over and terrorism is best handled by law enforcement agencies cooperating with each other, we pledge to do the following:

1. Abolish and criminalize acts that are intended to interfere in the internal affairs of foreign nations;

2. Abolish the use of assassination squads and prosecute people who have engaged in those activities;

3. Declare an end to the Global War On Terror (GWOT);

4. Repeal the Authorization to Use Military Force;

5. End the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan immediately;

6. Withdraw all of our troops from foreign countries and bring them home immediately;

7. Close all military bases in foreign countries;

8. Reduce and limit the size of our armed forces to a level reasonably required to defend our homeland from attack;

9. Treat terrorism as a law enforcement problem and assign the primary responsibility for solving it to the FBI;

10. Repeal the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, and the recently passed Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (2008);

11. End all domestic spying and wiretapping unless it complies with the Fourth Amendment, the Title III Electronic Surveillance Act, and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (2000);

12. Abolish the Central Intelligence agency;

13. Repudiate the use of torture for any purpose;

14. Release all prisoners seized as part of the GWOT who are not scheduled to be tried in federal court and release the ones who are acquitted;

15. Abolish the use of military tribunals;

16. Abolish the Department of Homeland Security;

17. Appoint an independent prosecutor to commence a federal grand jury investigation to determine whether probable cause exists to indict, and if so to prosecute and convict members of the Bush and Obama administrations, including the President and Vice President of both administrations, their various Attorney Generals and lawyers in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice, for violating and covering up violations of provisions of the Geneva Convention and the laws of the United States regarding initiating aggressive wars without justification in Afghanistan and Iraq and the conduct of those wars by the United States military and all of its various private subcontractors, the Joint Special Operations Command, and the Central Intelligence Agency, intentionally and recklessly slaughtering innocent men, women, and children, kidnapping, detaining, torturing, and murdering innocent people;