Interpol, the international police organization, does not list any outstanding arrest warrants for Bush or Cheney in their searchable database. Given all this, we wondered: Are there really outstanding warrants against Bush and Cheney from a legitimate authority, as the meme suggests? And are the two men in any danger of being arrested if they leave the United States? So we took a closer look.Īrrest warrants and the International Criminal Court A lawyer for the group told a Swiss newspaper that the cancellation stemmed from concerns about protests, not fear of arrest. (The British government later changed the law, allowing Livni and others to make subsequent visits.) In 2005 Donald Rumsfeld nearly pulled out of a conference in Germany until receiving prosecutors’ assurances that he wouldn’t be arrested, according to the Guardian.īush attracted significant media attention in 2011 when he canceled a trip to Geneva, Switzerland, to address the United Israel Appeal. In addition, Israeli politicians Tzipi Livni and Dan Meridor canceled trips to the United Kingdom in 20 amid threats of legal action, in Livni’s case for an Israeli strike on Gaza and in Meridor’s case an Israeli raid on a Turkish ship headed to Gaza. In 1998, Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was arrested in London after Spain requested extradition for charges related to the murders of Spanish citizens in Chile during his time in office. The idea that Bush and Cheney could be arrested overseas isn’t entirely far-fetched. It shows a photograph of the two men, with the caption, 'When I was growing up, I would never have believed that a former president and vice president of the United States would be unable to visit Europe due to outstanding warrants.' In many countries, policies that Bush and Cheney spearheaded to fight terrorism continue to color views of the former United States leaders - most notably the opening of the detainee center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the use of waterboarding and other 'enhanced interrogation' methods that many consider torture.Ī reader recently sent us a social media meme that captured this sentiment. Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney have been out of office for more than five years, but that doesn’t mean the rest of the world has forgotten about them. Much as I didn’t like Bush and disagree strongly with Liz Cheney and am horrified by so many GOP positions, I look forward to the day when my political adversaries are not reckless norm-breakers or coup-instigators.Former President George W. Perhaps such exercises are better left to philosophers.

I hate having to make such horrendous moral distinctions. But I never believed he would put his own ambition for power over the best interest of Americans. His refusal to accept the 2020 election results showed that Trump has no respect for American institutions or for the rule of law.īush made plenty of mistakes and his policies did plenty of damage (especially if you were, say, a detainee at Abu Ghraib prison).

He’s a dishonest, anti-democratic, twice-impeached demagogue, a corrupt and irresponsible man without principles who couldn’t rise above his own obsession with self-enrichment, self-aggrandizement and a place at center stage. What made Trump unfit wasn’t his policies or even his beliefs, to the extent he had any.

George w bush travel expenses