Bush & Rumsfeld Out of Control

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
Bush & Rumsfeld Out of Control
504
Tue, 06-08-2004 - 5:48am

The team of Bush & Rumsfeld have reduced the <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />United States government to the level of the Spanish inquisition. They’re ruined my wonderful country so that now, instead of the light of the world, we are an evil power. Torturing POWs is abhorrent to all civilized people that’s why nations agreed to accept the first Geneva Convention in 1864, right up to the fourth in 1949 .  The United States signed all the additional protocols added up to 1977, but congress didn’t ratify the 1977 addition concerning the treatment of guerilla fighters.  Bush is using this to claim that he had the right to order torture. He has even flaunted our own country’s law against torture.  The man is an out of control menace to civilization.  He has not learned from history, perhaps because he read any.


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 http://hnn.us/articles/586.html


 


I don’t want to hear the childish “Well, Saddam tortured them worse” line of reasoning.  I’ve had it. Two wrongs have never made a right. These people need to be impeached.


 


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/08/politics/08ABUS.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=


 


June 8, 2004
Lawyers Decided Bans on Torture Didn't Bind Bush

By NEIL A. LEWIS and ERIC SCHMITT







 


WASHINGTON, June 7 — A team of administration lawyers concluded in a March 2003 legal memorandum that President Bush was not bound by either an international treaty prohibiting torture or by a federal antitorture law because he had the authority as commander in chief to approve any technique needed to protect the nation's security.


The memo, prepared for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, also said that any executive branch officials, including those in the military, could be immune from domestic and international prohibitions against torture for a variety of reasons.


One reason, the lawyers said, would be if military personnel believed that they were acting on orders from superiors "except where the conduct goes so far as to be patently unlawful."


"In order to respect the president's inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign," the lawyers wrote in the 56-page confidential memorandum, the prohibition against torture "must be construed as inapplicable to interrogation undertaken pursuant to his commander-in-chief authority."


Senior Pentagon officials on Monday sought to minimize the significance of the March memo, one of several obtained by The New York Times, as an interim legal analysis that had no effect on revised interrogation procedures that Mr. Rumsfeld approved in April 2003 for the American military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.


"The April document was about interrogation techniques and procedures," said Lawrence Di Rita, the Pentagon's chief spokesman. "It was not a legal analysis."


Mr. Di Rita said the 24 interrogation procedures permitted at Guantánamo, four of which required Mr. Rumsfeld's explicit approval, did not constitute torture and were consistent with international treaties.


The March memorandum, which was first reported by The Wall Street Journal on Monday, is the latest internal legal study to be disclosed that shows that after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks the administration's lawyers were set to work to find legal arguments to avoid restrictions imposed by international and American law.


A Jan. 22, 2002, memorandum from the Justice Department that provided arguments to keep American officials from being charged with war crimes for the way prisoners were detained and interrogated was used extensively as a basis for the March memorandum on avoiding proscriptions against torture.


The previously disclosed Justice Department memorandum concluded that administration officials were justified in asserting that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to detainees from the Afghanistan war.


Another memorandum obtained by The Times indicates that most of the administration's top lawyers, with the exception of those at the State Department and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, approved of the Justice Department's position that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to the war in Afghanistan. In addition, that memorandum, dated Feb. 2, 2002, noted that lawyers for the Central Intelligence Agency had asked for an explicit understanding that the administration's public pledge to abide by the spirit of the conventions did not apply to its operatives.


The March memo, a copy of which was obtained by The Times, was prepared as part of a review of interrogation techniques by a working group appointed by the Defense Department's general counsel, William J. Haynes. The group itself was led by the Air Force general counsel, Mary Walker, and included military and civilian lawyers from all branches of the armed services.


The review stemmed from concerns raised by Pentagon lawyers and interrogators at Guantánamo after Mr. Rumsfeld approved a set of harsher interrogation techniques in December 2002 to use on a Saudi detainee, Mohamed al-Kahtani, who was believed to be the planned 20th hijacker in the Sept. 11 terror plot.


Mr. Rumsfeld suspended the harsher techniques, including serving the detainee cold, prepackaged food instead of hot rations and shaving off his facial hair, on Jan. 12, pending the outcome of the working group's review. Gen. James T. Hill, head of the military's Southern Command, which oversees Guantánamo, told reporters last Friday that the working group "wanted to do what is humane and what is legal and consistent not only with" the Geneva Conventions, but also "what is right for our soldiers."


Mr. Di Rita said that the Pentagon officials were focused primarily on the interrogation techniques, and that the legal rationale included in the March memo was mostly prepared by the Justice Department and White House counsel's office.


The memo showed that not only lawyers from the Defense and Justice departments and the White House approved of the policy but also that David S. Addington, the counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney, also was involved in the deliberations. The State Department lawyer, William H. Taft IV, dissented, warning that such a position would weaken the protections of the Geneva Conventions for American troops.


The March 6 document about torture provides tightly constructed definitions of torture. For example, if an interrogator "knows that severe pain will result from his actions, if causing such harm is not his objective, he lacks the requisite specific intent even though the defendant did not act in good faith," the report said. "Instead, a defendant is guilty of torture only if he acts with the express purpose of inflicting severe pain or suffering on a person within his control."


The adjective "severe," the report said, "makes plain that the infliction of pain or suffering per se, whether it is physical or mental, is insufficient to amount to torture. Instead, the text provides that pain or suffering must be `severe.' " The report also advised that if an interrogator "has a good faith belief his actions will not result in prolonged mental harm, he lacks the mental state necessary for his actions to constitute torture."


The report also said that interrogators could justify breaching laws or treaties by invoking the doctrine of necessity. An interrogator using techniques that cause harm might be immune from liability if he "believed at the moment that his act is necessary and designed to avoid greater harm."


Scott Horton, the former head of the human rights committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, said Monday that he believed that the March memorandum on avoiding responsibility for torture was what caused a delegation of military lawyers to visit him and complain privately about the administration's confidential legal arguments. That visit, he said, resulted in the association undertaking a study and issuing of a report criticizing the administration. He added that the lawyers who drafted the torture memo in March could face professional sanctions.


Jamie Fellner, the director of United States programs for Human Rights Watch, said Monday, "We believe that this memo shows that at the highest levels of the Pentagon there was an interest in using torture as well as a desire to evade the criminal consequences of doing so."


The March memorandum also contains a curious section in which the lawyers argued that any torture committed at Guantánamo would not be a violation of the anti-torture statute because the base was under American legal jurisdiction and the statute concerns only torture committed overseas. That view is in direct conflict with the position the administration has taken in the Supreme Court, where it has argued that prisoners at Guantánamo Bay are not entitled to constitutional protections because the base is outside American jurisdiction.


Kate Zernike contributed reporting for this article


 


 


Elaine

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iVillage Member
Registered: 05-13-2004
Tue, 06-15-2004 - 7:45pm
I don't know how I would feel if my own family was in those towers. I can only go by my own experience. I can tell you that a very serious wrong (sexual abuse) has been done to me by a family member but I don't hate them. Perhaps it's not the same thing but I simply don't know how I would feel. I don't thirst for revenge though because it ends up hurting those who seek revenge just as much as those they are trying to hurt. This I have learned by my own experience and by observing others. I'll bet a lot more people would be against this war if it were being fought on US soil where our own innocent lives were being ruined (not just killed) rather than just Iraqi lives ruined.
iVillage Member
Registered: 05-13-2004
Tue, 06-15-2004 - 7:48pm
I also wanted to say that the lives of innocent Iraqis mean the same to me as the lives of the innocent New Yorkers from our 9/11 attack.
iVillage Member
Registered: 05-13-2004
Tue, 06-15-2004 - 7:53pm
Yes, but an innocent baby to me is no different than an innocent child or woman or man who gets killed in this war or whose lives are ruined by their civilization falling apart. How do you think Americans would feel if another country came in and started bombing all of us because our leader is torturing people and driving our country to hell in a handbasket as they say. I really don't think Americans would appreciate that. Especially without asking for help first.
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
Tue, 06-15-2004 - 7:55pm
I see where you are going mentioning “suspicions”, but:

“I believe the democrats you mentioned went along with it out of fear.”

(I don’t know about Kerry) But many dems claimed these weapons were there before Bush took office, notably Gore and Clinton.

I’ll go along with saying Bush selectively weighted his evidence to favor a decision he wanted. But I think S.H. fooled almost everyone at the same time. Why else would we have had what? 14 UN resolutions insisting Iraq disarm (something like 12 before Bush went into office). I don’t think France, Russia, Germany, the U.S. and the other countries would continue making the demand for Iraq to disarm if they already though they’d been disarmed.

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-04-2003
Tue, 06-15-2004 - 8:50pm
<>

I beg to differ. When I first saw the photos I thought these soldiers were probably briefed on precisely what types of treatment that would be most humiliating for these detainees (especially when I noted that there were women present).


Edited 6/15/2004 8:56 pm ET ET by suemox

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-04-2003
Tue, 06-15-2004 - 8:59pm
feyindigowolf. I just want to say that I agree with every single one of your eloquent posts. Just thought I'd say that once rather than after each and every one of them. After all, I wouldn't want you to get a swelled head.

:o)

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-20-2003
Wed, 06-16-2004 - 11:15am
Bravo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-20-2003
Wed, 06-16-2004 - 11:20am
who invaded another country and what did the parents of Nick say?
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
Wed, 06-16-2004 - 12:00pm
I was stating my initial knee-jerk reactions.

I’ve read studies done with college students participating in a mock prison that showed the natural tendencies for “guards” to treat “prisoners” is a similar fashion. I also believe we tend to observe things through our own experiences. While playing poker with some guys at Ft. Dix, a female entered the room and played a tape of gay porn on the TV and tried to prevent us from turning it off. I was woke up in the middle of the night to a knock at my door. I answered it (keeping with the topic of the familiarity regarding those that serve) in my boxers and t-shirt to find two females at my door that rushed in to try and strip me down. They had a camera too. Someone somewhere has a disturbing photo of me.

I’ve mentioned on other threads that I consider most people between 18-20 to be only half baked, they are more teenager than adult. These are the kind of antics you get from immature people.

Just an explanation of where I was coming.

In light of the additional evidence, I agree with you that this was coordinated. But I still believe age, maturity and training are still factors. I’ve not seen anyone that looks over 30 partaking in the prisoner abuse, which I think is also relevant.

iVillage Member
Registered: 05-11-2004
Wed, 06-16-2004 - 12:22pm
"In light of the additional evidence, I agree with you that this was coordinated. But I still believe age, maturity and training are still factors. I’ve not seen anyone that looks over 30 partaking in the prisoner abuse, which I think is also relevant."


I think that is relevant. The average 18 or 19 year old probably wouldn't have the personal fortitude it would take to question and refuse an order.And lets face it the information we've heard on some of these soldiers it didn't sound like they had much of a moral compass to start with. But I think the aspect that bothers me the most is the enjoyment they seemed to be getting -some of the pictures I've seen it didn't look like they were "just following orders" kwim?

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