Bush & Rumsfeld Out of Control

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Registered: 03-27-2003
Bush & Rumsfeld Out of Control
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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: 03-01-2004
Wed, 06-16-2004 - 2:35pm
You know you just got me thinking. The next freedom to go with this wonderful administration will be the right to vote. He has taken so many of our freedoms away why not that one too. I do not think that because the leader we choose to elect is not the one I want, that we do not have a democracy. I feel that if the leader we have has practically proclaimed himself as King, that we do not really live in a true democracy.

To me a democracy is having all the freedoms our forefathers wanted for us. As time has gone by new freedoms are needed. To keep up with the times. Also some of the amendments in the Constitution should be changed such as the right to bear arms. We are not in the 1700s anymore. There are new consitutional rights that should be added.

Tell me something when do think that enough will finally be enough. Is it when they spy on our telephone conversations, is it when Americans are tortured in prisons. will it be when the police can just bang down your door and arrest you for no known reason.

Just wondering what you thought.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
Wed, 06-16-2004 - 3:06pm

I find this question a little confusing.


Elaine

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-04-2004
Wed, 06-16-2004 - 5:15pm
Well I respect your opinion that it wasn't enough information. I don't think invading a country for no reason other than being afraid is right, but that is not the case. This war has many reasons to it and I think security in my country is worth at least part of the reason to stop those who loathe us and wish us dead, and anyone who will help those to make that a reality need to be taken care of. It is how it should be taken care of that we seem to differ immensely. Sitting in the defensive position forever is only IMHO going to bring on more 9/11's. I don't think this country needs to sit and wait again. The sleeping Giant woke up and now we have a defense and offense to secure it won't happen again.
iVillage Member
Registered: 06-04-2004
Wed, 06-16-2004 - 5:25pm
I am deeply sorry to hear that you have had to deal with such awful circumstances. I do not however view this war as "revenge", since it wasn't Iraq or Saddam who performed those acts on 9/11, it doesn't really fit the "revenge" profile. Although Saddam and Iraqi higher authorities did harbor, agree, support and fund terrorism in some way or another while going against and ignoring the UN resolutions, mass murdering and supressing thier own citizens, transpiring to use WMD's or maybe aiding those who yearned for them to use against not only the US but many other countries. Again it's not revenge, it's stopping something before it happens again and teaching them that we are serious and taking action is what is going to be done. How come no one remembers Bush giving Saddam a last chance to follow the UN resolutions and allowing the inspectors back in otherwise action would take place...Hmmm if Saddam had nothing to hide or wasn't plotting any danger to anyone, why didn't he comply? If Bush wanted the oil that bad and was just a war-mongering animal with a personal agenda, why did he even give Saddam a chance? Why did he go to the UN and plead for their support in this? Why did he even bother if there ran the risk of Saddam complying and ruining his whole conspiracy grown agenda?? It doesn't make sense to me.


Edited 6/16/2004 6:15 pm ET ET by britogal2
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
Wed, 06-16-2004 - 5:28pm

Just the final figures – the actual votes for Bush, Gore & Nader, not including other candidates and not broken down by state as it is in the report


Elaine

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-04-2004
Wed, 06-16-2004 - 5:29pm
I agree, it saddens me everyday! I lost someone in 9/11 and she was a young woman ready for life. I also have a close friend who I went to high school and college with and worked with, whose family is in Afghanistan. They have innocent people there to...I hated seeing him so distraught over possibly losing someone he loved, but he realized it's what had to be done, he is an Afghanistanian American. Tell me something do you think the war in Afghanistan is wrong too?
iVillage Member
Registered: 06-04-2004
Wed, 06-16-2004 - 5:38pm
I am not saying they should like it, but I can't speak for which I have not encountered such issues. I don't have a leader who wants me dead if I so look at him wrong nor have I had to live in such conditions my leader delibrately posed on me for his own fortune. I am not saying any leader shouldn't fend for his own personal fortune while leading, it's the toughest job in the world and there sure isn't lines of people wanting to take on that postion, so yeah he/she should get something personal out of it. If I was in the same exact shoes as an Iraqi citizen I would try and understand that it is what it is. I had the unfortuante circumstance to be lead by an Evil person who wouldn't listen to anyone, who killed my friends and made us live in poverty, who supported those who wished dead to those who don't agree with them, and supported those who commited tragic innocent murders. But you also have to remember that Iraqi people don't get the "full" picture, not even close, they were not permitted to. It's very sad but IMO it is what needs to be done for the sake of humanity, for freedom and future life.
iVillage Member
Registered: 06-04-2004
Wed, 06-16-2004 - 5:53pm
One more thing...you said a life is a life...a terrorist is a life, so in regards to my response to that what do you say about your "life is a life" policy now?
iVillage Member
Registered: 06-04-2004
Wed, 06-16-2004 - 6:03pm
I think there needs to be changes in regards to "keeping" up with the times but changes in both sense. Restricting some because of what has been proven to be too disasterous or has resulted in way too many deaths/illnesses, chaotic endings etc...also new freedoms to keep up with our current world. Just like their is restrictions or rules about those freedoms we already have, you can't scream "Fire" in a public place, nor can you yell "BOMB" at an airport or anywhere else without having consequences...is that lack of freedom or is it stabilizing a society and preventing harm to others? What freedoms do you feel Bush has taken away and what makes your POV higher than Bush's in regards to what our country needs and doesn't need? And why should those rights you believe should be taken away "Right to bare arms", but those Bush feels should, shouldn't be?
iVillage Member
Registered: 06-04-2004
Wed, 06-16-2004 - 6:11pm
I could have sworn it is those who think like you that we shouldn't force our rules or ways of life on others. Are you saying that we should get some police to go into Iraq and arrest Saddam and all his followers and bring them back to the US and put them on trial? Do you feel that would do anything to stop anyone else from supporting or harboring terrorists, they will have to go to trial and would be given an innocent until proven guilty label? Are we supposed to lock them up as you say? Where? What do you think that is going to do in the schems of things, the big picture? This isn't your typical crime, criminal, or situation. Different circumstances send for difference consequences. If we don't get to force all our policies and ways on the Iraqi people then they don't get their "innocent until prove guilty" advantage, nor do they get their time in court. It's not pick and choose here, it goes both ways.

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