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: 05-28-2004
Fri, 06-18-2004 - 6:52pm
I have not read any posts after this but my first thought is: How many presidents were elected AFTER fighting in wars, thus providing them a record. i.e. I have fought a war so I know how horrible it is I will try to prevent this from happening again. Just a thought.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-31-2003
Fri, 06-18-2004 - 7:21pm
Hey britogal2,

This is totally OT, but did you used to go by the name of Britogurl a while back. If so, it is great to see you back on these boards again. :-)

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-17-2004
Fri, 06-18-2004 - 7:22pm
<>

I didn't write this - I think Bush fighting in the war he declared is an excellent idea.

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-17-2004
Fri, 06-18-2004 - 7:25pm
<>

This was not my question. But this would be the war in which to begin that tradition.

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-17-2004
Fri, 06-18-2004 - 7:32pm


I found it amusing the YOU were calling someone else rude. I know I didn't have to answer your question but thought I'd be polite.

iVillage Member
Registered: 02-23-2004
Fri, 06-18-2004 - 8:37pm
< It takes it's bible to the other neighbors and insists they convert. It does not respect other religions - it says God loves only them. >

That's unbelievably twisted logic. We were attacked by an Islamic fundamentalist extremist group for "sullying" the Saudi Arabian earth. How do you glean from that, that we are the ones trying to force OUR religion on anyone? Sorry, it is the Islamic extremists who insist others convert, not the United States. We don't care what religion anyone practices, provided they don't use it as an excuse to slaughter unsuspecting innocent people.



It's not only simplistic but biased and completely inaccurate.

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-04-2003
Fri, 06-18-2004 - 9:29pm
Sorry, I know you didn't write this but I was replying to you in relation to another post.

<>

well there's some here that think so too (myself included) but obviously others don't feel that way.

LOL

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-04-2003
Fri, 06-18-2004 - 9:34pm
Again, I know it wasn't your quote....I responded to you in relation to this quote from someone that you had copied into the post that I had responded to.

Whew! Anyone else confused?

It gets weird when one starts quoting quoted quotes. I could see how you would not want anyone else to think it was your quote as it does not reflect your personal views.

:o)

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-04-2003
Fri, 06-18-2004 - 10:10pm
<>

I can totally understand where you are coming from. The fact that Saddam was a hideous man is an argument that contains a logic that I struggle with myself. I'm not saying that the war is totally free of SOME justification. With every decision there has to be a strong weighing of pros and cons. You came out on one side and I came out thinking that in this case, taking the drastic step of declaring war on Iraq meant that the cons outweighed the pros. I had more support for the War in Afghanistan however.

A lot of Saddam's mass killings (the genocide of the Kurds for example) occurred in the 80s while he was being supported by the USA. But that is beside the point (as is the fact that America is supporting other murderous regimes as we speak). That he was a vicious and cruel dictator I have never once disputed but this war is far from over. Maybe we will have to do the math once the smoke has cleared and make a tally comparing Saddam's estimated death toll against the deaths at American hands and from the subsequent anarchy (and the potential civil war that may be coming).

There is another very strong difference that you did not take into account. Yes Saddam was bad. Yes he was a brutal killer however, HE was a brutal killer which places the blood on HIS hands. With the deaths resulting in this war, the blood is now on America's hands. HUGE difference as far as I'm concerned.

As powerful and well intentionned as America may be....it still cannot control the will and actions of other people. This is something that this administration cannot seem to grasp. The only thing that America can truly control is America itself. In order to get the cooperation of others or to win the hearts and minds of others is to play nice. I'm not talking about playing nice with the terrorists but the war on Terror is more of a war of ideologies NOT individual people. Using violence to stop violence is not a good tactic (unless you know for ABSOLUTELY 100% sure who the terrorists are and that is impossible). The logic behind this war is like slapping your child hard across the face and yelling "HOW MANY TIMES HAVE I TOLD YOU TO STOP HITTING PEOPLE!" Yeah....great way to teach a lesson and lead by example. Killing the wrong people will NOT teach the terrorists any type of lesson at all. All it will do is create more people who sympathize with the terrorists and help fuel the fire of hatred against the USA.





Edited 6/18/2004 10:17 pm ET ET by suemox

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-04-2003
Fri, 06-18-2004 - 10:14pm
<>

I apologize then. It didn't come across to me as being very nice. I obviously must have misinterpreted your intentions.

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