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
Sat, 06-19-2004 - 8:02pm
Some people look at it like this, they know basically what Bush has in store for the next 4 years and they do not like it. Sometimes the unknown is better than the known. Yes no one really knows what Kerry would be like but for people who are optimistic they have great hopes set on Kerry. No one believed that Reagan could do anything great he lasted 8 years doing many things. People had high hopes for the first Bush and he only lasted 4 years.

If Bush is the best thing for this country I think this country needs to change its standards. If the only thing Bush can do is take us into one war after another it is time for a change. I HEAR how great the economy is doing but do not actually SEE the results.

Hey I think I answered my own question on how to vote.

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-16-2004
Sat, 06-19-2004 - 8:04pm
My point is that we should not interchange the term 'islamic fundamentalist' and terrorist. They are two separate concepts. Some terrorists are islamic fundamentalists, and some islamic fundamentalists are terrorists. Al Queda is definitely a terrorist group. Whether all its members are are islamic fundamentalist is unlikely given their behaviour. I think it regroups terrorists with different motivations. History is NOT a justification for anything. The point was that we should not finger-point at a faith. Nobody started to make wide statements about catholics in the US when the IRA was actively making terrorist acts. Thank God for that (I'm catholic..)

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-16-2004
Sat, 06-19-2004 - 8:16pm
Hmm. I'm 'across the river' from an important Government city in Ontario.. I also don't work for the government (at least directly). Yes, we also have tough choices here. But my mind is already made up. It's as someone else on this board said : "the lesser of two evils'. My concern is a 'deal' between the Bloc and the new conservatives, which is spoken of all the time in the french-canadian news. From even the french ads of the Bloc, one can tell that there IS an agreement of some kind. That's pretty scary to me..
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2003
Sat, 06-19-2004 - 8:25pm
Thanks for the enlightenment. It pays to read the fine print before signing on the dotted line.
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2003
Sat, 06-19-2004 - 8:31pm
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There you go with absolute value judgments again. It really depends on the situation and criteria; even then I might plead IDK.


Edited 6/19/2004 8:53 pm ET ET by hayashig

iVillage Member
Registered: 05-28-2004
Sat, 06-19-2004 - 8:40pm
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/News/Editorial+%2F+Commentary/D05336EAEED7BB1886256EB70037C0DB?OpenDocument&Headline=PRESIDENT+GEORGE+W.+BUSH%3A+Credibility+gap

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Credibility gap

THE BIPARTISAN COMMISSION investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks has punctured a persistent myth that President George W. Bush has cultivated to justify the war in Iraq: that there was a working relationship between al-Qaida and Iraq.

The independent commission concluded this week that there was "no credible evidence that Iraq and al-Qaida cooperated on attacks against the United States."

But this is a myth that the president and Vice President Dick Cheney are loath to let die. Mr. Bush reiterated Thursday that "there was a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida." And Mr. Cheney said earlier this week that Saddam Hussein "had long-established ties with al-Qaida." The White House even maintained that its claims were not at odds with the commission's findings because the president had not linked Saddam directly to 9-11.

No wonder more than half the American people are confused and tell pollsters that Iraq was supporting al-Qaida or directly involved in the 9-11 attacks. No wonder many Americans who don't buy the connection believe that the president has a growing credibility gap.

The 9-11 commission said that contacts between Osama bin Laden and Iraq in the early 1990s "do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship." Bin Laden probably met with an Iraqi agent in 1994 in Sudan, requesting help in setting up training camps and obtaining weapons. But the commission concluded that "Iraq apparently never responded."

The much-ballyhooed Prague meeting between Mohammed Atta, the lead 9-11 pilot, and an Iraqi intelligence agent apparently never happened. The CIA and FBI have long said the meeting never occurred, but hawks in and out of the administration have clung to and perpetuated the fiction. The 9-11 commission sided with the spooks.

There is an important difference between the faulty claim about an al-Qaida-Iraq connection and the faulty claim about weapons of mass destruction. The WMD claim was grounded in information from the intelligence community. The claim about the al-Qaida-Iraq connection was not. It was promoted by hawks in the Pentagon, headed by Undersecretary Douglas Feith, who maintained the intelligence community had missed important evidence of a link.

There is another important difference. The discovery that there were no WMDs was made after the war. By contrast, critics of the war - including this page - challenged the al-Qaida-Iraq claim long before the first shot was fired.

Ironically, as the commission reported, the al-Qaida-Iraq connection has become a self-fulfilling prophecy with terrorists pouring into Iraq to attack U.S. forces. But that is a situation caused by Mr. Bush's war, not prevented by it.

If Mr. Bush wants to build support for the difficult occupation of Iraq and, if he seeks to inspire trust at home and abroad for the war on terrorism, he should start by making sure he is getting the right facts and getting the facts right.

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2003
Sat, 06-19-2004 - 8:40pm
<< I mean it seems to me it puts the contract into a grey area.>>

I didn't read carefully enough. You raise an excellent point considering that Bush declared victory a year ago. What kind of limbo will the troops be in when the government is handed over to the Iraqis, but the troops are forced to remain. Could that be considered "war".

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2003
Sat, 06-19-2004 - 8:46pm
<>

As you know GWB has no use for the rest of the world if it doesn't play his game. I think they stopped playing a while ago. It's really hard to turn on a trading partner, although we did exchange "french fries" for "freedom fries". The best the world can do is make it difficult for GWB. He will take his "mandate" and play at home.

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2003
Sat, 06-19-2004 - 8:49pm
<>

Sounds very promising to me; think I will follow your advice.


iVillage Member
Registered: 05-11-2004
Sat, 06-19-2004 - 9:14pm
That's exactly how I feel Freeofhate. I know what I'm getting with Bush and I'm already absolutely certain I don't like it.

-commited to a war I don't believe in.

- Not enviromentally friendly

-commited to the patriot act which I do not agree with as it is right now.

- against same sex marriages

- anti-abortion

-stem cell research

- Tax cuts I do not agree with.

-If he's re-elected there will be cuts to reading and head start programs with I feel are critical.

-prefers abstinence only sex ed.

-handling the terrorist issue in a way I don't agree with.

-Does not have a good working relationship with most countries of the world.

With Kerry as with all presidential candidates there is an unknown element. But I am very hopeful that he will do better then Bush.

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