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Banned
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Originally Posted by cyrnel
martinguerre, I can't find any suggestion in this discussion that we disregard legal conventions and abuse prisoners as a matter of policy. While I'm sure those opinions exist, I'm also sure you could find people willing to give their house keys to OBL/Charles Manson/etc. That might sound ridiculous, but it's only to suggest that putting people you don't understand in a box does nothing but satisfy emotions. It does nothing to help understand or bring people together.
Opinions are a continuum. Neither world domination nor absolute pacifism are going to survive in this world. Somewhere in the middle is civilized due dilligence.
A relatively small number of abuse cases have been reported and abusers are being prosecuted. That's how it should be. On the larger scene we're trying to get a country on its feet while battling a fairly large, apparently well funded organization with no regard for "conventions" of war who's recently declared war on democracy. I'll keep watching out for abuse trends, and hope our leaders do the same, but I know where to keep my focus.
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cyrnel, the Bush administration has "disregard(ed) legal conventions and abuse prisoners as a matter of policy". Bush and all those under him who
are "just following orders" are war criminals !
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<a href="http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=7086">http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=7086</a>
A Nuremberg Lesson Torture Scandal Began Far Above 'Rotten Apples'
......... by Scott Horton January 22, 2005
Los Angeles Times
"This so-called ill treatment and torture in detention centers, stories of which were spread everywhere among the people, and later by the prisoners who were freed ... were not, as some assumed, inflicted methodically, but were excesses committed by individual prison guards, their deputies, and men who laid violent hands on the detainees."
Most people who hear this quote today assume it was uttered by a senior officer of the Bush administration. Instead, it comes from one of history's greatest mass murderers, Rudolf Hoess, the SS commandant at Auschwitz. Such a confusion demonstrates the depth of the United States' moral dilemma in its treatment of detainees in the war on terror.
In past weeks, we have been treated to a show trial of sorts at Ft. Hood, Texas, starring Cpl. Charles Graner and other low-ranking military figures. The Graner court-martial and the upcoming trial of Pfc. Lynndie England are being hyped as proof of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's explanation for the Abu Ghraib prison tortures: A few "rotten apples" -- not U.S. policy or those who created it -- are to blame.
Graner entered a "Nuremberg defense" -- arguing that he was acting on orders of his superiors. This defense was rejected in Ft. Hood as it was in Nuremberg 60 years ago, when Nazi war criminals were found guilty of crimes against humanity. A misled American public can choose to see in the Graner verdict the proof of the "rotten apples" theory and of the notion that Graner and the others acted on their own initiative. But what it should see is a larger Nuremberg lesson: Those who craft immoral policy deserve the harshest punishment.
Consider the memorandum written by Alberto Gonzales -- then the president's attorney, now his nominee for attorney general. He wrote that the Geneva Convention was "obsolete" when it came to the war on terror. Gonzales reasoned that our adversaries were not parties to the convention and that the Geneva concept was ill suited to anti-terrorist warfare. In 1941, General-Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, the head of Hitler's Wehrmacht, mustered identical arguments against recognizing the Geneva rights of Soviet soldiers fighting on the Eastern Front. Keitel even called Geneva "obsolete," a remark noted by U.S. prosecutors at Nuremberg, who cited it as an aggravating circumstance in seeking, and obtaining, the death penalty. Keitel was executed in 1946.
Keitel's remarks were made in response to a valiant memorandum prepared by German military lawyers who argued that the interests of Germany's soldiers, and the interests of morale and good order, would be served by adhering to the Geneva treaty. Secretary of State Colin Powell, echoing the opinions of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and U.S. military lawyers, sent Gonzales a letter that hit the same notes.
Rumsfeld and the White House would have us believe that there is no connection between policy documents exploring torture and evasion of the Geneva Convention and the misconduct on the ground in Guantanamo Bay, Iraq and Afghanistan -- misconduct that has produced at least 30 deaths in detention associated with "extreme" interrogation techniques. But the Nuremberg tradition contradicts such a contention.
At Nuremberg, U.S. prosecutors held German officials accountable for the consequences of their policy decisions without offering proof that these decisions were implemented with the knowledge of the policymakers. The existence of the policies and evidence that the conduct contemplated in them occurred was taken as proof enough.
There is no doubt that individuals like Graner and England should be held to account. But where is justice -- and where are the principles the U.S. proudly advanced at Nuremberg -- if those in the administration and the military who seem most culpable for the tragedy not only escape punishment but in some cases are slated for promotion?
Next week, the world will commemorate the liberation of Auschwitz. A memorial prayer for the death camp victims will be read at the United Nations. German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer will attend to acknowledge that the depravities at Auschwitz were not the work of a few "rotten apples" but the responsibility of a nation. Such a courageous assumption of responsibility should provide a model for the United States, which can still act to salvage its tradition and its honor.
Scott Horton is a New York attorney and a lecturer in international humanitarian law at Columbia University.
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Quote:
<a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/01/19/news/abuse.html">http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/01/19/news/abuse.html</a>
International Herald Tribune.
WASHINGTON Officers of the Central Intelligence Agency and other nonmilitary personnel fall outside the bounds of a 2002 directive issued by President George W. Bush that pledged the humane treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody, Alberto Gonzales, the White House counsel, said in a document.
.
In written responses to questions posed by senators as part of their consideration of his nomination to be attorney general, Gonzales also said a separate congressional ban on cruel, unusual and inhumane treatment had "a limited reach" and did not apply in all cases to "aliens overseas."
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That position has clear implications for prisoners held in U.S. custody at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and in Iraq, legal analysts said.
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At the same time, however, the president has a clear policy opposing torture, and "the CIA and other nonmilitary personnel are fully bound" by it, Gonzales said.
.
The administration's views on torture and the treatment of prisoners have been the focus of the confirmation process for Gonzales, and several senators had pressed him for a fuller explanation, unsatisfied with the answers he gave at his hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
.
His written responses, totaling more than 200 pages on torture and other questions and made public Tuesday by the committee's Democrats, offered one of the administration's most expansive statements of its positions on a variety of issues, particularly regarding laws and policies governing CIA interrogation of terror suspects.
.
Gonzales's acknowledgment that the White House did not consider the CIA bound by the same rules as military personnel is significant because the intelligence agency has used some of the government's most aggressive and controversial tactics in the interrogating of detainees.
.
Martin Lederman, a former Justice Department lawyer who has analyzed the administration's legal positions on treatment of prisoners, said the documents made it clear that the White House had carved an exemption for the CIA in how it goes about interrogating terror suspects, allowing the agency to engage in conduct outside the United States that would be unconstitutionally abusive within its borders. Although the CIA has been largely bound by congressional bans on torture, Lederman said that standard was more permissive than the 2002 directive from Bush.
.
Last month, at the urging of the White House, congressional leaders scrapped a legislative measure that would have imposed new restrictions on the use of extreme interrogation measures by intelligence officers at the CIA and elsewhere. Gonzales said in the newly released answers that he had not been involved in the lobbying effort.
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"But it's notable," Lederman added, "that Gonzales is not willing to tell the senators or anyone else just what techniques the CIA has actually been authorized to use."
.
Indeed, Gonzales declined to say in his written responses to the committee what interrogation tactics would constitute torture in his view or which ones should be banned.
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Some Democrats said they remained unsatisfied with Gonzales's responses. "This was another missed opportunity for straight answers and accountability," said Senator Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont.
.
WASHINGTON Officers of the Central Intelligence Agency and other nonmilitary personnel fall outside the bounds of a 2002 directive issued by President George W. Bush that pledged the humane treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody, Alberto Gonzales, the White House counsel, said in a document.
.
In written responses to questions posed by senators as part of their consideration of his nomination to be attorney general, Gonzales also said a separate congressional ban on cruel, unusual and inhumane treatment had "a limited reach" and did not apply in all cases to "aliens overseas."
.
That position has clear implications for prisoners held in U.S. custody at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and in Iraq, legal analysts said.
.
At the same time, however, the president has a clear policy opposing torture, and "the CIA and other nonmilitary personnel are fully bound" by it, Gonzales said.
.
The administration's views on torture and the treatment of prisoners have been the focus of the confirmation process for Gonzales, and several senators had pressed him for a fuller explanation, unsatisfied with the answers he gave at his hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
.
His written responses, totaling more than 200 pages on torture and other questions and made public Tuesday by the committee's Democrats, offered one of the administration's most expansive statements of its positions on a variety of issues, particularly regarding laws and policies governing CIA interrogation of terror suspects.
.
Gonzales's acknowledgment that the White House did not consider the CIA bound by the same rules as military personnel is significant because the intelligence agency has used some of the government's most aggressive and controversial tactics in the interrogating of detainees.
.
Martin Lederman, a former Justice Department lawyer who has analyzed the administration's legal positions on treatment of prisoners, said the documents made it clear that the White House had carved an exemption for the CIA in how it goes about interrogating terror suspects, allowing the agency to engage in conduct outside the United States that would be unconstitutionally abusive within its borders. Although the CIA has been largely bound by congressional bans on torture, Lederman said that standard was more permissive than the 2002 directive from Bush.
.
Last month, at the urging of the White House, congressional leaders scrapped a legislative measure that would have imposed new restrictions on the use of extreme interrogation measures by intelligence officers at the CIA and elsewhere. Gonzales said in the newly released answers that he had not been involved in the lobbying effort.
.
"But it's notable," Lederman added, "that Gonzales is not willing to tell the senators or anyone else just what techniques the CIA has actually been authorized to use."
.
Indeed, Gonzales declined to say in his written responses to the committee what interrogation tactics would constitute torture in his view or which ones should be banned.
.
Some Democrats said they remained unsatisfied with Gonzales's responses. "This was another missed opportunity for straight answers and accountability," said Senator Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont.
.
WASHINGTON Officers of the Central Intelligence Agency and other nonmilitary personnel fall outside the bounds of a 2002 directive issued by President George W. Bush that pledged the humane treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody, Alberto Gonzales, the White House counsel, said in a document.
.
In written responses to questions posed by senators as part of their consideration of his nomination to be attorney general, Gonzales also said a separate congressional ban on cruel, unusual and inhumane treatment had "a limited reach" and did not apply in all cases to "aliens overseas."
.
That position has clear implications for prisoners held in U.S. custody at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and in Iraq, legal analysts said.
.
At the same time, however, the president has a clear policy opposing torture, and "the CIA and other nonmilitary personnel are fully bound" by it, Gonzales said.
.
The administration's views on torture and the treatment of prisoners have been the focus of the confirmation process for Gonzales, and several senators had pressed him for a fuller explanation, unsatisfied with the answers he gave at his hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
.
His written responses, totaling more than 200 pages on torture and other questions and made public Tuesday by the committee's Democrats, offered one of the administration's most expansive statements of its positions on a variety of issues, particularly regarding laws and policies governing CIA interrogation of terror suspects.
.
Gonzales's acknowledgment that the White House did not consider the CIA bound by the same rules as military personnel is significant because the intelligence agency has used some of the government's most aggressive and controversial tactics in the interrogating of detainees.
.
Martin Lederman, a former Justice Department lawyer who has analyzed the administration's legal positions on treatment of prisoners, said the documents made it clear that the White House had carved an exemption for the CIA in how it goes about interrogating terror suspects, allowing the agency to engage in conduct outside the United States that would be unconstitutionally abusive within its borders. Although the CIA has been largely bound by congressional bans on torture, Lederman said that standard was more permissive than the 2002 directive from Bush.
.
Last month, at the urging of the White House, congressional leaders scrapped a legislative measure that would have imposed new restrictions on the use of extreme interrogation measures by intelligence officers at the CIA and elsewhere. Gonzales said in the newly released answers that he had not been involved in the lobbying effort.
.
"But it's notable," Lederman added, "that Gonzales is not willing to tell the senators or anyone else just what techniques the CIA has actually been authorized to use."
.
Indeed, Gonzales declined to say in his written responses to the committee what interrogation tactics would constitute torture in his view or which ones should be banned.
.
Some Democrats said they remained unsatisfied with Gonzales's responses. "This was another missed opportunity for straight answers and accountability," said Senator Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont.
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