|
Banned
|
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by genuinegirly
Host, you reveal a dark and frightening side of things here.
|
But I'm not finished yet, genuinegirly.....if you click on the link in the last quote box displayed in my last post, read the short Newsweek report, and then continue here, you'll risk gaining an appreciation of the "problems" that the policies pursued by the Bush-Cheney administration are finally bringing home to them.
The Senate seems to be going after Morris Davis's former boss, a potential "war crimes king pin", William "Jim" Haynes. I know the news cycle centers around Britney, Jeremiah Wright, Obama's bowling score, Hillary's schedule when she was first lady....the press checks to see if she was at the White House, 11 years ago, on the day Monica was giving oral to Bill, and they thoroughly covered their weekend at McCain's Sedona "cabin", but all this "stuff" might end up in war crimes trials, and thus, we must at least assemble it and take a look see, like it or not....IT'S Soooooo Looonnnng, and we all hate to read Lonnnnnng Posts !!!!
Quote:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080303/tuttle
article | posted February 20, 2008 (web only)
Rigged Trials at Gitmo
Ross Tuttle
....."[Haynes] said these trials will be the Nuremberg of our time," recalled Davis, referring to the Nazi tribunals in 1945, considered the model of procedural rights in the prosecution of war crimes. In response, Davis said he noted that at Nuremberg there had been some acquittals, which had lent great credibility to the proceedings.
"I said to him that if we come up short and there are some acquittals in our cases, it will at least validate the process," Davis continued. "At which point, [Haynes's] eyes got wide and he said, 'Wait a minute, we can't have acquittals. .. We've got to have convictions.'"
Davis submitted his resignation on October 4, 2007, just hours after he was informed that Haynes had been put above him in the commissions' chain of command. "Everyone has opinions," Davis says. "But when he was put above me, his opinions became orders." ...
<h3>Currently, in his capacity as Pentagon general counsel, Haynes oversees both the prosecution and the defense for the Guantánamo commissions. </h3>
|
....but it seems that the President intentionally misled us when he assured us, in the Nov. ,2005 quote in my last post:
Quote:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/...,2446661.story
AWOL military justice
Why the former chief prosecutor for the Office of Military Commissions resigned his post.
By Morris D. Davis
December 10, 2007
<h3>I was the chief prosecutor for the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, until Oct. 4, the day I concluded that full, fair and open trials were not possible under the current system.</h3> I resigned on that day because I felt that the system had become deeply politicized and that I could no longer do my job effectively or responsibly.
In my view -- and I think most lawyers would agree -- it is absolutely critical to the legitimacy of the military commissions that they be conducted in an atmosphere of honesty and impartiality. Yet the political appointee known as the "convening authority" -- a title with no counterpart in civilian courts -- was not living up to that obligation.
In a nutshell, the convening authority is supposed to be objective -- not predisposed for the prosecution or defense -- and gets to make important decisions at various stages in the process. The convening authority decides which charges filed by the prosecution go to trial and which are dismissed, chooses who serves on the jury, decides whether to approve requests for experts and reassesses findings of guilt and sentences, among other things.
Earlier this year, Susan Crawford was appointed by the secretary of Defense to replace Maj. Gen. John Altenburg as the convening authority. Altenburg's staff had kept its distance from the prosecution to preserve its impartiality. Crawford, on the other hand, had her staff assessing evidence before the filing of charges, directing the prosecution's pretrial preparation of cases (which began while I was on medical leave), drafting charges against those who were accused and assigning prosecutors to cases, among other things.
How can you direct someone to do something -- use specific evidence to bring specific charges against a specific person at a specific time, for instance -- and later make an impartial assessment of whether they behaved properly? Intermingling convening authority and prosecutor roles perpetuates the perception of a rigged process stacked against the accused.
The second reason I resigned is that I believe even the most perfect trial in history will be viewed with skepticism if it is conducted behind closed doors. Telling the world, "Trust me, you would have been impressed if only you could have seen what we did in the courtroom" will not bolster our standing as defenders of justice. Getting evidence through the classification review process to allow its use in open hearings is time-consuming, but it is time well spent.
Crawford, however, thought it unnecessary to wait because the rules permit closed proceedings. There is no doubt that some portions of some trials have to be closed to protect classified information, but that should be the last option after exhausting all reasonable alternatives. Transparency is critical.
Finally, I resigned because of two memos signed by Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England that placed the chief prosecutor -- that was me -- in a chain of command under Defense Department General Counsel William J. Haynes. Haynes was a controversial nominee for a lifetime appointment to the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, but his nomination died in January 2007, in part because of his role in authorizing the use of the aggressive interrogation techniques some call torture.
I had instructed the prosecutors in September 2005 that we would not offer any evidence derived by waterboarding, one of the aggressive interrogation techniques the administration has sanctioned. Haynes and I have different perspectives and support different agendas, and the decision to give him command over the chief prosecutor's office, in my view, cast a shadow over the integrity of military commissions. <h3>I resigned a few hours after I was informed of Haynes' place in my chain of command.</h3>
The Military Commissions Act provides a foundation for fair trials, but some changes are clearly necessary. I was confident in full, fair and open trials when Gen. Altenburg was the convening authority and Brig. Gen. Tom Hemingway was his legal advisor. Collectively, they spent nearly 65 years in active duty, and they were committed to ensuring the integrity of military law. They acted on principle rather than politics.
The first step, if these truly are military commissions and not merely a political smoke screen, is to take control out of the hands of political appointees like Haynes and Crawford and give it back to the military.
The president first authorized military commissions in November 2001, more than six years ago, and the lack of progress is obvious. Only one war-crime case has been completed. It is time for the political appointees who created this quagmire to let go.
Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham have said that how we treat the enemy says more about us than it does about him. If we want these military commissions to say anything good about us, it's time to take the politics out of military commissions, give the military control over the process and make the proceedings open and transparent.
Morris D. Davis is the former chief prosecutor for the Office of Military Commissions. The opinions expressed are his own and do not represent the views of the Department of Defense or the Department of the Air Force.
|
Quote:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...,2370010.story
Guantanamo prosecutor turns defense witness
Air Force Col. Morris Davis, who resigned as the prison's chief military prosecutor in October, will testify at a hearing for the driver of Osama bin Laden.
From the Associated Press
February 22, 2008
SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO -- The former chief military prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay said Thursday that he would be a defense witness for the driver of Osama bin Laden.
Air Force Col. Morris Davis, who resigned in October over alleged political interference in the U.S. military tribunals, told the Associated Press that he would appear at a hearing for Salim Ahmed Hamdan.
"I expect to be called as a witness. . . . I'm more than happy to testify," Davis said in a telephone interview from Washington. He called it "an opportunity to tell the truth."
At the April pretrial hearing inside the U.S. military base in southeast Cuba, Hamdan's defense team plans to argue that the alleged political interference cited by Davis violates the Military Commissions Act, Hamdan's military lawyer, Navy Lt. Brian Mizer, told the Associated Press.
Davis alleges, among other things, that <h3>Pentagon General Counsel William J. Haynes II said in August 2005 that any acquittals of terrorism suspects at Guantanamo would make the United States look bad, calling into question the fairness of the proceedings.
"He said, 'We can't have acquittals; we've got to have convictions,' " Davis recalled.</h3>
A Pentagon spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, denied that Haynes made such a comment. Gordon also denied the former prosecutor's allegations of political interference, which he has repeated in newspaper opinion columns and in interviews in recent months.
If the judge rejects the motion to dismiss, Mizer said, the defense will seek to remove two top officials in the military commission system -- legal advisor Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann and Convening Authority Susan Crawford -- from Hamdan's case. This would probably result in further delays to a trial that has been stalled by legal challenges.
It is not clear whether the Pentagon -- which defends the commission system as fair -- will allow Davis to testify. In December, two months after he resigned as the chief prosecutor for the Guantanamo war-crimes tribunals, the Defense Department barred Davis from appearing before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee......
|
Quote:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...,6527443.story
Hamdan's lawyer says advisor is exerting illegal sway for political ends
In a motion to dismiss the case against Bin Laden's ex-driver, he says his Navy superior is pursuing election-year convictions when he is supposed to be impartial.
By Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
March 28, 2008
|
Quote:
http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/20...e_jag_032708w/
Controversial JAG submits retirement papers
By Erik Holmes - Staff writer
Posted : Sunday Mar 30, 2008 10:17:21 EDT
The former chief prosecutor for the Pentagon’s Office of Military Commissions is retiring from the Air Force, ending a distinguished 25-year career punctuated by a recent high-profile dispute with the Pentagon over the fairness of military tribunals for terrorism suspects.
Col. Morris Davis, director of the Air Force Judiciary, said he submitted retirement paperwork March 17 and expects to retire effective Nov. 1. He will leave his job and go on terminal leave in late July, he said.
Davis has been in his current job just six months following his resignation in October as chief prosecutor for the military commissions because of what he said was improper meddling with the prosecution by the convening authority, Susan Crawford, and her legal adviser, Brig. Gen. Tom Hartmann.
The resignation — followed by editorials he wrote for major newspapers criticizing the tribunals — effectively ended his career, Davis said.
“I knew when I quit what the consequences were,” he said. “I pretty much made myself noncompetitive for [Defense Department]-level jobs. I knew it was going to be the end of the line.”
Davis also raised eyebrows in February when he said he plans to testify in the defense for Salim Ahmed Hamdan, Osama bin Laden’s driver and bodyguard. He said he has been asked by the defense to testify at pre-trial hearings that begin April 28. Davis will not testify that the defendant is innocent, he said, but that there are problems with the military commissions process.
But Davis said there has been little backlash over that issue and there is no single reason he decided to retire. Family considerations were a major factor, he said. He and his family want to remain in the Washington, D.C., area, but because of the controversy, he would not be able to move onto other Air Force or Pentagon positions. That means he must retire and seek employment in the civilian sector.
Davis said his work has not been affected and no one has pressured him to retire.
“I’ve had nothing but support from the Air Force JAG community,” he said.
Davis said he is not certain what job opportunities he will pursue next, but he has applied for teaching positions at law schools around Washington. At this point, he said, he has not ruled anything out.
“I guess, worst-case, there’s a new Jiffy Lube up the street,” Davis said. “I like coveralls.”
|
The following is reported by Scott Horton. He recently publihed the most thorough and persuasuve investigative reporting about the conviction and imprisonment of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman. Siegelman was finally released from a Louisiana federal prison after serving eight months, pending the results of his appeal of his convictions:
Quote:
http://harpers.org/archive/2008/04/hbc-90002817
TITLE Torture Lawyer in the Crosshairs
DEPARTMENT No Comment
BY Scott Horton
PUBLISHED April 7, 2008
I reported <a href="http://harpers.org/archive/2008/02/hbc-90002336">here</a> and <a href="http://harpers.org/archive/2008/03/hbc-90002648">here</a> on former Pentagon General Counsel William J. (“Jim”) Haynes II, his covert war against the JAG Corps, and the focal role played by the torture issue in this process. Haynes may have gone off to do lawyering for Chevron Inc., but it seems that as he leaves there is rising interest in getting him to account for his dealings at the Pentagon. The three lawyers who played the most central roles in the process of introducing torture techniques were David Addington, Jim Haynes, and John Yoo.
At least until Philippe Sands’s long-awaited book, The Torture Team, hits the stands, the internal story is still not sufficiently developed to narrow the field to the single key administration lawyer. But while the gregarious Mr. Yoo continues to insert himself into the limelight and is now the best-known, <h3>it’s clear that his role is subsidiary to that of Haynes and Addington.</h3> And Haynes’s role in advocating the decisive Rumsfeld December 2, 2002 order and other documents may yet yield for him the dubious distinction of being the lead torture lawyer.
Over the last four days I’ve shared notes several times with Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff, who tells me he senses a distinct gathering of storm clouds around Haynes. On Sunday, Isikoff reported that Haynes had lawyered up, hiring a prominent criminal defense attorney to advise him. Here’s <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/id/130611">the Isikoff report</a>:
"With little advance notice, Pentagon general counsel William Haynes quietly resigned at the end of February to take a top legal job at Chevron. But Haynes, a close ally of Vice President Dick Cheney, remains a key figure in a sweeping Senate probe into allegations of abuses to detainees in Defense Department custody.
Haynes was thrust back into the spotlight last week after the disclosure of a March 2003 Justice Department memo concluding that federal laws against torture, assault and maiming would not apply to the overseas interrogation of terror suspects. Haynes requested the memo (which was written by the then Justice Department lawyer John Yoo) and he and his boss, the then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, later used it to justify harsh interrogation practices on terror suspects at Guantánamo Bay. The memo’s disclosure raises new questions about the role that Haynes and other Bush-administration lawyers played in crafting legal policies that critics say led to abuses at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere.
Haynes’s departure initially raised concerns about obtaining his testimony without a subpoena, especially after the panel learned that he had retained top criminal defense attorney Terrence O’Donnell, who represented Cheney during the Valerie Plame leak investigation. But O’Donnell told NEWSWEEK that Haynes has agreed to be interviewed, adding that the committee’s probe “had nothing to do” with his resignation."
It’s noteworthy that Terrence O’Donnell also cut his teeth with Cheney in the Defense Department, and was close to David Addington and Jim Haynes. Indeed, O’Donnell preceded Addington as the Pentagon’s general counsel, and was, along with Addington and Haynes, deeply enmeshed in an effort to <a href="http://harpers.org/media/image/blogs/misc/odonnelltdod-gcltrsennunnchsasc070391.pdf">push back against</a>, downsize and potentially even eliminate the JAG Corps.
I’ve been looking into this trying to get a sense of what, exactly, the Armed Services Committee is so eager to discuss with Haynes. Two possibilities emerge.
First is the subject that Isikoff identifies: committee staffers have been carefully assembling secondary accounts concerning Haynes’s role in the process of authorizing highly coercive interrogation techniques, in preparing memoranda, and in soliciting memoranda to cover his advice from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. Haynes’s relationship and dealings with OLC are drawing particular attention. <h3>Similarly, staffers are looking very carefully at Haynes’s prior appearances before the Committee, as well as his appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee in connection with his nomination to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. </h3>
My hunch is that the facts and circumstances surrounding the preparation of the two “torture memoranda,” which I have dubbed Yoo Prime (August 2002) and Yoo Two (March 2003) will be right in the center of questioning. <h3>Something that Haynes said, it seems, doesn’t sit right with the investigators.
The second matter is Haynes’s role in restructuring the Military Commissions at Guantánamo and tasking prosecutors and the legal advisor to the convening authority. This is the point on which the president of the New York City Bar, apparently now joined by other bar associations, is pressing for Haynes’s examination under oath.</h3> Accusations come from the former chief prosecutor, Colonel Morris Davis, among others. Davis has recently stated that he is prepared to submit to a lie-detector test about the matter. Haynes has refused to make public comment, offering only a bland statement that he “disputes” Davis’s charges through a Pentagon public affairs spokesman.
Isikoff quotes O’Donnell as noting that Haynes will appear and testify. Previously, when invited to appear by Senator Diane Feinstein, <h3>Haynes not only refused to appear, he actually ordered uniformed military officers not to appear or testify either, setting the stage for confrontation. Haynes may now be pulling back from that. But as a private citizen and employee of Chevron Inc., his power prerogatives are obviously far more limited.</h3>
|
Quote:
http://www.benferencz.org/arts/83.html
The Legality of the Iraq War
The following essay was written by Ben Ferencz a few days after the secret information contained therein became public. Since the American Society for International Law had published a comprehensive scholarly review of the legal issues as seen from various perspectives, Ferencz submitted his essay, on April 10, 2005.....
.....On August 3, 2002, UK military spokesmen briefed the Pentagon and US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on the status of UK's preparation. The next day they briefed President Bush. Coordinated plans for the attack on Iraq continued, despite a reported private statement by Britain's Foreign Secretary Straw that "Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran." His legal advisers in the Foreign Office had submitted a Confidential 8-page memorandum casting doubt on whether Security Council (SC) resolutions 678 (1990) or 687 (1991), that had authorized members "to use all necessary means" to restore peace in the area" could justify the forceful invasion of Iraq.
Straw made the interesting point that if the SC would again demand that Saddam allow UN inspectors to confirm that he had complied with earlier resolutions to destroy his WMD and, if the inspectors discovered that he had failed to do so, that might justify a renewed use of force. A refusal to accept inspection would also be politically helpful to justify the invasion. The best that could be achieved, however, was SC Res. 1441 of November 8, 2002, again demanding that Iraq disarm and allow UN inspectors to report back within 30 days. The Resolution ''recalled" that Iraq had repeatedly been warned that it would "face serious consequences as a result of its violations". The "decision" taken by the Council was to "await further reports" and then "to consider the situation." Troops were being mobilized for a combined massive military assault but there was still no clear agreement on the legal justification for such action.
<b>On February 11, 2003. Attorney General Lord Goldsmith went to Washington where he conferred with leading lawyers in the Bush administration - including White House lawyer Alberto Gonzales</b>, State Department Legal Adviser William Taft IV, <h3>Jim Haynes</h3>, Adviser for the Defense Department and US Attorney General, John Ashcroft. A 13- page memo by Lord Goldsmith dated March 7, 2003, still expressed doubts about the legality of the contemplated assault on Iraq but seemed to be softer than the firm stand taken by him at the meeting of July 23, 2002.
Ten days later, on March 17, 2003, and just two days before the war was scheduled to begin, Goldsmith made a summary statement in Parliament in which he noted that a reasonable case could be made "for war without a Security Council resolution." William Taft IV is reported to have commented that the Goldsmith statement "sounded very familiar" - presumably because it echoed the US position.
In his report to his Prime Minister, Goldsmith wrote: " I remain of the opinion that the safest legal course would be to secure the adoption of a further resolution to authorize the use of force...nevertheless, having regard to the information on the negotiating history, which I have been given, and to the arguments which I heard in Washington, I accept that a reasonable case can be made that Resolution 1441 is capable in principle of reviving the authorization in 678 without a further resolution." He noted that such an argument could only be sustainable if there was clear evidence of non-compliance and non-cooperation by Iraq. These qualifying conditions were not mentioned in the 1-page summary given to the Cabinet on March 17.
UK military leaders had been calling for clear assurances that the war was legal under international law. They were very mindful that the treaty creating a new International Criminal Court in the Hague had entered into force on July 1, 2002, with full support of the British government. General Sir Mike Jackson, chief of the defense staff, was quoted as saying "I spent a good deal of time recently in the Balkans making sure Milosevic was put behind bars. I have no intention of ending up in the next cell to him in the Hague." On the eve of war, the British Attorney General's abbreviated statement of March 17 was accepted as legal approval of the official US/UK line. Not everyone in the British government could agree that the war that was about to begin was legal.
Prime Minister Blair chose to rely on the summary opinion of his Attorney General rather than the views of the Foreign Office which, ordinarily, would be responsible for opinions affecting foreign relations and international law. On March 18, 2003, the Deputy Legal Adviser to the Foreign Ministry, Elizabeth Wilmshurst, resigned. Her letter of resignation, after more than 30 years of service, stated: "I regret that I cannot agree that it is lawful to use force against Iraq without a second Security Council resolution..." She had, for many years, represented the UK at meetings of the UN preparatory committees for an international criminal court and was recognized as one of the foremost experts on the subject of aggression. Her letter stated..."an unlawful use of force on such a scale amounts to the crime of aggression; nor can I agree with such action in circumstances that are so detrimental to the international order and the rule of law."
Elizabeth Wilmshurst remembered that the Nuremberg trials had condemned aggressive war as "the supreme international crime" That decision had been affirmed by the UN General Assembly and followed in many other cases. She demonstrated Professor Tom Franck's concluding appeal in the 2003 Agora that "lawyers should zealously guard their professional integrity for a time when it can again be used in the service of the common weal."
Benjamin B. Ferencz
A former Nuremberg Prosecutor
J.D. Harvard (1943).....
|
Quote:
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/38604/
Could Bush Be Prosecuted for War Crimes?
By Jan Frel, AlterNet. Posted July 10, 2006.
......Perhaps no person on the planet is better equipped to identify and describe our crimes in Iraq than Benjamin Ferencz, a former chief prosecutor of the Nuremberg Trials who successfully convicted 22 Nazi officers for their work in orchestrating death squads that killed more than one million people in the famous Einsatzgruppen Case. Ferencz, now 87, has gone on to become a founding father of the basis behind international law regarding war crimes, and his essays and legal work drawing from the Nuremberg trials and later the commission that established the International Criminal Court remain a lasting influence in that realm.
Ferencz's biggest contribution to the war crimes field is his assertion that an unprovoked or "aggressive" war is the highest crime against mankind. It was the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 that made possible the horrors of Abu Ghraib, the destruction of Fallouja and Ramadi, the tens of thousands of Iraqi deaths, civilian massacres like Haditha, and on and on. Ferencz believes that a "prima facie case can be made that the United States is guilty of the supreme crime against humanity, that being an illegal war of aggression against a sovereign nation."
Interviewed from his home in New York, Ferencz laid out a simple summary of the case:
"The United Nations charter has a provision which was agreed to by the United States formulated by the United States in fact, after World War II. Its says that from now on, no nation can use armed force without the permission of the U.N. Security Council. They can use force in connection with self-defense, but a country can't use force in anticipation of self-defense. Regarding Iraq, the last Security Council resolution essentially said, 'Look, send the weapons inspectors out to Iraq, have them come back and tell us what they've found -- then we'll figure out what we're going to do. <b>The U.S. was impatient, and decided to invade Iraq -- which was all pre-arranged of course. So, the United States went to war, in violation of the charter."........</b>
|
Quote:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1474337,00.html
Iraq, the secret US visit, and an angry military chief
The legality of the Iraq war exploded on to the agenda last week, causing chaos to Labour strategy. Here we reveal the key US officials who persuaded Britain that invasion was legal - and the astonishing reaction from our military chiefs
Antony Barnett, Gaby Hinsliff and Martin Bright
Sunday May 1, 2005
........ The US connection
On the sixth floor of the State Department in Foggy Bottom sits the recently vacated office of William Taft IV. Despite the peculiarity of his name, few in Britain will have heard of him or his distinguished Republican pedigree.
Yet The Observer can reveal that this great-grandson of a former Republican president played a critical role in persuading Goldsmith's that the war against Iraq was legal. Taft was one of five powerful lawyers in the Bush administration who met the Attorney General in Washington in February 2003 to push their view that a second UN resolution was superfluous.
Goldsmith, who had been expressing doubts about the legality of any proposed war, was sent to Washington by the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, to 'put some steel in his spine', as one official has said.
On 11 February, Goldsmith met Taft, a former US ambassador to Nato who was then chief legal adviser to the Secretary of State, Colin Powell. After a gruelling 90-minute meeting in Taft's conference room 6419, Goldsmith then met the US Attorney General, John Ashcroft, followed by a formidable triumvirate including Judge Al Gonzales, Bush's chief lawyer at the White House.
Goldsmith also met <h3>William 'Jim' Haynes</h3>, who is Defence Secretary's Donald Rumsfeld's chief legal adviser, and John Bellinger, legal adviser to Condoleezza Rice, then the National Security Adviser. This group of lawyers is as renowned for fearsome intellect as it is for hard-line conservative politics. Bellinger is alleged to have said: 'We had trouble with your Attorney; we got there eventually.' From copies of Goldsmith's legal advice to the Prime Minister published last week, it is clear that these meetings had a pivotal role in shaping Goldsmith's view that there was a 'reasonable case' for war.
Goldsmith states: 'Having regard to the information on the negotiating history which I have been given and to the arguments of the US Administration which I heard in Washington, I accept that a reasonable case can be made that Resolution 1441 is capable in principle of reviving the authorisation in 678 [which approved of military force in the first Gulf war] without a further resolution.'
In an exclusive interview with The Observer, Taft has for the first time disclosed details of Goldsmith's mysterious visit to the US capital. Up until now, the British government has been reluctant to give any details of his meeting with the powerful network of lawyers in Bush's inner sanctum who helped persuade him that a second UN resolution was not necessary.
Taft reveals the role Straw played in fixing up these meetings and how pleased the US lawyers were when they heard Goldsmith's final 'unequivocal' advice delivered to Parliament on the eve of invasion.
<h3>Taft, a former deputy defence secretary under President Ronald Reagan, was the man to do that. He had been credited with masterminding the doctrine of 'pre-emption', which argues that a state can take military action to deter an attack. Crucially, Taft was also personally responsible in 2002 for drawing up 1441, which called on Saddam fully to comply with demands to disarm or face 'serious consequences'.</h3>
Speaking from his country home in Lorton, Virginia, Taft explains how Straw set up Goldsmith's visit. 'It was something that grew out of a series of conversations between Secretary Powell and Secretary of State Straw,' said Taft. 'The question was: in particular circumstances - namely the failure of Iraq to comply with resolution 1441 - would the use of force be authorised in the absence of a further decision by the Security Council? We had reached the conclusion that, while a second resolution would be desirable, it was not necessary.
'As a legal matter, 1441 had been drafted in such a way that the Security Council was required to meet and discuss the subject in the absence of Iraq's compliance, but no further decision was needed. Secretary Powell had shared that conclusion with Mr Straw and Mr Straw said his lawyers were looking at this, the Attorney General in particular, and asked, could he meet Secretary Powell's lawyers? Because of that, Lord Goldsmith arranged to talk to us about our views.'
Taft, who has since left the State Department to resume work in the private sector, said: 'Lord Goldsmith met with me and one or or two others in the State Department most of the morning. He then met with our Attorney General, and met with people at the Pentagon - <h3>Jim Haynes</h3>, and Judge Gonzales and John Bellinger.'
<b>To human rights groups and many international lawyers, this roll-call of Republican lawyers will ring alarm bells.</b> Gonzales, the 49-year-old son of immigrants from Texas, has been at the heart of controversy over detainees in Guantanámo Bay and prisoner abuse scandals at Abu Ghraib.
After a political battle in Washington, Bush appointed Gonzales US Attorney General earlier this year, despite leaks of memos from him that appeared to authorise the use of torture on 'enemy combatants' not categorised as prisoners of war. Critics say his interpretation of guidelines on torture paved the way for human rights abuses at Abu Ghraib.
He was criticised after writing a memo to the President in which he said the war against terrorism was a 'new kind of war' that renders obsolete the Geneva Conventions' strict limitations on questioning enemy prisoners and renders 'quaint' some of its provisions.
<h3>Haynes</h3>, another Texan, was appointed to the top legal job in the Pentagon in May 2001 and has been a controversial architect of Bush's 'war on terror' under the wing of Rumsfeld. Like Gonzales, he has been embroiled in the Abu Ghraib scandal. His nomination as a federal judge last year led to a 35,000-name petition being sent to the White House demanding the withdrawal of his name.
Philippe Sands QC, an international lawyer whose book Lawless World re-ignited the row over the Attorney General's legal advice said: 'How delightful that a Labour government should seek assistance from US lawyers so closely associated with neo-con efforts to destroy the international legal order.'
Taft denies that any undue pressure was put on Goldsmith or that the British Attorney General expressed grave doubts about the legality of any war. He said: 'We all told him what our views were in the same way ... although he didn't indicate at the time what his own conclusion would be. Our discussions were very straight up and he was looking to understand our argument.'
Laughing he added: 'I will say that, when we heard his statement in Parliament, which was the next thing we heard about, what he said sounded very familiar.' ......
|
My this is messy, messy. Wouldn't you think, with the military tribunal "show trials" process on Guantonomo in complete implosion mode, it might be time for congress to demand the resignation of Sect'y of Defense Bob Gates, and maybe appoint a house impeachment investigative committee to examine whether or not there are legal grounds to impeach Dick Cheney, as a start?
Last edited by host; 04-07-2008 at 10:58 PM..
|