Torture and war crimes.

[McCulloch]

some in the United States and abroad are doing the math and demanding an accounting. They reject the argument that the horrific 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington excuse the shredding of the rule of law that came with the "war on terror."

They say the legitimization of torture, the trampling of civil liberties, the violation of international law, and a dubious declaration of war that claimed more than 4,000 American and 100,000 Iraqi lives are not just miscalculations but crimes.

War crimes, in fact. "This administration did more than commit crimes," argues Scott Horton, an expert on international law and contributing editor of Harper's magazine. "It waged war against the law itself."

[...]

So the dilemma remains: can a country that has allowed the rule of law to be flouted continue as a credible democracy, setting an example to ordinary citizens and claiming the moral high ground in the international community?

"The fact that a huge slough of people were engaged in torture and conspiracy to torture, with impunity, says something about the rule of law in this country," laments Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights. "If we think we need to torture someone for any reason we'll do that. What does that say to any police precinct?"

Or to America: "I'm very pessimistic on what I considered an emerging sense of fundamental rights," he says. "In some ways civilization has been set back at least 100 years."

[...]

THE ARGUMENT IS that the Bush Administration's "war on terror" prompted skewing of intelligence that led to war in Iraq, an operation that cost not only blood but treasure, draining an estimated $3 trillion in U.S. taxpayer dollars; that it also created homeland surveillance programs not seen since the witch-hunts of the anti-communist McCarthy era; and that the administration enabled "rendition" flights of terrorism suspects like Canadian Maher Arar to countries where they could be tortured, and that it created secret "black sites" where suspects were held and interrogated. Those suspected of terrorist links could be seized and brought before military tribunals, their constitutional rights suspended.

Of these excesses, torture has had the most traction in legal circles, and seems most likely to bring scrutiny, if not justice, to some members of the Bush administration.

British international lawyer Philippe Sands, author of Torture Team: Uncovering War Crimes in the Land of the Free, spent months interviewing those he says created a regime of abusive interrogation.

He concluded the lawyers who advised Bush, Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and others, were guilty of giving the unsound advice that terrorism suspects had no right to protection under international law, a view that the U.S. Supreme Court overruled in 2006.

By that time, Sands contends, a "torture team" had made abuses systematic, eliminating the constraints of the Geneva Conventions, the 1984 treaties prohibiting torture, and even the army's own Field Manual.

[...]

Last spring, a Spanish court began a criminal investigation of six former Bush officials on suspicion of aiding and abetting torture. Italy has convicted 23 Americans, mainly CIA operatives, in absentia, for kidnapping a Muslim cleric from Milan in 2003 and sending him to allegedly be torture in Egypt.

[...]

the overarching principle remains: "we must hold those responsible for torture accountable. We cannot put the genie back in the bottle. Perhaps we can deter future conduct if we send a message to the world that torturers, like the pirates of old, are enemies of all humankind and will be brought to justice no matter what their power or high office."

[...]

Questions for debate:

1. Were the leaders of the USA in violation of international law in Iraq?
2. Did the American leaders commit ethical violations in their pursuit of a war in Iraq?
3. Should the leaders be held legally and criminally accountable for their actions?

[East of Eden]

some in the United States and abroad are doing the math and demanding an accounting. They reject the argument that the horrific 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington excuse the shredding of the rule of law that came with the "war on terror."

They say the legitimization of torture, the trampling of civil liberties, the violation of international law, and a dubious declaration of war that claimed more than 4,000 American and 100,000 Iraqi lives are not just miscalculations but crimes.

War crimes, in fact. "This administration did more than commit crimes," argues Scott Horton, an expert on international law and contributing editor of Harper's magazine. "It waged war against the law itself."

[...]

So the dilemma remains: can a country that has allowed the rule of law to be flouted continue as a credible democracy, setting an example to ordinary citizens and claiming the moral high ground in the international community?

"The fact that a huge slough of people were engaged in torture and conspiracy to torture, with impunity, says something about the rule of law in this country," laments Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights. "If we think we need to torture someone for any reason we'll do that. What does that say to any police precinct?"

Or to America: "I'm very pessimistic on what I considered an emerging sense of fundamental rights," he says. "In some ways civilization has been set back at least 100 years."

[...]

THE ARGUMENT IS that the Bush Administration's "war on terror" prompted skewing of intelligence that led to war in Iraq, an operation that cost not only blood but treasure, draining an estimated $3 trillion in U.S. taxpayer dollars; that it also created homeland surveillance programs not seen since the witch-hunts of the anti-communist McCarthy era; and that the administration enabled "rendition" flights of terrorism suspects like Canadian Maher Arar to countries where they could be tortured, and that it created secret "black sites" where suspects were held and interrogated. Those suspected of terrorist links could be seized and brought before military tribunals, their constitutional rights suspended.

Of these excesses, torture has had the most traction in legal circles, and seems most likely to bring scrutiny, if not justice, to some members of the Bush administration.

British international lawyer Philippe Sands, author of Torture Team: Uncovering War Crimes in the Land of the Free, spent months interviewing those he says created a regime of abusive interrogation.

He concluded the lawyers who advised Bush, Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and others, were guilty of giving the unsound advice that terrorism suspects had no right to protection under international law, a view that the U.S. Supreme Court overruled in 2006.

By that time, Sands contends, a "torture team" had made abuses systematic, eliminating the constraints of the Geneva Conventions, the 1984 treaties prohibiting torture, and even the army's own Field Manual.

[...]

Last spring, a Spanish court began a criminal investigation of six former Bush officials on suspicion of aiding and abetting torture. Italy has convicted 23 Americans, mainly CIA operatives, in absentia, for kidnapping a Muslim cleric from Milan in 2003 and sending him to allegedly be torture in Egypt.

[...]

the overarching principle remains: "we must hold those responsible for torture accountable. We cannot put the genie back in the bottle. Perhaps we can deter future conduct if we send a message to the world that torturers, like the pirates of old, are enemies of all humankind and will be brought to justice no matter what their power or high office."

[...]

Questions for debate:

1. Were the leaders of the USA in violation of international law in Iraq?
2. Did the American leaders commit ethical violations in their pursuit of a war in Iraq?
3. Should the leaders be held legally and criminally accountable for their actions?

No, no, and no. This is an attempt to criminalize political differences.

"By that time, Sands contends, a "torture team" had made abuses systematic, eliminating the constraints of the Geneva Conventions," Al-Quada type vermin are not included in the descriptions of who is covered in the Geneva Conventions, just like the WWII German sabatuers FDR had executed about a week after their capture.

Most of what is falsely called torture was really humiliation. Torture is pulling out someone's fingernails.

What does this have to do with religion?

[McCulloch]

Al-Quada type vermin are not included in the descriptions of who is covered in the Geneva Conventions, just like the WWII German sabatuers FDR had executed about a week after their capture.

I guess that I must have missed the part of International Law that allows exceptions for those people who you can label as vermin. What were the official justifications for the war in Iraq? Have we found any WMDs yet?

Most of what is falsely called torture was really humiliation. Torture is pulling out someone's fingernails.

Torture, according to the United Nations Convention Against Torture, is:

...any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him, or a third person, information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in, or incidental to, lawful sanctions.

What does this have to do with religion?

I suppose that the possibility of an illegal and immoral war, instigated by the most openly Christian president of the United States would be topic for religion and politics.

[East of Eden]

I guess that I must have missed the part of International Law that allows exceptions for those people who you can label as vermin.

The Conventions specify a number of ways combatants can be covered, but in general they must wear some recognizable insignia denoting their combatant status and fight according to the rules of war. The Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters simply do not qualify.

What were the official justifications for the war in Iraq?

According to then President of the United States, George W. Bush and then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Tony Blair, the reasons for the invasion were "to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), to end Saddam Hussein's support for terrorism, and to free the Iraqi people." Funny how those supporting the Bosnia war (no UN approval, no threat to us) on human rights grounds cared nothing for Iraqi human rights. We now have one of the freest, most democratic governments in the Middle East. I believe that situation is part of the reason the Iranians are waking up and opposing 'government by mullah'.

Have we found any WMDs yet?

They may have been taken out of the country, or we may have had bad intel. Perhaps if the Democrats hadn't gutted our inteligence capabilities int he '70s it woudln't have happened.

Torture, according to the United Nations Convention Against Torture, is:

...any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him, or a third person, information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in, or incidental to, lawful sanctions.

Not that I care much what the UN thinks, but our enhanced interrogation efforts didn't cause 'severe pain or suffering'. This is torture: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/ye ... ture1.html

I suppose that the possibility of an illegal and immoral war, instigated by the most openly Christian president of the United States would be topic for religion and politics.

Illegal and immoral are your opinions. I would say the same for Roe v. Wade.

You hit on much of the opposition to Bush, his open Christian faith upset anti-Christian bigots. I'm not saying you are one of them.

[micatala]

I guess that I must have missed the part of International Law that allows exceptions for those people who you can label as vermin.

The Conventions specify a number of ways combatants can be covered, but in general they must wear some recognizable insignia denoting their combatant status and fight according to the rules of war. The Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters simply do not qualify.

I would agree, but probably for different rationale than those held by East of Eden.

In my view, Al-Qaeda is a criminal organization. I reject the notion that "war" is the correct term to apply. I think characterizing the mission to annihilate Al-Qaeda as a war plays into their thinking. They want it to be a war because that plays into their notion that they are warriors against an oppressive regime. They are really criminals and should be treated as such in my view.

Now, with respect to the torturing of such individuals, I would say that in either case torture is not something we should do. If we do not apply the Geneva convention to these individuals, I think I am probably OK with that. However, we don't torture other criminals so we should not be torturing these criminals either.

It has nothing to do with them. It has everything to do with us, who we are as a nation, the values we espouse, and how we will perceived, not by the criminals, but by other civilized nations.

What were the official justifications for the war in Iraq?

According to then President of the United States, George W. Bush and then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Tony Blair, the reasons for the invasion were "to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), to end Saddam Hussein's support for terrorism, and to free the Iraqi people." Funny how those supporting the Bosnia war (no UN approval, no threat to us) on human rights grounds cared nothing for Iraqi human rights. We now have one of the freest, most democratic governments in the Middle East. I believe that situation is part of the reason the Iranians are waking up and opposing 'government by mullah'.

First, I think your suggestion that those who opposed the Iraq war "cared nothing for Iraqi human rights" is not only false, but amounts to an insulting cheap shot.

I would agree we now have a government in Iraq that is orders of magnitude more preferrable to Saddam. I would also say, although we may have gotten to where we are now without invading Iraq, that is certainly only speculation on my part. We can't know for sure if we could have engineered Saddam's ouster by other more peaceful means.

However, I will point out that our actions and the good that resulated came at a significant cost. Tens of thousands of people were killed. In addition, we should consider ourselves lucky things are now as good as they are. WE had no guarantee going in of a positive outcome and the decision should not be measured solely by what has happened, but by the potentially worse results that easily could have occurred and that we risked by going to war.

We could have ended up with a two or three way civil war with a resulting blood bath of potentially hundreds of thousands dead.

We could have ended up with a regime in Iraq, or parts of Iraq, every bit as bad as Saddam.

We could have ended up with many more American dead and an ongoing insurgency that continued to take significantly more Iraqi and American lives than is occurring even now.

Have we found any WMDs yet?

They may have been taken out of the country, or we may have had bad intel. Perhaps if the Democrats hadn't gutted our inteligence capabilities int he '70s it woudln't have happened.

Or Bush and Cheney may have had no concern about what the intelligence said even if it was more accurate. Perhaps they simply had their mind made up for other reasons.

You brought up Bosnia, which is I think a fair point. Let's bring up Sudan. If Bush was really concerned about human rights and atrocities, why not do something about Sudan? How Robert Mugabe in Zaire?

Torture, according to the United Nations Convention Against Torture, is:

...any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him, or a third person, information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in, or incidental to, lawful sanctions.

Not that I care much what the UN thinks, but our enhanced interrogation efforts didn't cause 'severe pain or suffering'. This is torture: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/ye ... ture1.html

I suppose that the possibility of an illegal and immoral war, instigated by the most openly Christian president of the United States would be topic for religion and politics.

Illegal and immoral are your opinions. I would say the same for Roe v. Wade.

You hit on much of the opposition to Bush, his open Christian faith upset anti-Christian bigots. I'm not saying you are one of them.

Personally, I think Bush's religion is irrelevant. My beef is that his administration acted in an incompetent manner, and not just with respect to Iraq. His administration consistently made decisions without doing their homework, and consistently allowed ideology to trump reality.

[micatala]

some in the United States and abroad are doing the math and demanding an accounting. They reject the argument that the horrific 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington excuse the shredding of the rule of law that came with the "war on terror."

They say the legitimization of torture, the trampling of civil liberties, the violation of international law, and a dubious declaration of war that claimed more than 4,000 American and 100,000 Iraqi lives are not just miscalculations but crimes.

War crimes, in fact. "This administration did more than commit crimes," argues Scott Horton, an expert on international law and contributing editor of Harper's magazine. "It waged war against the law itself."

[...]

So the dilemma remains: can a country that has allowed the rule of law to be flouted continue as a credible democracy, setting an example to ordinary citizens and claiming the moral high ground in the international community?

"The fact that a huge slough of people were engaged in torture and conspiracy to torture, with impunity, says something about the rule of law in this country," laments Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights. "If we think we need to torture someone for any reason we'll do that. What does that say to any police precinct?"

Or to America: "I'm very pessimistic on what I considered an emerging sense of fundamental rights," he says. "In some ways civilization has been set back at least 100 years."

[...]

THE ARGUMENT IS that the Bush Administration's "war on terror" prompted skewing of intelligence that led to war in Iraq, an operation that cost not only blood but treasure, draining an estimated $3 trillion in U.S. taxpayer dollars; that it also created homeland surveillance programs not seen since the witch-hunts of the anti-communist McCarthy era; and that the administration enabled "rendition" flights of terrorism suspects like Canadian Maher Arar to countries where they could be tortured, and that it created secret "black sites" where suspects were held and interrogated. Those suspected of terrorist links could be seized and brought before military tribunals, their constitutional rights suspended.

Of these excesses, torture has had the most traction in legal circles, and seems most likely to bring scrutiny, if not justice, to some members of the Bush administration.

British international lawyer Philippe Sands, author of Torture Team: Uncovering War Crimes in the Land of the Free, spent months interviewing those he says created a regime of abusive interrogation.

He concluded the lawyers who advised Bush, Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and others, were guilty of giving the unsound advice that terrorism suspects had no right to protection under international law, a view that the U.S. Supreme Court overruled in 2006.

By that time, Sands contends, a "torture team" had made abuses systematic, eliminating the constraints of the Geneva Conventions, the 1984 treaties prohibiting torture, and even the army's own Field Manual.

[...]

Last spring, a Spanish court began a criminal investigation of six former Bush officials on suspicion of aiding and abetting torture. Italy has convicted 23 Americans, mainly CIA operatives, in absentia, for kidnapping a Muslim cleric from Milan in 2003 and sending him to allegedly be torture in Egypt.

[...]

the overarching principle remains: "we must hold those responsible for torture accountable. We cannot put the genie back in the bottle. Perhaps we can deter future conduct if we send a message to the world that torturers, like the pirates of old, are enemies of all humankind and will be brought to justice no matter what their power or high office."

[...]

Questions for debate:

1. Were the leaders of the USA in violation of international law in Iraq?
2. Did the American leaders commit ethical violations in their pursuit of a war in Iraq?
3. Should the leaders be held legally and criminally accountable for their actions?

To answer the questions for debate.

1) Not sure, but I think probably yes. I would ask for a description of the appropriate international laws before answering definitively.

2) Yes.

3) Yes, if it is determined they violated either U.S. or international law.

[McCulloch]

Published on Friday, October 7, 2005 by The Independent
Bush: God Told Me to Invade Iraq
President 'revealed reasons for war in private meeting'
by Rupert Cornwell

President George Bush has claimed he was told by God to invade Iraq and attack Osama bin Laden's stronghold of Afghanistan as part of a divine mission to bring peace to the Middle East, security for Israel, and a state for the Palestinians.


http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1007-03.htm

[East of Eden]

I would agree, but probably for different rationale than those held by East of Eden.

In my view, Al-Qaeda is a criminal organization. I reject the notion that "war" is the correct term to apply. I think characterizing the mission to annihilate Al-Qaeda as a war plays into their thinking. They want it to be a war because that plays into their notion that they are warriors against an oppressive regime. They are really criminals and should be treated as such in my view.

I have to completely disagree with that. On 9/11 we lost the most citizens from a hostile attack on US territory since the Civil War. Hitler was never able to do that. If they had a nuke they would use it. To compare them to the Mafia or similar is ridiculous. Al-Qaeda terrorists are the front line storm troopers of the re-emerged Islamic war against the West. This is a much more serious problem that we faced in the Cold War, as the Soviets were somewhat rational and not suicidal.

One term I do object to is saying we are in a war against terrorism. Terrorism is simply a tool the jihadists use, if they found a better one they would use it. We are really in a war against radical Islam, but few will admit to that due to political correctness and cowardice.

Now, with respect to the torturing of such individuals, I would say that in either case torture is not something we should do. If we do not apply the Geneva convention to these individuals, I think I am probably OK with that. However, we don't torture other criminals so we should not be torturing these criminals either.

It has nothing to do with them. It has everything to do with us, who we are as a nation, the values we espouse, and how we will perceived, not by the criminals, but by other civilized nations.

Not even if we had a jihadist with information that we could use to stop another 9/11 or nuclear attack?

Personally I wouldn't care if the military executed all the scum in Gitmo, after they ceased to be useful.

First, I think your suggestion that those who opposed the Iraq war "cared nothing for Iraqi human rights" is not only false, but amounts to an insulting cheap shot.

Then please explain the concern for Muslims in Bosnia but not in Iraq. Saddam killed more Muslims than anyone since the French in Algeria.

I would agree we now have a government in Iraq that is orders of magnitude more preferrable to Saddam. I would also say, although we may have gotten to where we are now without invading Iraq, that is certainly only speculation on my part. We can't know for sure if we could have engineered Saddam's ouster by other more peaceful means.

Who knows, you could ask that question about Hitler in WWII also.

However, I will point out that our actions and the good that resulated came at a significant cost. Tens of thousands of people were killed.

Far less than would have died if Saddam had remained in power. He killed something like 600,000 of his own people.

In addition, we should consider ourselves lucky things are now as good as they are. WE had no guarantee going in of a positive outcome and the decision should not be measured solely by what has happened, but by the potentially worse results that easily could have occurred and that we risked by going to war.

We could have ended up with a two or three way civil war with a resulting blood bath of potentially hundreds of thousands dead.

We could have ended up with a regime in Iraq, or parts of Iraq, every bit as bad as Saddam.

We could have ended up with many more American dead and an ongoing insurgency that continued to take significantly more Iraqi and American lives than is occurring even now.

That's the law of unintended consequences, which applies to pretty much everything the government does.

Or Bush and Cheney may have had no concern about what the intelligence said even if it was more accurate. Perhaps they simply had their mind made up for other reasons.

You brought up Bosnia, which is I think a fair point. Let's bring up Sudan. If Bush was really concerned about human rights and atrocities, why not do something about Sudan? How Robert Mugabe in Zaire?

Bad people, but because you can't do everything it doesn't mean you do nothing.

Personally, I think Bush's religion is irrelevant. My beef is that his administration acted in an incompetent manner, and not just with respect to Iraq. His administration consistently made decisions without doing their homework, and consistently allowed ideology to trump reality.

I'm much more concerned with our current incompetent president who is allowing his left-wing ideology to trump reality.

[East of Eden]

Published on Friday, October 7, 2005 by The Independent
Bush: God Told Me to Invade Iraq
President 'revealed reasons for war in private meeting'
by Rupert Cornwell

President George Bush has claimed he was told by God to invade Iraq and attack Osama bin Laden's stronghold of Afghanistan as part of a divine mission to bring peace to the Middle East, security for Israel, and a state for the Palestinians.


http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1007-03.htm

Does this bother you also?


By Kathleen Gilbert

WASHINGTON, D.C., August 20, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A sudden shift towards religiously-charged rhetoric in President Obama's stumping for health care reform continued yesterday in a telephone conference, in which the president said that "we are God's partners in matters of life and death."

Obama told the virtual gathering of Jewish rabbis - as many as 1000, according to the Washington Jewish Week news service - that he was "going to need your help in accomplishing necessary reform."

Washington, D.C. Rabbi Jack Moline posted some of the president's statements in a series of live tweets, which went viral on the Internet before Moline deleted almost all the posts hours later. A handful of other Jewish clerics tweeted the event, which was not publicized by the White House.

[McCulloch]

On 9/11 we lost the most citizens from a hostile attack on US territory since the Civil War. Hitler was never able to do that. If they had a nuke they would use it. To compare them to the Mafia or similar is ridiculous. Al-Qaeda terrorists are the front line storm troopers of the re-emerged Islamic war against the West. This is a much more serious problem that we faced in the Cold War, as the Soviets were somewhat rational and not suicidal.

We are discussing the war in Iraq not Afghanistan. Has a link between Saddam and Al-Qaeda been made? Did Iraq, before the US invasion, support militant radical Islam? Were Iraqis involved in the 9/11 attack?

Personally I wouldn't care if the military executed all the scum in Gitmo, after they ceased to be useful.

Are you a Christian? Is this the attitude taught to you by Jesus?

Does this bother you also? [President Obama invoking religious support for health care reform]

Yes it does.