babble home
rabble.ca - news for the rest of us
today's active topics


Post New Topic  Post A Reply
FAQ | Forum Home
  next oldest topic   next newest topic
» babble   » current events   » international news and politics   » Legalizing torture under U.S. law

Email this thread to someone!    
Author Topic: Legalizing torture under U.S. law
josh
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 2938

posted 23 September 2006 04:51 AM      Profile for josh     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:

A Republican deal on terrorism trials and interrogations would give President Bush wide latitude to interpret standards for prisoner treatment, even though it doesn't include a provision he wanted on the Geneva Conventions.

The resulting legislation, if passed next week by Congress as Republicans hope, would revive the CIA's terrorist interrogation program because it would reduce the risk that agency workers could be found guilty of war crimes.

The deal also could open the door to aggressive techniques that test the bounds of international standards of prisoner treatment.

. . . .

The GOP bill outlines specific war crimes such as torture and rape, but it also says the president can "interpret the meaning and application" of the Geneva Convention standards to less severe interrogation procedures. Such a provision is intended to allow him to authorize methods that might otherwise be seen as illegal by international courts.


http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/09/22/ap/politics/mainD8KA6MT01.shtml

Gee, I thought it was the job of the courts, not the president, to interpret the law. But apparently the may not get that chance:

quote:

But, legal experts agree, in the end it will be up to the president to determine when most interrogation methods go too far. The bill bans detainees from protesting their detention and treatment in court.



So there you have it. If upheld by the Supreme Court, Bush, or any president, will become the law. Somehow, I don't think this is what folks like James Madison had in mind when writing the Constitution. But it might make the Michael Ignatieffs and Alan Dershowitzs of the world happy.

And where are the Democrats in all this? See the ensuing post.

[ 23 September 2006: Message edited by: josh ]


From: the twilight zone between the U.S. and Canada | Registered: Aug 2002  |  IP: Logged
josh
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 2938

posted 23 September 2006 04:58 AM      Profile for josh     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
From the CBS link:

quote:

"The key to this deal will be whether Congress exercises real oversight over the CIA interrogation program," said California Rep. Jane Harman, who as the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee has been briefed on how the CIA handles terrorism suspects.



Congressional oversight? Thses days, that's an oxymoron if I ever heard one.

quote:

The House response all but settles an intraparty squabble and puts congressional Democrats in a difficult spot six weeks before elections in which they hope to wrest many House and Senate seats from the GOP. Some of the Democrats' liberal constituents dislike the bill, viewing it as a green light for President Bush to resume a CIA policy of interrogating foreign terrorism suspects with harsh techniques that some critics consider torture. But to oppose the compromise, which Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has embraced, would subject them to charges of being soft on terrorism, several analysts said.

Many Democrats would undoubtedly like to change the bill, "but probably those in competitive races will just have to stay behind McCain," said political scientist Bruce Cain, director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California at Berkeley. A House Democratic leadership aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss political strategy, said: "We had really hoped the White House had caved, but it's looking more and more like the senators caved."


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/22/AR2006092201355.html

That last sentence summarizes the Democratic stratgey in a nutshell. It was the Democrats who "caved" from the get go, and now they are the ones in a political corner. Expect some Democrats, like Russ Feingold and John Conyers to vociforiously oppose the bill. But it's likely to become law:

quote:

With Congress planning to adjourn by Sept. 30, it is possible that last-minute snags could complicate or even prevent the bill's passage. But top Democrats in both houses indicated that they will not stand in the bill's path and risk being blamed for its demise.

[ 23 September 2006: Message edited by: josh ]


From: the twilight zone between the U.S. and Canada | Registered: Aug 2002  |  IP: Logged
Stargazer
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 6061

posted 24 September 2006 05:29 AM      Profile for Stargazer     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I see we can always count on the Democrats to stick up for the left.
From: Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist. | Registered: Jun 2004  |  IP: Logged
Michelle
Moderator
Babbler # 560

posted 24 September 2006 06:52 AM      Profile for Michelle   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Whatever gave you the idea that US Democrats are necessarily progressive or left-wing?

Hey josh, have you still got your honourary Canadian passport? You might need it!


From: I've got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Stargazer
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 6061

posted 24 September 2006 07:15 AM      Profile for Stargazer     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Really. We should just give him one now. And Ken Burch.
From: Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist. | Registered: Jun 2004  |  IP: Logged
Michelle
Moderator
Babbler # 560

posted 24 September 2006 07:31 AM      Profile for Michelle   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Oh yeah, Ken too! If for nothing else, then for getting all that spam off TAT this morning.

I think josh got his in 2002 or 2003 if I'm not mistaken. Not sure if there's an expiry date on them.


From: I've got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Stargazer
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 6061

posted 24 September 2006 07:33 AM      Profile for Stargazer     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Expirary dates should be arbitrary. I'll all for extending a Canadian citizenship to Josh.
From: Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist. | Registered: Jun 2004  |  IP: Logged
Michelle
Moderator
Babbler # 560

posted 24 September 2006 07:59 AM      Profile for Michelle   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Well, maybe it's time for another ceremony! Ken, josh, Keith...
From: I've got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Américain Égalitaire
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 7911

posted 24 September 2006 08:41 AM      Profile for Américain Égalitaire   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Folks I gotta tell you its been rough. I've almost assembled my immigration packet and its a big scary step to do it. On one hand, I see Canada drifting dangerously closer to the USA (read the Maude Barlow article on rabble.ca if you haven't already) and wonder if the nastiness will follow me.

On the other hand, there's this and other news that makes me wonder if the USA will ever get out from under this morass of militarism and predatory capitalism (not to mention creeping, now trotting fascism, as long as we're into -isms.).

Let's put it this way - would you tell the average educated American that no matter what Harper's government is doing it still better in Canada in terms of personal freedoms, cultural expression, the rule of law, etc. than the US and one could expect it to remain so?

Anyway, there's the cultural aspects too which draws me closer to Canada.

And look at this too - this is disturbing, albeit understandable:

AWOL Soldier Says He Wants to Come Home

quote:
He said he's making plans now to return to the United States, turn himself in to a special processing unit at Fort Knox for soldiers absent without leave and accept whatever punishment he's given. That could mean a dishonorable discharge, jail time or both.

"I decided that I've got to go back and get this over with once and for all, instead of living in limbo up here forever," Anderson said by phone from Toronto.

Anderson told some Canadian publications this summer that he was considering going home, and his mother in Lexington confirmed the decision earlier this month. Like other news reports about Anderson, the word drew sharp reaction, many Lexingtonians asserting that he should be locked up when he comes back, others calling for leniency.

Whatever the outcome, Anderson's decision apparently has been brewing for some time.

According to the U.S. Army, between 5,000 and 6,000 soldiers have deserted since the invasion of Iraq, although officials say most of them left because of personal problems, not opposition to the war. According to some estimates, about 150 have fled to Canada, as Darrell Anderson did.

Anderson went to Iraq with the 1st Armored Division. He said he was ready and willing to die for his country, and he received a Purple Heart after being wounded by a roadside bomb. But Anderson said he quickly became disillusioned with the war, contending that it was killing innocent Iraqis and doing little to protect America.

While home on leave in late 2004, he decided to flee to Canada rather than return to his outfit and the possibility of another tour in Iraq.

Anderson hoped to build a new life north of the border, away from the war and U.S. prosecution. But it hasn't turned out that way.

Anderson, 24, said his Canadian attorney missed a deadline for filing paperwork to have him declared a refugee, which would have allowed him to remain in the country. Anderson said that not only meant he couldn't qualify for a government work permit -- which he had to have to get a job -- it also opened the possibility that Canadian authorities might deport him, even though he had married a Canadian woman.

He said he's been scraping along, working odd jobs, relying on the generosity of Canadian friends and help from his family back in Lexington.

"Since the refugee application didn't get in on time, I've basically been without a work permit or health care for the two years I've been up here," Anderson said. "I worked a few jobs under the table ... cheap labor, construction, whatever I could find ... just trying to eat. It's not the easiest life."



From: Chardon, Ohio USA | Registered: Jan 2005  |  IP: Logged
Boom Boom
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 7791

posted 24 September 2006 09:55 AM      Profile for Boom Boom     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Senator Frisk (House Majority Leader) was being incredibly evasive on the subject of torture on the George Stephanopolous show this morning. Asked repeatedly if certain torture methods such as water (retention?), cold cells, sleep deprivation and others will continue to be used by Americans as interrogation methods, the evasive bastard said he would not reveal to the terrorists watching the Stephanopolous show exactly what methods that government agencies will use on terror suspects. What an asswipe. He then said that the methods used will all be within the new US guidelines, and that the Geneva Convention's section on torture was too vague to be useful.
From: Make the rich pay! | Registered: Dec 2004  |  IP: Logged
jeff house
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 518

posted 24 September 2006 12:54 PM      Profile for jeff house     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
It is of some importance that US War Resisters like Jeremy Hinzman and Brandon Hughey had their claims turned down because:

"The US does not condone torture."

At their refugee hearings, when any particular atrocity was brought up, such as the Abu Ghraib and associated violations of the Geneva Accords, the respnse from the government of Canada and the Board was that the US is prosecuting the perpetrators, therefore they don't condone these abuses.

So now, Hinzman, Hughey, and others are rejected, and Bush brings in a bill which would shield all the torturers from prosecution. Both future and past.

Here's the Washington Post:

quote:
"The bad news is that Mr. Bush, as he made clear yesterday, intends to continue using the CIA to secretly detain and abuse certain terrorist suspects. He will do so by issuing his own interpretation of the Geneva Conventions in an executive order and by relying on questionable Justice Department opinions that authorize such practices as exposing prisoners to hypothermia and prolonged sleep deprivation. Under the compromise agreed to yesterday, Congress would recognize his authority to take these steps and prevent prisoners from appealing them to U.S. courts. The bill would also immunize CIA personnel from prosecution for all but the most serious abuses


and protect those who in the past violated U.S. law against war crimes.


abuse can continue


From: toronto | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Boom Boom
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 7791

posted 24 September 2006 01:04 PM      Profile for Boom Boom     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by jeff house:

- snip -

Here's the Washington Post:

abuse can continue


Bill Frisk this morning said it's all in the name of "national security".


From: Make the rich pay! | Registered: Dec 2004  |  IP: Logged
jeff house
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 518

posted 24 September 2006 05:07 PM      Profile for jeff house     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
What crime can't be justified by national security?

Half the coups in Latin America had that as their justification.


From: toronto | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
josh
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 2938

posted 24 September 2006 05:25 PM      Profile for josh     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:

As lawmakers prepare to debate the CIA's special interrogation program for terrorism suspects, fewer than 10 percent of the members of Congress have been told which interrogation techniques have been used in the past, and none of them know which ones would be permissible under proposed changes to the War Crimes Act.

Only about 40 of the 535 senators and representatives -- the top members of leadership in both parties, members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, and a small handful of others -- have been briefed on the past practices of the CIA program, which permits more aggressive interrogation tactics than those used by other agencies.

The lack of consultation means that senators and representatives will be voting next week to authorize a program that most know little about, raising questions about Congress's oft-repeated vow to increase its oversight of the war on terrorism.

``You're not having any checks and balances here," said Norman J. Ornstein, a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. ``It sure doesn't look to me as if they stood up and did anything other than bare their teeth for some ceremonial barking, before giving the president a whole lot of leeway. I find it really troubling."

. . . .

Democrats complain that the White House has kept most of Congress in the dark to prevent any criticism of the program.

``They're saying, `Trust us,' " said Representative John F. Tierney, Democrat of Salem, who, as a member of the House Intelligence Committee, has received briefings but is forbidden to talk about them. ``The president is perfectly set with taking as much leeway as he can. That's his history, and it keeps getting us into trouble."

Tierney also blamed congressional leaders for failing to demand more access to information. But some members of the Republican majority say they should be kept in the dark about interrogation methods, since widely distributing such information could result in leaks.

``I don't know what the CIA has been doing, nor should I know," said Senator Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican.



http://tinyurl.com/nbqah


From: the twilight zone between the U.S. and Canada | Registered: Aug 2002  |  IP: Logged
josh
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 2938

posted 28 September 2006 05:46 AM      Profile for josh     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:

Congress took major steps on Wednesday toward establishing a new system for interrogating and trying terror suspects as the House approved legislation sought by President Bush and the Senate defeated efforts to alter the measure.

The House, in a politically charged decision, voted 253 to 168 in favor of extensive new rules governing the questioning of terror suspects and bringing them before military tribunals. The Senate was expected to follow suit on Thursday, which would deliver Republicans a major national security victory before the elections.

. . . .

In the House, 219 Republicans and 34 Democrats, many in more competitive districts, supported the bill; 160 Democrats and 7 Republicans opposed it; the opponents included the Democratic leadership and major party voices on the military and intelligence issues.

. . . .

Leading Democrats said the approach would result in government-sanctioned mistreatment of detainees. They predicted it would be again thrown out by the Supreme Court, leaving the United States remaining without a system to try terrorists after a wait that has already extended five years beyond Sept. 11, 2001.

. . . .

House Democrats were prevented from offering any amendments. Under the Senate agreement, Democrats were allowed four proposed amendments. One, by Mr. Levin, would have adopted the approach endorsed by the Armed Services Committee and the three Republicans who resisted the Bush administration: Senators John Warner of Virginia, John McCain of Arizona, and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. It failed on a 54-to-43 vote, with two Democrats, Senators Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana and Ben Nelson of Nebraska, crossing party lines.

Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, pressed an amendment that would strike a provision from the bill that prohibits terror suspects from challenging their detention in the courts. “What the bill seeks to do is set back basic rights by some 900 years,” said Mr. Specter, who traced the ability to challenge one’s detention to the Magna Carta.


http://tinyurl.com/mgjpt


From: the twilight zone between the U.S. and Canada | Registered: Aug 2002  |  IP: Logged
josh
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 2938

posted 28 September 2006 10:35 AM      Profile for josh     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Beyond torture:

quote:

The legislation before the Senate today would ban torture, but let Bush define it; would allow the president to imprison indefinitely anyone he decides falls under a wide-ranging new definition of unlawful combatant; would suspend the Great Writ of habeas corpus; would immunize retroactively those who may have engaged in torture. And that's just for starters.

. . . .


"But passage of the new detainee legislation will be a different sort of watershed. Now we are affirmatively asking to be left in the dark. Instead of torture we were unaware of, we are sanctioning torture we'll never hear about. Instead of detainees we didn't care about, we are authorizing detentions we'll never know about. Instead of being misled by the president, we will be blind and powerless by our own choice. And that is a shame on us all."

. . . .

Buried in the complex Senate compromise on detainee treatment is a real shocker, reaching far beyond the legal struggles about foreign terrorist suspects in the Guantanamo Bay fortress. The compromise legislation, which is racing toward the White House, authorizes the president to seize American citizens as enemy combatants, even if they have never left the United States. And once thrown into military prison, they cannot expect a trial by their peers or any other of the normal protections of the Bill of Rights.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2006/09/28/BL2006092800790.html


From: the twilight zone between the U.S. and Canada | Registered: Aug 2002  |  IP: Logged
jeff house
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 518

posted 28 September 2006 01:40 PM      Profile for jeff house     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
see we can always count on the Democrats to stick up for the left.

Of course they don't stick up for the left. But this bill means that ANYONE can dissapear at the President's order, and NO ONE who disappears in this way will have ANY access to a court to determine if a mistake has been made.

Apart from Maher Arar, are mistakes made?

quote:
Coalition military intelligence officials estimated that 70 to 90 percent of prisoners detained in Iraq since the war began last year "had been arrested by mistake," according to a confidential Red Cross report

red cross report


From: toronto | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Disgusted
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 12280

posted 29 September 2006 12:37 AM      Profile for Disgusted        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I wonder how long it will be before anti-Bush dissenters and journalists, environmentalists, and other "terrorists" start disappearing down there in the Land of the Free.
From: Yukon | Registered: Mar 2006  |  IP: Logged
josh
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 2938

posted 29 September 2006 03:05 AM      Profile for josh     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Senate passes bill:

quote:

But provisions of the bill came under criticism from Republicans as well as Democrats, with several crossing lines on amendments that failed along narrow margins.

Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, arguing for an amendment to strike a provision to bar suspects from challenging their detentions in court, said it “is as legally abusive of the rights guaranteed in the Constitution as the actions at Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo and secret prisons were physically abusive of detainees.”

The amendment failed, 51 to 49.

Even some Republicans who voted for the bill said they expected the Supreme Court to strike down the legislation because of the provision barring court detainees’ challenges, an outcome that would send the legislation right back to Congress.

“We should have done it right, because we’re going to have to do it again,” said Senator Gordon H. Smith, Republican of Oregon, who voted to strike the provision and yet supported the bill.

The measure would broaden the definition of enemy combatants beyond the traditional definition used in wartime, to include noncitizens living legally in the United States as well as those in foreign countries and anyone determined to be an enemy combatant under criteria defined by the president or secretary of defense.

It would strip at Guantánamo detainees of the habeas right to challenge their detention in court, relying instead on procedures known as combatant status review trials. Those trials have looser rules of evidence than the courts.

It would allow of evidence seized in this country or abroad without a search warrant to be admitted in trials.

The bill would also bar the admission of evidence obtained by cruel and inhuman treatment, except any obtained before Dec. 30, 2005, when Congress enacted the Detainee Treatment Act, that a judge declares reliable and probative.


http://tinyurl.com/hsuv5


From: the twilight zone between the U.S. and Canada | Registered: Aug 2002  |  IP: Logged
josh
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 2938

posted 29 September 2006 06:41 AM      Profile for josh     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:

The MCA continues to recognize that certain conduct is illegal, but attempts to eliminate all judicial remedies for such violations. That means that if the President violates the MCA, he still fails to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, which is his constitutional duty under Article 2, section 3 of the Constitution. (And in case you are wondering, he might well be guilty of a high crime and misdemeanor, but don't hold your breath.) The President wanted it this way: He wanted to be able to say that he was following the law, but, just in case he wasn't, he didn't want to be held to account for it in any court proceeding.

http://balkin.blogspot.com/2006/09/what-hamdan-hath-wrought.html


From: the twilight zone between the U.S. and Canada | Registered: Aug 2002  |  IP: Logged
jeff house
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 518

posted 29 September 2006 11:43 AM      Profile for jeff house     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
The Senate has now passed the bill, meaning it will become law when Bush signs it.

This is a profoundly important moment, when the US openly throws out its legal traditions and embraces quasi-dictatorial rule by the President.

I spend a fair bit of time reading what US law professors are saying about pending legislation.
Overall, they are aghast, and believe that the US is now entering into a new, uncharted era of authority without limits.

Rather than send you to read law articles, here's a good post from a generally moderate civil rights lawyer, Glenn Greenwald:

quote:
I fully understand, but ultimately disagree with, the viewpoint, well-argued by Hunter and others, that this bill constitutes merely another step on a path we've long been on, rather than a fundamental and wholly new level of tyranny. Or, as Hunter put it: "So this is a merely another slide down the Devil's gullet, not a hard swallow." But even with the extreme range of abuses the Bush presidency has brought, this is undeniably something different, and worse, by magnitude, not merely by degree.

There is a profound and fundamental difference between an Executive engaging in shadowy acts of lawlessness and abuses of power on the one hand, and, on the other, having the American people, through their Congress, endorse, embrace and legalize that behavior out in the open, with barely a peep of real protest. Our laws reflect our values and beliefs. And our laws are about to explicitly codify one of the most dangerous and defining powers of tyranny -- one of the very powers this country was founded in order to prevent.


"A wholly new level of tyranny".

He links Bruce Ackerman, a law prof at Yale, who has analysed the bill:

quote:
The compromise legislation, which is racing toward the White House, authorizes the president to seize American citizens as enemy combatants, even if they have never left the United States. And once thrown into military prison, they cannot expect a trial by their peers or any other of the normal protections of the Bill of Rights.

This dangerous compromise not only authorizes the president to seize and hold terrorists who have fought against our troops "during an armed conflict," it also allows him to seize anybody who has "purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States." This grants the president enormous power over citizens and legal residents. They can be designated as enemy combatants if they have contributed money to a Middle Eastern charity, and they can be held indefinitely in a military prison.


Anyone, including a US citizen, "can be held indefinely in a military prison".


The bill also removes the right to habeas corpus.
In other words, if you are an American citizen who the Commander-in-Chief wishes to confine indefinitely, you have no right to appeal to any court. Ever.

A Republican, Arlen Spector, pointed out that tossing out the right to habeas corpus meant a retreat to legal procedures of 900 years ago.

He offered an amendment to retain habeas corpus, but it was defeated. So he voted for the Bush bill. Quite a man of principle, in dangerous times.


From: toronto | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
josh
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 2938

posted 29 September 2006 12:45 PM      Profile for josh     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Actually, Arlen Specter has never been known for his principles. And he actually ended up voting for the bill after his amendment failed.

More on the law:

quote:


The bill rejects the right to a speedy trial and limits the traditional right to self-representation by requiring that defendants accept military defense attorneys. Panels of military officers need not reach unanimous agreement to win convictions, except in death penalty cases, and appeals must go through a second military panel before reaching a federal civilian court.

By writing into law for the first time the definition of an "unlawful enemy combatant," the bill empowers the executive branch to detain indefinitely anyone it determines to have "purposefully and materially" supported anti-U.S. hostilities.

. . . .

University of Texas constitutional law professor Sanford V. Levinson described the bill in an Internet posting as the mark of a "banana republic." Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh said that "the image of Congress rushing to strip jurisdiction from the courts in response to a politically created emergency is really quite shocking, and it's not clear that most of the members understand what they've done."



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/28/AR2006092801763.html


From: the twilight zone between the U.S. and Canada | Registered: Aug 2002  |  IP: Logged
contrarianna
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 13058

posted 29 September 2006 02:24 PM      Profile for contrarianna     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Here is a detailed explanation and some photos of the (now legal) waterboard taken at a museum of Khymer Rouge atrocities: (scroll down a bit)

http://www.davidcorn.com/

Unfortunately, the most direct critique I've seen on US television is a comedy skit by Colbert:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAtnNfVYxeM


From: here to inanity | Registered: Aug 2006  |  IP: Logged
siren
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 7470

posted 29 September 2006 02:33 PM      Profile for siren     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I wonder how this open admission of being a torture state will affect America's relationship with the rest of the world. Canada does not now send people of interest to the US to states which employ the death penalty. Surely we cannot "render" people to the US knowing that as a torture state, the people may well be labeled terrorists and tortured by the CIA or others.

I hope Marc Emery's lawyers are paying attention.


From: Of course we could have world peace! But where would be the profit in that? | Registered: Nov 2004  |  IP: Logged
jeff house
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 518

posted 29 September 2006 02:42 PM      Profile for jeff house     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Good links, ana.

Here's a good article by Dahlia Lithwick, which makes the point that everything which occurred at Abu Ghraib is now legal:


quote:
At the time, we referred to Abu Ghraib as a "scandal." The images were a searing reproach to virtually any American with a soul and a conscience. With a handful of sick exceptions, people who could agree on nothing else could agree that this was an unacceptable way to treat prisoners—regardless of who they were, what they were accused of, or where they were being held.

But in hindsight, Abu Ghraib wasn't a scandal for the Bush administration. It was a coup. Because when the Senate passes the president's detainee bill today, we will, as a country, have yet more evidence that yesterday's disgrace is today's ordinary.


http://www.slate.com/id/2150541/


From: toronto | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
josh
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 2938

posted 30 September 2006 04:35 AM      Profile for josh     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Attorney General attempts to intimidate the judiciary:

quote:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who is defending President Bush's anti-terrorism tactics in multiple court battles, said Friday that federal judges should not substitute their personal views for the president's judgments in wartime.

He said the Constitution makes the president commander in chief and the Supreme Court has long recognized the president's pre-eminent role in foreign affairs. "The Constitution, by contrast, provides the courts with relatively few tools to superintend military and foreign policy decisions, especially during wartime," the attorney general told a conference on the judiciary at Georgetown University Law Center.

"Judges must resist the temptation to supplement those tools based on their own personal views about the wisdom of the policies under review," Gonzales said.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/29/AR2006092900511.html


From: the twilight zone between the U.S. and Canada | Registered: Aug 2002  |  IP: Logged
M. Spector
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8273

posted 01 October 2006 12:03 AM      Profile for M. Spector   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by siren:
I wonder how this open admission of being a torture state will affect America's relationship with the rest of the world. Canada does not now send people of interest to the US to states which employ the death penalty. Surely we cannot "render" people to the US knowing that as a torture state, the people may well be labeled terrorists and tortured by the CIA or others.
It's not just a question of "rendering" people to the USA. There's also the question of sharing "intelligence" with them.

The Arar Commission recommended:

quote:
Recommendation 14

The RCMP and CSIS should review their policies governing the circumstances in which they supply information to foreign governments with questionable human rights records. Information should never be provided to a foreign country where there is a credible risk that it will cause or contribute to the use of torture. Policies should include specific directions aimed at eliminating any possible Canadian complicity in torture, avoiding the risk of other human rights abuses and ensuring accountability.


So far nobody is taking this as a reference to the USA, but I say why the hell not?

We should no more be supplying detrimental information about our own citizens to the USA than to Syria.


From: One millihelen: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
M. Spector
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8273

posted 01 October 2006 12:56 AM      Profile for M. Spector   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Bush has concentrated so much arbitrary power in his Presidency that he can be described in the vernacular as the torturer-in-chief, the jailer-in-chief and the arrestor-in-chief. Who needs the courts? Who needs the constitutional rights to habeas corpus for defendants to be able to argue that they were wrongfully arrested or capriciously imprisoned indefinitely without being charged?

The only light at the end of this Bush tunnel comes from many law professors and knowledgeable members of Congress, such as Senator Pat Leahy (D-VT), who believe that when this law reaches the Supreme Court, its offending and vague provisions will be declared unconstitutional. But that will take two years and in the meantime King George can continue expanding his massively losing tally of arrests, detentions and imprisonment of innocent people who are tortured or mistreated, isolated and defenseless.


- Ralph Nader
quote:
Remember the great harm done to the moral core of our nation when, according to the excited news reports following Kenneth Starr's great work in life, children were asking their parents what oral sex was? Neither do I.

But children can now ask their parents what torture is, how waterboarding works, and when exactly torture is a good thing. "Mommy, we're going to play enemy combatant. Can I have some pliers to pull out Geoffrey's fingernails?"


- David Swanson

[ 01 October 2006: Message edited by: M. Spector ]


From: One millihelen: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
jeff house
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 518

posted 01 October 2006 12:29 PM      Profile for jeff house     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Bush has concentrated so much arbitrary power in his Presidency that he can be described in the vernacular as the torturer-in-chief...

Not just the vernacular. I was amazed to find this article, in the normally-staid Indiana Law Journal. It's title is: "Can the President be Torturer-in-Chief?"

It is written by the Dean of Law, Yale University Law School. Dean Koh was once the highest-ranking human rights official in the United States government.

http://www.acslaw.org/node/2887


From: toronto | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
B.L. Zeebub LLD
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 6914

posted 01 October 2006 02:15 PM      Profile for B.L. Zeebub LLD     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
This law, if it stands would put all American "citizens" in the position of being potential homo sacer. That is, they would be simultaneously bound and defined by the law, but live in a state of exception from that law.

Hannah Arendt argued that it is the protection of civil rights that maintains the protection of human rights and not the other way around. This would be a perfect example. Once stripped of the sovereignty embodied in the concept of individual right and freedoms (the Bill of Rights, etc.) the naked animal life of a person can be dispatched out of the public realm and their bodies literally abused.

Recall that the Nazis would not allow Jews to be sent to concentration camps until their citizenship had been legally stripped. They went through the process of creating a set of laws by which this could be made possible so that the whole thing was codified, rather than simply being a random extralegal act of tyranny.

This law gives power to the President and Secretary of state to define who stands inside the law (is a proper citizen) and who does not - abrogating the whole notion of a inalienable Bill of Rights. It effectively gives them the same power to strip the civil and human rights of their own and other states' citizens that the Nazis held over those that they imprisoned, tortured and massacred. It effectively reverses the principle that the individual is ultimately sovereign and grants that sovereignty to the state.

This is the essence of a fascist, or perhaps a Stalinesque state. And while some might argue that this is unlikely to happen, rights are always about potentialities rather than actualities.

[ 01 October 2006: Message edited by: B.L. Zeebub LLD ]


From: A Devil of an Advocate | Registered: Sep 2004  |  IP: Logged
jeff house
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 518

posted 01 October 2006 04:17 PM      Profile for jeff house     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
This law gives power to the President and Secretary of state to define who stands inside the law (is a proper citizen) and who does not - abrogating the whole notion of a inalienable Bill of Rights

That is absolutely right. And as Nazi legal theorist Carl Schmitt wrote:

"Sovereign is he who decides on the exception".

Schmitt used that to justify Nazi dictatorship. The traditional theory of the US Constitution claimed that the people are sovereign, and that
Congress, Judiciary, and Executive SHARE the sovereignty.


From: toronto | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
jas
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 9529

posted 01 October 2006 07:25 PM      Profile for jas     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
This has to be the singlemost important North American news item of the last seven days, if not more. Has it made front page in any of the dailies? If the scope of this legislation is anything like its commentators suggest, I don't think Canadians can stand to be quite so complacent about this. This has the potential for any political commentator or dissenter to be taken in with no warning and no trial. Taken to one logical extreme, posting anti-American sentiments on Babble could become a torture-able offence, if they feel like it, or happen to not like you, or find you in some other wrong place at the wrong time. What does this mean for protest demonstrations in the future?

And with Harper in power, and deep integration on the map, what's to protect Canadians from this kind of treatment in the near future? Never mind American Democrats, where is the outrage up here? Our no. 1 trading partner/parasite/next-door bully has just become a torture state. This is frightening.


From: the world we want | Registered: Jun 2005  |  IP: Logged
BetterRed
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 11865

posted 04 October 2006 10:37 PM      Profile for BetterRed     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
This article on waterboarding from Washington Post:

quote:
The article said the practice was "fairly common" in part because "those who practice it say it combines the advantages of being unpleasant enough to make people talk while still not causing permanent injury."

The picture reportedly led to an Army investigation.

Twenty-one years earlier, in 1947, the United States charged a Japanese officer, Yukio Asano, with war crimes for carrying out another form of waterboarding on a U.S. civilian. The subject was strapped on a stretcher that was tilted so that his feet were in the air and head near the floor, and small amounts of water were poured over his face, leaving him gasping for air until he agreed to talk.

"Asano was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor," Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) told his colleagues last Thursday during the debate on military commissions legislation. "We punished people with 15 years of hard labor when waterboarding was used against Americans in World War II," he said.



Waterboarding: formerly a war crime

From: They change the course of history, everyday ppl like you and me | Registered: Jan 2006  |  IP: Logged
M. Spector
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8273

posted 13 October 2006 09:09 PM      Profile for M. Spector   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
The Democrats and the War on Civil Liberties
quote:
I'm still wondering where all the damn outrage is, and I'm not talking about the Foley scandal. On September 29, the Senate voted 100-0 in favor of the pork-swollen Pentagon Budget, which earmarked $70 billion for our ongoing military ventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. There was no debate over the appropriations and not one Democrat voted against the egregious spending. On the same day, the Senate also overwhelmingly approved the dismantling of habeas corpus for "enemy combatants". Twelve Democrats sided with the Republicans to allow the US government to detain people arbitrarily and indefinitely.

We shouldn't be all that surprised the Democrats didn't filibuster the awful bill, which also expanded the definition of "enemy combatant" to include anybody who "has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States." Whatever that's supposed to mean. No, the Democrats have long been on the frontlines of the federal government's assault on our civil liberties.

In fact, what we are seeing today is just a logical continuation of a foundation laid during the Clinton era. Before the now well-known Patriot Act there was The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which was signed into law following the Oklahoma City bombing.
....
So, who is honestly supposed to believe that ushering the Democrats back into office in November will bring any sort of legitimate change - in Iraq, or back at home?



From: One millihelen: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
josh
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 2938

posted 04 October 2007 05:22 AM      Profile for josh     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:

When the Justice Department publicly declared torture “abhorrent” in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations.

But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales’s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.

Mr. Gonzales approved the legal memorandum on “combined effects” over the objections of James B. Comey, the deputy attorney general, who was leaving his job after bruising clashes with the White House. Disagreeing with what he viewed as the opinion’s overreaching legal reasoning, Mr. Comey told colleagues at the department that they would all be “ashamed” when the world eventually learned of it.

Later that year, as Congress moved toward outlawing “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment, the Justice Department issued another secret opinion, one most lawmakers did not know existed, current and former officials said. The Justice Department document declared that none of the C.I.A. interrogation methods violated that standard.



http://tinyurl.com/37azqy


From: the twilight zone between the U.S. and Canada | Registered: Aug 2002  |  IP: Logged
N.Beltov
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4140

posted 04 October 2007 06:30 AM      Profile for N.Beltov   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
There's some more information and legal history in a few articles at MR. I started a thread over here. The title is Enemy Combatants, Wholesale Denial of Rights, and US Law.
From: Vancouver Island | Registered: May 2003  |  IP: Logged

All times are Pacific Time  

Post New Topic  Post A Reply Close Topic    Move Topic    Delete Topic next oldest topic   next newest topic
Hop To:

Contact Us | rabble.ca | Policy Statement

Copyright 2001-2008 rabble.ca