Oh, rumors center around Khalid Sheikh Muhammad
No transcripts so far of Olbermann’s interview with Jonathan Turley last Friday, but there is a video of said interview.
Go to
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/
Beneath Bush’s picture, scroll down to
• Video: Reinventing the Geneva Conventions
and click on it.
Compare what is discussed to what I posted in the OP.
I think there’s a lot of merit in discussing the pros and cons of what Bush is trying to do with this legislation, or if some other legislation is needed (or not). But good luck trying to make a case that “the only reason” he’s doing this is to cover his ass wrt future crimial prosecutions. I haven’t seen an argument yet in this thread that comes close to making such a case.
There are those (Bob Herbert, for example) who say that many folks very high in the Administration are very scared. See his column in today’s NYT.
The idea for a debate in GD is not to simply refer to points others are making elsewhere. I’d love to be able to reply to whatever assertions Mr. Herbert is making, but his column does not appear to available on-line unless I pay. And I’m unwilling to do that.
If YOU have a point to make, make it. But if your only persuasive tectic here is to announce that others are making brilliant points elsewhere that support how you feel… save it.
Response to Sage Rat’s point about the likely political fallout for Bush and his administration should CIA employees and contractors be found criminally liable for employing the interrogation techniques that Bush retroactively seeks to validate, Bricker?
I thought a bit more about whether the change really was to fix things retroactively, or whether it was more targetted for future transgressions.
True, it could be either, but given that the tortures were illegal to begin with and he ordered it anyways, I don’t see why he would try to legalise it now. If he’s ignored the law once, I don’t see any reason he wouldn’t do it again. While as he’s never had an instance where “bad stuff” could potentially effect him, and given that’s possible now and the move to do this is now, seems to make sense that that’s what he’s mostly concerned with.
But you’re OP posits that it’s Bush himself who is scared and that’s what is motivating him to change the law. Are we now switching the debate to lower level CIA guys? That’s probably an easier case to make. But we still have no inights into whether Bush gives a shit about these lower level guys. Frankly, I’m not sure I do, either. They knew exactly what they were doing, if they were in fact doing what has been alleged.
In real world politics, having the lower level guys get punished for wrong doing is fine. But whether that effects the President or not depends on whether it is legal or illegal to do at the time the peons are prosecuted.
No one’s going to try and do anything to the president while it is legal to torture, regardless of whether his peons are all getting sentenced to jail for having done so while it was illegal.
There’s also the issues of Moral Standing and Legacy. From what I can tell of Bush, being thought to be guilty of torture as an indecent and immoral act pretty much means he’s going to Hell. At bare minimum he has to think most people understand that he’s just doing what God wants, or otherwise he’s going to have to think of himself as a bad person. And again, who wants to be the President that we would have impeached if only what he had done could be tried for his actions…?
A. While this is certainly a more possible scenario than Bush himself being criminally charged, it’s still not really very likely overall.
B. If it did happen, the political fallout would not be as severe as you (or SageRat)seem to be suggesting.
Possible, but not really relevant. The question was whether his goal is to protect himself from fallout or not. Given that everything we know about him and the current timing, it seems to be the most probable answer.
And what sort of fallout occurs could very well be being charged with felonies and impeachment or stepping down. We’ve already agreed that he ordered illegal things to happen (i.e. felonies), we’re just not sure of what penalty is attached to that. The only question is whether anyone would be willing to charge the President with that. And that will probably largely depend on how much information about the tortures is actually uncovered. If we end up with a video of a Muslim woman being tortured and raped by CIA officials while trying to get her to give us the location of her husband, that’s going to see a lot of things be put into being that you wouldn’t normally expect. It just depends on what comes out. And what comes out is going to be linked to how secure people feel leeking secret materials–which is linked to the legal status of torture as tested against the Supreme Court and Congress.
Actually, no, I haven’t agreed that he ordered illegal things to happen. I think it’s far from clear that the things he ordered are actually illegal. For example, US law makes “a grave breach” of the Geneva Conventions a felony. So far as I can tell, there is no case law specifying precisely what a “grave breach” is, and how it differs from an ordinary breach. Since it’s unclear that the terror suspects are even entitled to POW protections in the first place, to say that it’s unquestionably a felony is simply wrong. You’d have to show that the conduct not only violated the Conventions, but constituted a GRAVE violation. The POW portion of the Conventions may not apply. The Rome Statute does not apply because of the US’s signing reservations.
It’s all untested legal ground, and please remember that in a criminal case, the rule of lenity applies: a criminal statute is construed strictly against the government. It’s not an evenly distributed burden – the statute must specifically define the prohibited conduct; ambiguity isn’t distributed equally: it all goes against the government in criminal cases.
While it’s certainly POSSIBLE that a court could find guilt under these circumstances, it’s far from certain.
Sure. If more specific, detailed information comes along that reveals unquestionably grave violations, such as you describe above, then I’d certainly concede that Bush was likely trying to cover his, or his underlings’, collective asses with this legislation.
BUT THAT’S UTTER SPECULATION RIGHT NOW. Right this moment, there is no particular evidence that suggests Bush’s motive is eliminating his criminal liability. Suggesting that merely because future grave violations may be discovered, we should NOW conclude that this is his motive… is unsupportable.
Complete non sequitur. Basically all you’re saying is that Bush is a poopypants, therefore anything bad said about him is probably true. In fact, several of us have given specific arguements in this thread why your thesis is probably not true, and all you’ve done is assert that it is without any arguement as to why.
Indeed! We should gather in happy groups and march in cheerful unison, carrying our banner: “Not Indictable!”.
I rather think the opposite, actually, I think GeeDub would love to be indicted by some furriner court full of Swedish liberal activists. It would offer him yet another opportunity to just out his chin in defiance of foreign intervention, and to juxtapose his patriotism against corrupt internationalism. The Emperor has no clothes, he would drape himself with our flag so that his wrinkled winkie isn’t made a public spectacle.
And if he were merely a “poopypants” - oh, my, what a better world it would be!
Every now and then I get tired enough at seeing your brand of non-debate in GD that I feel compelled to point out the lack of actual debate material.
This is a strawman. No one is advocating gathering in groups and marching in unison. It’s true there are arguments that boil down to “not indictable,” but they are being offered in opposition to arguments that appear to boil down to “Indictable!” and are thus relevant.
'luc: You’re beind the times again. Sweden is no longer “liberal”-- haven’t you heard? Sweden: 12 years of leftist rule ends in close election. 