[QUOTE=Harper’s Magazine]
Yesterday the Obama Administration, after a delay of several years, released an important document relating to the Bush Administration’s torture policies: a memorandum by Philip Zelikow, a high-ranking State Department lawyer and confidant of Condoleezza Rice, which aggressively refuted Justice Department memoranda that sought to authorize the use of thirteen “enhanced interrogation techniques” used by the CIA.
[/QUOTE]
I would like to discuss these questions:
Should Bush-era officials, at any level, be charged with war crimes, by U.S. prosecutors, for authorizing (or using) the procedures that Zelikow criticized and apparently refuted?
Is the Obama administration vulnerable to similar charges?
I don’t think there is any doubt that these “enhanced interrogation techniques” (hereinafter referred to as EITs or just plain torture) were used by military and intelligence officers during the Bush administration, and were authorized at the highest levels.
In my opinion, it would be better for the U.S. if such a trial were conducted fairly and openly by our own government, rather than by any sort of world court that might claim jurisdiction. Better for our reputation throughout the world. and better for our own country’s soul. However, it would also be better if it could be pursued in some non-partisan way, perhaps by a special prosecutor appointed by Congress, rather than by the Justice Dept.
They could also pursue whether any of these same practices have been used by the current administration, and what Obama officials, if any, might also be guilty of war crimes.
I think it should be done. I have not been comfortable at all with torture being done in my name, for my supposed “safety” (and for which some of my civil liberties have also been curtailed). But I am not holding my breath, and will be quite surprised if anything like this does happen.
I will also be curious to see if this story generates any lasting interest in the media.
Roddy
They should be prosecuted and punished, but they won’t be. Remember how Obama officially, permanently shielded the torturers for their crimes? There is no hope for justice, only for the continuing victory of evil and further atrocities. It’s only going to get worse from here as America slides further and further to the Right and towards barbarism. Years from now I’m sure that we’ll look back to the good old days where we only tortured people on rare occasions and bothered to hide it.
But yes; shooting someone in the head IS better than torturing them. Not that Obama is much of an improvement on Bush, including on the subject of torture.
How would a “world court” claim jurisdiction? And even if they did, how would they enforce their decision against the U.S.? Would this “world court” send troops into the U.S. to arrest Dubya? I think we all know how Bush’s Secret Service detail would react to that, to say nothing of the U.S. military’s reaction.
The only circumstance in which I can see that working is if the U.S. government decided to submit to the world court’s jurisdiction. And that would be a very, very silly thing for the current sitting President to do. Not only would it be handing your political opposition a stick to beat you with, Presidents tend to be protective of Presidential power and prerogative because they know that they’ll be out of office eventually, and the political winds might start to shift the other way.
What benefit do you see from such an enhancement to the U.S.'s reputation? I doubt the U.S. would garner new allies solely because of such prosecution. I think the opposition to the U.S. is more sincere than that. I think it is usually based on the fact that they have interests that don’t align with the U.S.'s. That won’t change simply because the U.S. prosecutes alleged war criminals.
:dubious:
Good luck with that. If you thought Ken Starr was a debacle, I can’t imagine what a war crimes prosecution would be like.
Some sort of prosecution and punishment would indicate that America actually disapproves of torture and murder, instead of just being embarrassed that what we’ve been doing became so public. Of course, we really *don’t *care about anything but the embarrassment, so there will be no prosecutions or even investigations.
:rolleyes: So dislike of America because of its barbaric behavior isn’t “sincere”. People don’t care if we torture and murder their friends and relatives; only about their “interests”.
I think you confuse America’s sociopathic attitudes as being the human norm. For most people, torture and murder matter.
I’ll go further out on a limb and say that anyone that uses “enhanced interrogation techniques” or condones an underling doing the same should be executed.
If that means Bush spends his last moments staring down the barrels of half a dozen rifles, so be it.
The answer to both questions is obviously no. There is nothing to be gained by domestic prosecution, and the notion of submitting to any sort of “World Court” is too stupid to dignify with reasoned response.
If the current administration were foolish enough to try this before the election, they’d just hand the White House to the GoP. If Obama is reelected, doing it in his second term might get him impeached.
At this level, you’d be wrong about that. Obama ain’t going to let this happen because doing it would be political suicide. It’s a liberal wet dream, and a poorly conceived one at that.
I find it sad that you think living up to our founding values is a “liberal wet dream”. It’s obvious that Obama is not going to greenlight a prosecution, or he would have done so years ago. The question is whether the Bush Administration officials responsible for torture should be prosecuted.
I think it is pathetic that you’d condone an unprecedented prosecution of a former POTUS to further your political agenda. That is the only potential “benefit” in play here.
Are you insane? We condone a prosecution of a former President, VP, and probably a bunch of others because the committed crimes against both domestic and internationals laws and treaties. You may forget, but I haven’t, that quite a lot of prisoners died in Afghanistan and elsewhere while being interrogated.
Unfortunately the only was our favorite criminals might ever face prosecution is if they ever set foot outside the US and another nation has the guts to arrest them and to deliver them to an international tribunal. Scant odds of that, though.