The link in the OP goes to an article in Harper’s that discusses Cheney’s appearance on ABC, and seems to suggest that Cheney’s admissions in that interview provide all that’s necessary to lock him up.
Out of a strong, widely-shared suspicion that Cheney’s was the active role, and Bush’s a passive one, despite the official WH org chart.
Hilarious. Of course, it utterly fails to address the facts. Taken at its evident meaning, you would urge us to abandon the specific legal protections afforded to every other criminal defendant in the country, and carve out a special “But they’re terrorists - Yuck!” rule. :rolleyes:
Oh, they are, they are. The UN Convention on Torture. The hangup would be the US’ refusal to sign on to the International Court of Justice treaty, but that can be overcome by the universal jurisdiction clause.
You left out the part about the government body being under the orders of the defendant to provide exactly that rationalization, not to mention the part about it running against our fundamental notion of fairness NOT to prosecute him for it.
IOW, “sigh”.
Piffle. If you wish to advance the notion that Mr Cheney consulted an unbiased and wholly candid expert in complete innocence and ignorance of the advice he was going to recieve, you may, of course, do so. I believe it would be greeted with the respect and attention it deserves, that is to say, mockery, scorn and derision.
I, for one, refuse to accept the idea that the first purpose of the law is to provide mental gymnastics so that its practitioners may keep thier sophistic skills of rationaliization in tip-top shape.
I’ve no doubt you are quite correct, Mr Cheney will skate. If not the device of “estoppel”, then another mechanism will be offered in its place, a mechanism with the intelligence of a man and the morality of a hammer. Such is the law, she is as we have made her, and no better than she should be.
You say it didn’t happen that way. But so far as I can tell, you’re basing that belief on nothing more than your sense of Dick Cheney. (“He’s just the sort that would do such a thing!!”)
Is there anyone, anywhere, who has said anything along the lines of, “Yes, I heard Dick order the Justice Department lawyers to change their opinion,” or “I heard him order them to come up with an opinion that said waterboarding is legal?” In other words, what evidence would you place in front of a jury so that they could find that such an event had occurred? Is there a memo? A letter? Testimony about a well-timed furious glare? Something?
I don’t think there is. I think your view is simply that Cheney must have done it that way, that any other theory is worth only " mockery, scorn and derision." And that view is based on the idea that Cheney was a piece of shit, and that’s just the kind of thing that pieces of shit do.
Right?
Blah, blah, blah. The law is to be applied equally. I think the immorality here is in your full and knowing acquiesence to the repulsive idea that just because you don’t like the man that stands accused, we should abandon the procedural protections that are available to other defendants. If this were some homeless guy arrested for urinating in an alley after a cop told him to go piss out of sight in that alley over there, you’d be apoplectic with rage at the inherent unfairness of the prosecution. And at its heart, this kind of due process defense is about precisely that: unfairness. It’s unfair for the Justice Department to prosecute someone for conduct the Justice Department assured him was legal. And it’s unfair to assert as a given that he ordered the Justice Department to render that opinion without a scrap of evidence showing it to be so.
Not guilty by reason of folksy charm. And stupidity.
**
ElvisL1ves** is correct regarding the UN Convention Against Torture treaty. It is basically the statute 2340 (2340 is our implementation of the CAT, although other countries could interpret it differently and thus make it easier to violate; the US really emphasizes “severe”). Some other countries, under a theory of universal (global) jurisdiction, can prosecute anyone in the world who violates it. Spain was in the works of doing this until they voted against having universal jurisdiction. It’s possible other countries could, but the politics of doing so make it unlikely.
Basically, the ICY prosecutes States/Nations. The International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutes individuals for war crimes. The ICC has universal jurisdiction, but it’s tricky and being a signatory to the ICC helps (the US is not). Even so, if a crime were committed outside the US in a member state, the ICC could prosecute. Recently, someone filed a complaint against Cheney and the gang for the renditions into signatory countries that involved claims of torture.
Lastly, the US also has the War Crimes Act. Relative to waterboarding, it basically covers everything 2340 covers, but, in 2000 it was amended to include any violation of Article 3 of the Geneva conventions (and rewritten in 2006 to include only a serious violations). Therefore, in 2000-2006 it covered violations of “degrading” treatment (degrading not considered serious violation). While just guessing, waterboarding would definitely be degrading and thus a war crime, because degrading is a lower threshold than cruel and inhumane treatment and severe mental/physical pain. I’m not sure how it works to prosecute someone under that Act today, for crimes committed during 2000-2006.
Interestingly enough, the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility under Obama and Holder reviewed the conduct of Bybee and Yoo in preparing the legal conclusions at issue here. And they concluded that although they may have shown poor judgment in reaching the conclusions they did, their conduct was not anything that demanded any professional sanctions whatsoever.
This, in my view, effectively kills the suggestion that Cheney ordered the memos or the memowriters to reach conclusions that are absurd on their face, because that would amount to a serious breach of professional responsibility.
And this effectively kills the idea that the looming hand of Cheney dictated this review result, because it was a review undertaken after Holder was the AG and Obama was the President.
Gonzales “couldn’t recall” any of that under oath, you know. And don’t be silly about any third party being present.
That’s what investigations are for, Counselor. :rolleyes: You start with the prima facie stuff, which is there, and then whip out the subpoenas.
To be convincing, you must first be able to represent a differing opinion accurately and fairly. You might give it a try someday. Meanwhile, you’re table-pounding.
Including the law against ordering or performing torture.
And such things, and whitewashes too, never, ever occur, do they? :rolleyes:
Your stated position on the law is, as is distressingly common for someone who obviously knows better, completely indistinguishable from IOKIYAR.
As Yoo’s memo says:
Obtaining a criminal conviction for Dick Cheney, when that memo existed and he can testify that he relied on it to guide his actions, is as close to impossible as it’s likely to get in the world of U.S. criminal law.
OK, that makes sense. Thanks.
Is it your position, Brick, that waterboarding does not constitute prolonged mental harm, or that a reasonable person could believe that it does not?
That a reasonable person could believe that it does not, especially after doing things like surveying professional literature, consulting with experts, .or reviewing evidence gained from past experience.
In a word: Bullshit.
Even if they surveyed professional literature, consulted with experts, and reviewed evidence gained from past experience… and discovered that it does?
Past experience and literature, if it included the Tokyo war crimes trials, would lead to the conclusion that it does have those effects and that using it is a major crime. Indeed, the only *reason *to use it is because of a belief that it would have those effects.
Let it go, Bricker, you’re only embarrassing yourself.
Sorry, I had limited access yesterday. That said, Damn you, Harper’s Magazine and Scott Horton, for putting the following paragraph into the magazine article, especially with a link that led me to believe that the former vice president’s alleged remarks would be found therein:
And damn you, me for taking it at face value and passing it on as a rebuttal to Bricker’s legalistic analysis. I really ought to know better.
So, retracted, I guess.
In Horton’s “defense,” such as it is, here’s the section that he apparently characterizes as “[going] on to explain that Justice Department lawyers had been instructed to write legal opinions to cover the use of this and other torture techniques after the White House had settled on them”:
(on the last page of the transcript you provided)
I’ll concede that he was not so careless as to explicitly state the words Mr. Horton put into his characterization, and repeat my retraction.
But you’re right, Bricker. If it’s true that it happened that way, it is a good point. I’m not particularly hopeful that we’ll ever get proof that it is, short of a deathbed confession by Cheney himself. And don’t even hope to get one any time soon.
I do hope that we get one after he’s spent several long years living with the debilitating and painful effects of a disease that does not respond to treatment. 
'Cos I don’t believe in an “eternal afterlife” brand of Hell; so I can only wish for him the type that actually exists.
It’s one thing if top administration officials went to their lawyers and said “write memos justifying waterboarding.” It’s another if they say “we think we should be able to waterboard detainees, can you make a legal case for us being allowed to?” and the lawyers, being part of an administration of yes-men, come to a conclusion they think will make their bosses happy, even if their conclusions were legally dubious.
Not so fast! Cheney turned to a member of the Federalist Society, an august group whose reputation for strict non-partisanship is the stuff of legend!
And it’s a third thing if they said, “Here is a description of a technique called ‘waterboarding.’ Does it violate the law?”
If either your second thing or my third thing happened, then Cheney would seem to be legally in the clear.
I agree that if your first scenario happened, then Cheney could be prosecuted.
But what I’ve never heard from anyone is the slightest hint of evidence that it happened, other than an abiding conviction that it’s just the sort of thing Cheney would do.
You mean conservatism? rimshot