Not only that, but torture is not defined firmly enough in the convention to be prosecutable. Vague laws tend to get struck down by the courts when someone is actually convicted under them. What President Bush did was a legal gray area. He did not just license torture, so much as expand the techniques that could be used. Arguably, our domestic prison system already is in violation of the UN Convention on Torture. But nations get quite a bit of leeway to define what is and isn’t torture.
As for Obama ordering the IRS to discriminate, that would violate the Administrative Procedure Act:
But as in the torture example, there might not be an empowering statute that mandates jail time for violation. Sometimes its just assumed that Presidents won’t do certain things, and if they do, impeachment is a good enough remedy. So what you’d probably see done if there was a smoking gun connecting Obama to IRS targeting after he left office is to pass a censure resolution or do something like pass a law that nothing can ever be named after him since he sullied his office.
" For the purposes of this Convention, the term “torture” means any act by which severe pain or suffering,"
I was hoping you’d give me something I didn’t know. And that the Bush administration didn’t know. What is severe pain and suffering? Are the punishments dished out to recruits in the US armed forces torture, and thus drill sergeants should all go to jail?
I don’t disagree with you that it was wrong, I just don’t see a prosecutable offense here, and I’d note that no one was pardoned. The FBI is quite free to pursue any Bush administration officials they want. The Obama administration did not order anyone to back off.
I was never trying to make equivalency, only pointing out that the circumstances of the different cases make one easier to prosecute than the other. I have also not stated that Obama DID order the IRS to do anything, only that if there was such a paper trail he could go to prison.
Regarding the phony IRS scandal, not a single conservative group was denied their tax-exempt status and at least one liberal group was. Strictly reading of the law, none of the political groups should have had tax-exempt status.
It’s not a derailment to ask what law Obama broke, that he or his officials should be prosecuted for.
Impeachment means, essentially, whatever Congress decides is grounds for impeachment. Prosecution of a past administration isn’t impeachment - you have to have probable cause to show to a grand jury, and cite the specific US law that was broken.
I don’t think it matters if the opposing party takes over the White House or not. If they have actual evidence of a specific crime, they can prosecute. If they don’t, they can’t.
You can create just as strong a case that Obama should be prosecuted for using drones as you could that Bush should have been prosecuted for using waterboarding. Which is exactly the point - neither were clear cut violations of US law. (No, they aren’t, no matter what the extreme partisans on either side say.)
Besides, it just isn’t practical. If Hillary or Sanders wins the White House, he/she isn’t going to try to get Obama indicted, and an attempt to get Bush eleven years after the fact is just petty political revenge. If the GOP wins, Obama will simply proactively pardon himself on his last day in office.
This is a nation of laws, not men. If you want to prosecute someone, pointing to the law they broke is an absolute prerequisite - not just “we won the election, now let’s throw our opponents into prison”. Maybe they can get away with that in the Third World. In the USA - not so much.
As mentioned, there is the same kind of evidence that Obama’s drone strikes are illegalas that waterboarding was illegal. That is to say, nothing that you can bring before a grand jury in either case.
I understand your conviction that what Republicans do is always illegal and what Democrats do is completely different. The thing is that the principle on which this is based will not stand up in a court of law. Even Democratic policticians recognize this, which is why Obama didn’t try to prosecute Bush et al., and why Hillary won’t if she gets elected.
I’ve heard the lefties on the SDMB fulminate about how disastrous it was for the GOP to impeach Clinton for lying under oath, because his popularity went up and he was acquitted and the GOP looked all petty and hypocritical and so forth. It would be the same thing if a Republican President tried to get Obama indicted or Hillary tried to go after Bush after all these years.
A sore winner doesn’t look any better than a sore loser.
No. Your cite is only about using military force in a defined “armed conflict”, nothing more. It isn’t even specific to drones, only the use of force.
You may wish there were no evidence about torture, but that is not the case.
:rolleyes: I go with the facts, and the facts are that Bush tortured, and that torture is a crime, under US as well as international law. Time to drop the handwaving and desperate imagining of equivalency.
No, the principle is political expedience, nothing more, deplorable though it is.
It would indeed.
That’s where a basic respect for justice, and our having a country of laws and not of men (as you so helpfully point out yourself) comes into it.
Didn’t read the cites (there were two of them), did you?
The UN says that waterboarding is illegal, so Bush should be prosecuted. The UN says the drones are illegal, therefore Obama shouldn’t.
Well, good for you.
Stick with the facts even when it comes to Democrats, and we might get somewhere. The facts are that Obama used drones, and that his use of drones is a crime, under US and international law. So both Bush and Obama should be prosecuted.
I look forward to your calls to either impeach Obama, or to have him criminally indicted come January 2017.