Seventy to 90 percent of the Iraq detentions in 2003 were “mistakes,” U.S. officers once told the international Red Cross. With that high an error rate, treating even ‘suspects’ with a little respect seems warranted.
That’s true, insofar as the OP goes.
But let’s get it straight: do people in this thread support or not support what the US is claiming the authority to do here, and do they think there is no international law or treaty that has any control over it? As I see it, the essential practice that Bush wants to legitimize is:
- quietly seize someone in any country on the planet, who is a citizen of any country on the planet without notifying anyone
- do whatever they want to them (since there is no oversight, any kind words about how torture is wrong are meaningless, especially now that the US has demonstrated an interest in tortures that leave no physical marks: I wonder if that’s just a coincidence, no?) for however long you want
- hold a mock trial with evidence against them they cannot see or rebut and, if, astonishingly, they are found guilty, execute them.
That is basically what the US is claiming to do, all on the grounds of “trust us, we have a good reason.” Now, I generally think that the US does have good reasons, though they are not incapable of giant screwups either. But do you trust, say, China with that sort of standard in play internationally?
I believe do they should be treated with “a little respect”. I thought that is what I’ve been saying in this thread.
It seems like they’ve already had a pretty free hand, including torturing them, sometimes to death. I’m not sure how freer a hand can get than that.
Eat the bodies afterward on national TV ?
That is not what Bush is asking AFAICT, but if you have a cite to back it up, I’m open to considering it. And of course that is not what I’m suggesting at all. I’m not here to defend the particulars of Bush’s proposal, but I strongly disagree with the OP, and do support the general idea of what Bush is trying to do-- set up some ground rules of the CIA that are not limitted to what the miliarty can do.
I don’t trust or expect China to do anything other than what it wants to do, regardless of what the US does.
You quoted me out of context to make a rhetorical point, so I won’t respond substantively to that post.
No I didn’t. You think the CIA should have a freer hand. But it seems that, like China, Bush’s CIA will do anything it wants regardless. What the heck does a legal guideline even mean when you’ve just and will continue to break them?
Of interest, this story, offered without comment:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060918/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/guantanamo_solitary
**
Lawyers go to court for Gitmo detainee **
A freer hand than the military has. This debate needn’t be about Bush. If your only opposition to a particular statue is that you think Bush will abuse it, well, that’s a pretty empty argument. We might as well just toss out the legal code altogether.
That depends: a male statue or a female one?
Seriously though: the CIA already has been exercising outside these laws. Why does expanding them matter? Why legitimize the extremes of what has been done by shoehorning this into a weakening of an existing treaty when we have already demonstrated that we will not respect any law?
You really need cites AGAIN for the treatment of the detainees: treatment that BUSH has talked about and proposed?
Your hope for a harsh interrogation that stops short of torture is pointless. People will not comply unless you make them suffer in ways they cannot stand, and that’s what torture is, what any reasonable person would call torture if it were done to someone they cared about or to themselves. There’s no way around that. You are either going to have to torture them, or you aren’t going to get the effects of torture.
The Bush move has been to focus on suffering that doesn’t cause bodily harm, in part, likely, because it is then harder to hold anyone accountable or prove it was done.
The nuns never could get me to spell correctly. 
I’m not advocating legimizing “the extremes” of anything. I do not support the particulars of Bush’s legislation.
I do not support the particulars of Bush’s legislation.
I don’t accept that premise. But let me ask you this: Let’s fast forward to a time when the US’s detention facility is legitimzed. We have acceptable tribunals set up and speedy trials to determine the detainees status. There is oversight, transparency and Congressional approval. Now, let’s say the CIA captures a high level al Qaeda operative with the cooperation of the securtiy officials of the country he is captured in. How long may the CIA detain and question him until he is transfered to the official detention facility? If you can’t answer that simple question, then I think that tells us why some type of legislation is needed.
For the 5,000th time: I DO NOT SUPPORT THE PARTICULARS OF THE BUSH LEGISLATION. I don’t know who you think you’re debating with, but you’re not debating with me when keep bringing this stuff up.
I don’t know what China will do. However, in WW II, Russian prisoners were treated much worse than American or British prisoners - the reason being that the Soviet Union was not a signatory to the GC, and did mistreat German prisoners. Since it is a matter of self interest, as Powell said, China might well abide by them.
BTW, I’d love a cite that the American public would support the torture of organized crime figures, especially before they were convicted. Most people who object to the “coddling” of criminals object to the availability of movies and TV and the like. I don’t recall anyone saying the absence of a torture chamber amounted to coddling.
Tossing out the legal code is pretty much what Bush has been doing. The only new detail here is his desire to have the legal code changed to match so that he doesn’t have to be annoyed with that liberal crap. There are plenty of reasons to be concerned here other than simple Bush-bashing (and your strawmen on that subject have become increasingly tiresome, you know). The fear of abuse of the law is in fact one of the basic requirements of defining good law, not an “empty argument”. 
To the OP question, the “clarity” Bush is demanding, for regulations that already seem pretty clear and comprehensive to a person who puts morality above self, seem like the occasional demands in the Pit for the moderator community to “clarify” the “don’t be a jerk” rule. If he’s demanding a list of specific actions he can no longer perform (legally), he seems likely to use that, with Gonzalez standing by his side to write the rationalization (and, no doubt, Bricker ready to “explain” it to us), for doing other things instead that the law-writers haven’t thought of. He could authorize torture techniques in clear violation of the spirit as well as the letter of the Conventions by simply shrugging and saying “Hey, it’s not on the list you gave me. C’mon now, guys”.
See why it matters now, John?
I’d like to see where anyone said they would. You’re assuming that anything outside Articel 3 = torture, which is incorrect. But if you’re so sure of yourself, answer the question I asked in my last post. How long can the CIA detain someone overseas?
Bush’s request for “clarification” of the Geneva Convention Articles 2 and 3 is a veiled request for legislation that gives him the authority and/or loopholes to avoid prosecution for war crimes.
It’s been established that the US Military and Intelligence services, and their contractors, have committed suspects to secret prisons overseas, performed extraordinary renditions to third party countries known to employ torture as standard procedure, engaged in humiliating and degrading acts and even torture upon suspects, suspended habeas corpus on said suspects, set up secret courts to prosecute them, witheld evidence from defendants, and lied to deny or justify all of it prior to contrary evidence and judgements coming out.
So why do they need “clarity” all of a sudden? What has changed?
Answer: The evidence part. There’s finally enough evidence to get them in trouble.
So the “clarity” they need is protection from prosecution.
Here’s what “Clarity” means to logical, objective folks: Were suspects really tortured? Does waterboarding and cold cells and deprivation count as torture? Do secret courts with rules that permit secret evidence and indefinite detention violate the Geneva Conventions? But Bush and Rumsfeld are not interested in this kind of “clarity.”
Those in our government who engaged in the “methodologies” in question don’t care, and wouldn’t have cared if word hadn’t ever got out. But now that word is out, all of a sudden we need legislation that makes what we’ve been doing legal, retroactive to 2001. That’s the kind of “clarity” we need, apparently.
Here’s clarity for you: If we showed on Prime Time Network TV treatment of an American POW the same as that we currently give to “enemy combatants,” and the American Public doesn’t react with outrage, then it’s OK. Otherwise, Mr. Bush, either “stop the program,” or resign.
We already did a thread on this, and there is little, if any, evidence that you are correct.
You make the same mistake as the OP. We’re not talking about POWs-- the analogy is a false one.
I was wondering how long it would take for my statements to be misrepresented.
John, my first assertion is a deduction. He didn’t need clarity before, why does he suddenly need it now, and why so urgently? The only difference between then and now is that now there is evidence of torture, secret prisons, and there is a Supreme Court ruling that those things are illegal in spite of the (ahem) tortured logic of Alberto Gonzales.
In other words: If there was no evidence available that these activities were going on, would Bush and Co. be needing “clarity” anyway?
This is a rhetorical question by the way, because the “yes” answer is impossible to support. If you are going to answer “yes,” then you also need to be prepared to explain why he didn’t request it before the evidence came out… when was he going to get around to it, I wonder? Were they so concerned with maintaining the moral authority of the US that they were not going to contintue interrogate prisoners without seeking clarity, even though nobody would know what they were doing? Yeah, right.
It’s nice that you can allude to a thread that supports your argument. Can you link to it?
Secondly, the “mistake” being made here is that I did not draw any analogies, so there is no analogy to be false.
Clarify: Is the treatment degrading and humiliating or not? The POW status of the subject is not an issue. The question is, what treatment would the average American consider degrading and humiliating? I propose letting them view the treatment live on TV, applied to a US serviceman, and then judging what is degradation, humiliation, and torture.
This is not an analogy. It is elimination of a double standard.
So what is my mistake again?
And you definition is a technical one. A particular parsing of meaning that gives shelter and comfort to a position. A prisoner of the United States is our ward, the reponsibility for his well-being ours, and ours alone. Whatsoever legalistic label can be dreamed up is of no consequence, his species is human, his humanity is worthy of respect, or ours is not either.
I didn’t misrepresent your post-- I disagreed with it. If you go to the other thread (it’s still on the front page), I think you’ll see why. The chance of Bush being prosecuted for what was done prior to the *Hamdan *decision is so small as to be essentially Zero.
There is an election coming up and the Dems are likely to win big. Bush wants to push legislation thru now while he has a more friendly Congress. He didn’t need to do this before the *Hamdan *decision and before Congress started drawing up the current legislation, which is much more restrictive than he wants. This has all transpired in just the last few months.
We’re not talking about POWs, so that’s a false standard. And I’m not talking about what Bush has done in the past, but what we might do in the future. For the 5,0001st time: I DO NOT SUPPORT THE PARTICULARS OF BUSH’S LEGISLATION. There is lots of room between what Bush has done (assuming waterboarding was done) and subjecting a prisoner to some intimidation tactics that we might subject any common crimal to, but we are forbidden by the GC (Article 4)to subject POWs to.