So they deliberately set up a situation where the Constitution didn’t apply. Why would they do that if it was legal?
The UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment is a ratified treaty and therefore part of US law. You’ll find everything you need in it.
They didn’t set up situations where the Constitution, and treaties ratified according to it, didn’t apply legally, only ones where it didn’t apply de facto - where there was no danger of getting adverse enforcement by the competent authorities.
I’m not sure that’s completely correct. If the authors of the Constitution didn’t want to make the distinction between citizens and persons, then why does the 5th Amendment begin with…No*** person ***shall be held to answer…
Clearly they wanted the 5th to apply to everyone.
Yet the 14th Amendment states; …No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States…
Here, they want to apply it to citizens, not merely resident “people.”
This was dishonest when Bush used it. The protections unavailable to aliens outside the U.S. were the natural result of the U.S. not exercising control in other countries due to the sovereignty of those countries. The fiction that Guantanamo was not under U.S. control is part and parcel with the desperate need for the U.S. to engage in ineffectively, barbaric practices as directed by ignorant men lacking in both honesty and knowledge. It is exactly the sort of dishonest dishonor that got us into Iraq and ultimately has led to the creation of ISIS.
Because the Fourteenth was written with the understanding that the Fifth was already in force with the intent to prevent the (Secessionist) states from abridging the rights of citizens, such as the right to vote.
Immunities was not an immunity from torture that was already covered under cruel and unusual punishments.
1: The authors of the Constitution and the authors of the 14th Amendment aren’t the same “they”.
B: No, they aren’t saying they want it to apply to only citizens, they’re saying the States shall not make or enforce any law which abridges the privileges or immunities (the first Eight Amendments of the Constitution/Article IV, Section. 2) of citizens of the United States.
If I’m reading John Bingham correctly this is the first(?) attempt at Incorporation . . . then come the Slaughterhouse Cases.
CMC fnord!
The American Constitution is completely irrelevant. Torture is banned as an international norm with no exceptions permitted, and it’s literally one of the few things virtually every civilised country in the world agrees on along with prohibitions against genocide and slavery. It does not matter one iota whether the torture was happening in sites within the territory of the United States, outside of it, whether those being tortured were American citizens, citizens of American allies, or citizens of America’s enemies. Its use is ipso facto illegal no matter who is doing it or to whom. As noted previously by a poster, the Japanese use of waterboarding, the very same technique the CIA was using, was enough to convict Japanese military leaders and have them sentenced to death in the aftermath of WW2. There is literally no reasonable ambiguity as to whether the CIA was acting against well-established international norms.
Any discussion of what the United States Constitution permits—and to be honest I’d be astonished if the Constitution did actually permit non-citizens to be tortured, seeing as the Anglo-American legal tradition had already prohibited the use of torture for centuries before it was written, as noted earlier—serves as nothing more than a distraction from what is a factually, morally and legally an entirely one-sided debate.
Very true.
The point of the Constitution excursion was that after pretending that the torture did not occur, Terr threw in the extraneous invalid claim that the Constitution protected only citizens.
Not “largely.” Without exception.
Those who differ are welcome to infer an assertion about their humanity.
By the way, what the fuck is the “severe” death?
Wrong. Read again what I wrote.
How is this even a discussion worth having?
Waterboarding is torture. I welcome anyone who disagrees with that statement to go get waterboarded.
We used waterboarding and other techniques which similarly fall under the purview of “torture” to anyone who isn’t a freakin’ psychopath on enemy combatants.
Torture is not okay. There are a handful of extremely fringe cases where it is acceptable (such as where you need the answer ASAP to save someone’s life, and the answer is easily checked and verified - in other words, life or death, and they can’t lie about it without you knowing), and those did not apply here. I welcome anyone who disagrees with this statement to go get waterboarded (preferably by enemy combatants, who aren’t going to stop when you can’t take it any more).
How have we had 14 pages of people justifying this shit?
And what you wrote was irrelevant. Your point that Constitutional protection ends at the US border is quite pointless. The point is that the US was signatory to a UN Convention that prohibits its members to practice torture on anyone anywhere. Whether waterboarding is done in the Capitol Rotunda, Gitmo, the high seas, or on the moon is totally irrelevant. The US may not torture anyone of any nationality at any place for any reason and may not farm it out to anyone who does. There are no exceptions, ever.
It is in fact very simple. The very same set of these practices were by the USA labelled as torture when others engaged in them, whether the KGB or the Gestapo or the Japanese. And where they could the USA or the allies of the USA have prosecuted those who engaged in these practices against the soldiers or the civilians or the partisan guerrillas / nonuniformed resistance fighters (the ‘enemy combatant’).
Now to pretend that is the Americans do it, it is not actually torture is to adopt the langauge and the habits of the Soviets and the totalitarians with their double language.
It is that simple.
Do the americans want to be known to be adopting the double think of the Soviets? Or do they want to keep to the culture and the values of the democratic republics?
I may have been naive, but I was convinced that no one with an iota of decency and humanity would defend this to any extent. It saddens me to have been proven wrong.
I’m not sure that you have. Perhaps the defenders don’t have an iota of decency or humanity.
Indeed. It’s just extraordinary that this is a discussion.
Last I looked in here, anal rape of 11-year old girls was okay as long as someone decided they were ‘eneny combatants’.
Remind me, who’s the good guys here?
I’m not surprised that there’s someone defending it. What surprises me is that it’s pretty much just Terr. Color me pleasantly surprised, I guess.
Ok, well if that’s the case why not just ignore that person and talk about the substantive issues like accountability - who are the main criminals here?
At this point, it’s just a matter of waiting until his arguments reach the paper-towel-tube level (assuming they haven’t yet done so).