for allowing the torture of prisoners? Should the Bush administration be allow to get away with such hypocrisy?
Or is it: United States torture is good, but the rest of the world’s torture is bad?
Not a chance; he and his friends are above the law. After all, who’s going to do so ? The Republican Congress ? Will the American public demand it ? As far as I can tell, most of us don’t care or are outright gloating over it.
It is unlikely that any member of the Bush administration will be tried for torturing prisoners, except maybe in absentia (in other words, without any chance of penalty ot them. Maybe not even in absentia.
Yes, they should be tried. US torture is bad, rest of the world’s torture is bad.
They should be. Yesterday, I heard about this thing called " extraordinary rendition". In short , it’s when the CIA rounds up certain individuals and flies them off to countries that are known to torture people for information and hands them over or (do the torturing theirselves? I would think that it would be in violation of some human rights laws or even some GENEVA convention laws. Outrageous.
Unless some other country has a kidnapping team as good as the U.S.'s (yes, I know, Isreal does [or at least used to] - but they’re our buddies) the Bushistas will not be tried overseas; and if they are charged in the U.S. (which is highly unlikely for the reasons mentioned above), Bush will just pardon them.
Even if the Democrats regain Congress later, the most you’ll ever see is some low-level scapegoat going to prison. The Dems aren’t saints; they’d like to be above the law themselves.
I think this could be a debate.
Moved from IMHO to GD.
Trial in absentia might be an EXCELLENT way of highlighting the Bush Administration’s abysmal human rights record.
Trying somebody in absentia is just trying them when they’re not there. If they’re convicted and then captured later, they still suffer whatever sentence was imposed. Unless the Bush administration all flees to some country without an extradition treaty, how would trial in absentia even come about?
No . . . but in the next administration, provided it’s a Democratic one (or even a Republican one with some quaint, eccentric attachment to the idea of justice – McCain’s, maybe?), the Justice Department just might float the tentative idea of looking into opening an investigation.
Bush can just preemptively pardon everybody, just like Daddy and his “Christmas Pardons”. Does anyone know if the President can pardon himself ? Bush is arrogant and self righteous enough to try.
If you were to bring Mr. Bush to trial, what laws, specifically, would you accuse him of violating?
It is against the law, it violates the un convention against torture
http://untreaty.un.org/ENGLISH/bible/englishinternetbible/partI/chapterIV/treaty14.asp
Article 3
No State Party shall expel, return (“refouler”) or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.
For the purpose of determining whether there are such grounds, the competent authorities shall take into account all relevant considerations including, where applicable, the existence in the State concerned of a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights.
Ratified by the US in 1994. But we were doing it when Clinton was president.
however we get around that by ‘asking’ places like Syria and Egypt to promise not to torture suspects when we hand them over. Its just a way of winking and avoiding responsibility by saying ‘but we told Egypt/Syria/Pakistan/etc. not to torture them’.
I don’t know the law too well but the UN convention of torture prohibits alot of what we are doing. So does domestic military law and the Geneva convention.
According to Clause 2 of Article 6 of the constitution
http://www.house.gov/Constitution/Constitution.html
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.
Which I assume means that by ratifying the UN convention against torture, the geneva convention and our own domestic laws makes torture illegal.
These methods have been mentionned for years, now. As much by the press than by posters on this board. It wasn’t any big secret. The only thing I find surprising is that people are surprised.
We didn’t used to do it wholesale, and torture was not part of the official program, as it is now. (Might still have been done off the books as it were, but that’s a different thing.)
Which specific torture instance did Bush authorize, and what legal precedent decided that the act was, in fact, torture? The Geneva Convention is pretty vauge. Maybe the act didn’t inflict “severe” pain.
What’s the penalty for violating that law?
I mean, if we have a law against robbery, the law includes a penalty - such and so many years in prison, a fine of such-and-such.
I assume, if we passed a law prohibiting crystal meth, but failed to mention any penalty at all, you’d be outraged at the idea that someone could be jailed or fined for violation of it - right?
So – what’s the penalty for violation of the Geneva Convention? Where is it written?
I don’t think anyone will be tried, as it appears that most of the people don’t think it’s so wrong to torture terror suspects. So chances are more than half of a randomly picked jury will not vote to convict, as they see it justified.
Read about the recent poll here.
There was a time that people in the US look with great disdain and indignation at countries that practiced torture. We considered ourselves more enlightened then them, and gave a lot of lip service to countries around the world about how torture is never justified.
Apparently we’ve changed our mind about that.
I don’t think anything has changed. We don’t want other people to torture, but it’s OK if we do it. I can guarantee you that if you took a poll 50 years ago, you would have found MORE people open to the idea of the US torturing people than you would today.
Just look at the death penalty. How many “western democracies” have the death penalty? We’re the ones behind the curve on that, if there is a curve to be behind.