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Legalizing Torture and Assassination
Neocons: Yes Bush: No...maybe McCain: No |
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The Neocons and Torture
The neocon reaction to the Abu Ghraib torture scandal was to find excuses for torture. Commentary, the more intellectual neocon magazine, promptly published a long article on "the propriety of torture" (Torture: thinking the unthinkable, 7/1/2004).
What is remarkable about the article is that the author could not find a single reason that he felt carried any weight for supporting current law which he admits makes it "illegal in the U.S. under any circumstances." His conclusion is that “THE TASK, then, is to create controlled, highly regulated, ... torture warrants.”
In opposition to these legalistic neocon intellectuals, we now have Senator McCain, who was himself tortured for years in Vietnam. He has no trouble finding both moral and practical reasons that torture should not now become America’s policy. His position is in fact identical to Bush’s before the neocons got a hold of him.
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Senate Backs McCain legislation restricting torture by U.S. troops. On Oct. 6, 2005, 90 Senators voted to limit interrogation techniques against terrorism suspects by U.S. troops as part of a $400 billion military spending measure. The limits, introduced by John McCain, respond to a letter from an Army captain. The legislation would (1) establish the Army Field Manual as the uniform standard for the interrogation of Department of Defense detainees and (2) prohibit cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of persons in the detention of the U.S. government.
The McCain amendments are intented to reverse aggressive new Administration positions, put forth by John Yoo and others, about the President's inherent powers to wage war against terrorists. Noting that those positions mean "that America is the only country in the world that asserts a legal right to engage in cruel and inhuman treatment" , McCain said the legislation would "restore clarity on a simple and fundamental question: Does America treat people inhumanely? My answer is no, and from all I’ve seen, America’s answer has always been no."
The legislation faces an uncertain future. House GOP leaders object to it and Bush could veto it.
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| Letter to McCain |
from a Captain in the U.S. Army Infantry |
I have served two combat tours with the 82nd Airborne Division, one each in Afghanistan and Iraq. While I served in the Global War on Terror, the actions and statements of my leadership led me to believe that United States policy did not require application of the Geneva Conventions in Afghanistan or Iraq. ...
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Prof. Yoo Sees Broad Powers For Presidents at War;
White House Backs Away / New Definition of Torture
By PAUL M. BARRETT, Staff Reporter of the Wall St. Journal
September 12, 2005; Page A1 [brackets and emphasis added]
In June, about 100 people gathered at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative [neoconservative] Washington think tank, to hear a lecture by John Yoo on "fighting the new terrorism." Mr. Yoo recommended an unusual idea: assassinating more suspected terrorists. ....
During a two-year stint at the Justice Department from 2001 through 2003, he wrote some of the most controversial internal legal opinions justifying the Bush administration's aggressive approach to detaining and interrogating suspected terrorists.
Some of those memos have become public, but not all of them. Asked after his AEI talk whether there is a classified Justice Department opinion justifying assassinations, Mr. Yoo hinted that he'd written one himself. "You would think they -- the administration -- would have had an opinion about it, given all the other opinions, wouldn't you?" he said, adding, "And you know who would have done the work." A spokesman for the Justice Department declined to comment. ....
At the Justice Department, Mr. Yoo crafted legal arguments for the president's power to launch pre-emptive strikes against terrorists and their supporters. ... And he interpreted the federal antitorture statute as barring only acts that cause severe mental harm or pain like that accompanying "death or organ failure." [In other words most forms of torture are legal.]
In the wake of the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal, the Bush administration has backed away from Mr. Yoo's most extreme ideas about interrogation. ....
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell warned in 2002 in an internal memo that Mr. Yoo's ideas about treatment of detainees would "undermine the protections of the law of war for our troops." In July, senior uniformed military lawyers deplored his [Yoo's] analysis in Senate testimony.
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http://zfacts.com/p/100.html | 01/18/12 07:19 GMT
Modified: Mon, 17 Apr 2006 05:43:54 GMT
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