War Crimes and the Bush administration

LOH, my reply to you was also based on a specific statement that you made- namely the comparison to Saddam Hussein. That's certainly the kind of comparison that is all but meaningless. Not because the US needs to sink to a certain level, but because so many other realities exist that make this comparison moot. What does Australia stand for? The UK? France? Are all of these countries no better than Saddam Hussein as well? Such moral absolutism doesn't exist in the world. Because despite the fact that ASIO agents may have tortured Bali bombing suspects in the past, Sydney is a far cry from Damascus.

How about when JFK tried to have Castro assassinated..not once, but multiple times? Or that Eisenhower probably had a hand in overthrowing the leader of the Congo at the request of Belgium? Or that Reagan sold arms to Iran to funnel money back to Nicaragua? Or that Clinton launched missiles into an aspirin factory, killing scores of people in order to deter "terrorists," who probably had no connection to the factory at all?

Hey, for a whopper of moral ambiguity, Churchill had to make the decision to let scores of Allied troops die so as to not reveal the fact that the Brits had broken the Nazi Enigma code. Is there any kind of absolute moral rule that provides a clear answer to such a question? No, because it doesn't exist.

These types of decisions have to be made by every President and world leader, because the world isn't a perfect place. But amazingly, I have yet to see anyone even come close to trying to answer why it's better from a moral standpoint to leave a bunch of Cuban rebels stranded to die on the beach, or to invade Haiti- most likely through a deal with France- in 1994 to overthrow Raoul Cedras based on economic concerns, because at least those examples didn't involve staging mock executions of terrorism suspects?

This situation wasn't anything close a mass re-writing or willful violation of established law. There were teams of officials who tried to make sense of a mish-mash of international law, treaty, and precedent in order to make a working policy out of something that was for all purposes, unworkable, but needed to be done anyway.

But sure, let's have another investigation to determine that the world may not be a nice place, and to explore the reason why it was so much better from a moral standpoint to order the Bay of Pigs Invasion because the 1960's was such a freewheeling time, but it might mean that JFK was simply Pol Pot with nicer hair.

 

Well said, Mr44.

 

I agree with MR 44. Well intentioned mistakes were made and are too be regretted. It's all so very confusing and international law is silent on how many electrodes on your testicles counts as torture. I mean some understanding of the Ireland case would suggest as many as 3. Clearly this needed to be done and if there's any fault to be had here it's in that they loved their country too much.

I mean it's not clear at all,SAure we've prosecuted people for water boarding both domestically and internationally, but these aren't people, they're terrorists. Who knows how human rights extend to a group that's obviously sub human. It's all so very confusing, it's a good thing we had the crack legal minds of the Bush administration to work on this by carefully defining just how many times you could slam someone into the wall before it became torture*.

Whew, problem solved.

*Once more than whatever the CIA had already done.

 

I guess the matter is settled then. 3, the answer is 3.

Unless, of course, the answer is 42.

 

For slamming people into a wall? 20 to 30 times consecutively . So yeah 42 would be excessive.

It's like 39 lashes, any more would be excessive.

 

I think you misunderstand me Mr44. I'm arguing from the hypothetical position that the United States of America actually formally, officially, unambiguously adopts the use of torture as a legitimate tool and policy in the war on terror. This hypothetical comes from Smuggler's previous statement that even if the methods used by the Bush adminstration did amount to torture (which Smuggler disputes) then the doctrine of 'competing harms' comes into play and on the basis of that doctrine, the use of torture is warranted and justified.

On that basis, I stand behind my previous statement. Is a formal policy of torture really what the United States of America wishes to stand for? In Bush's 2003 State of the Union speech, Bush specifically deplored the use of state sanctioned torture by Saddam Hussein as an example of "evil".

I hope that clarifies my position. I hope you can distinguish between a formal, government sanctioned policy of torture and the other historical examples you cited, unless the assassination of foreign heads of state has always formed part of official US foreign policy.

I have never actually claimed that the Bush government willfully violated the law. My view is that a process was initiated and legal advice was sought from the appropriate sources, who presumably had an obligation and duty to provide independent, unbiased legal advice and such legal advice was provided and relied upon. Whilst in hindsight, that legal advice may have been questionable or the 'independence and unbiased' nature of the legal advice now bares some scrutiny, the real question is whether Bush and his people were entitled to rely upon that advice.

 

And I'd say that's a much more reasonable discussion to have.

There is certainly a tangible difference between presenting something as a moral constant, and presenting something as an idea of what should be policy. Both can and do overlap, but they're not inclusive of each other.

 

How about when JFK tried to have Castro assassinated..not once, but multiple times? Or that Eisenhower probably had a hand in overthrowing the leader of the Congo at the request of Belgium? Or that Reagan sold arms to Iran to funnel money back to Nicaragua? Or that Clinton launched missiles into an aspirin factory, killing scores of people in order to deter "terrorists," who probably had no connection to the factory at all?

Hey, for a whopper of moral ambiguity, Churchill had to make the decision to let scores of Allied troops die so as to not reveal the fact that the Brits had broken the Nazi Enigma code. Is there any kind of absolute moral rule that provides a clear answer to such a question? No, because it doesn't exist.

These types of decisions have to be made by every President and world leader, because the world isn't a perfect place. But amazingly, I have yet to see anyone even come close to trying to answer why it's better from a moral standpoint to leave a bunch of Cuban rebels stranded to die on the beach, or to invade Haiti- most likely through a deal with France- in 1994 to overthrow Raoul Cedras based on economic concerns, because at least those examples didn't involve staging mock executions of terrorism suspects?

But here's a difference: I and others -- maybe not Yathura, but some others equally turned aside by the right -- are not ASKING for the hand of justice of today or yesterday to be stayed, or the legacy of these men to stay clean.

Before I go any further, the example of Churchill is another thing entirely becuase that's comparing a passive act (not doing something) to an active one, with a clear cause and effect relationship. But I do not come before you asking for clemancy for JFK, for Eisenhower, for Reagan or Clinton.

Surely, like Prseident Ford, I can countenance the NEED for it. Given a situation I can see what needs to be done to keep the peace by issuing Parsons to the guilty. Again, what needs to be done needs to be done.

But I do not DEMAND one. I do not REQUEST one. I do not come before my peers and say "look, that man there derves special treatment so let's give him one". I only hand it out because it MUST be given. I do not sit back and make excuses for JFK to avoid the theoretical scaffold for what he did or allowed to be done in Cuba. Nor Clinton in the Sudan. Nor even Jimmy Carter in his attempts in Iran. That is the law and the law should be applied to each of these men as readily as thier Republican counterparts. Thier motives are irrelevant. Thier achievments are ALSO irrelevant.

I also do not ask any of them be jeered any more than they are cheered. To do that elevates your personal feelings before the spirit of the law, and that is what should be adhered to.

Let us say all of these men had good intentions from Truman to today. LEts us also say that if not for thier morally ambuiguous actions, poor things may have happened. Potential catastrophies may have occurred. Am I saying that they should not have done the things they did? No.

But as a question of thier case in and of itself, they should STILL be convicted and sentenced like any other man who had the least of intentions and few achievments to speak of for his actions.

Becuase it is not about who is the patriot and who is not, and it is not about what the benefit of the act was or what the situation was, it's about the act itself. If we are to say it is good enough for one man, then it becomes good enough for lesser men. That is why even the heroes must be cast out and imprisoned: to deter those who would imitate them for lesser reasons. To stop a General MacArthur who just wants to start a war because he dislikes the Chinese. To stop a Hitler who rewrites borders through the threat of war.

Because thier supporters insist we must treat these men different as a necessity. But to be one of those supporters I emphatically diagree with and think they have thier personal pride rather than the good of thier society at heart.

 

But is discussion possible when one side tries to criminalize the policy views of the other?

By the way, Gonk, you may find

Andrew McCarthy's latest at NRO to be interesting reading. 180 degrees the opposite - and I do not see it ending well if McCarthy is right.

If they will not even concede that Bush and his Administration acted in good faith, and want to turn them into evil incarnate, then I see no reason why I should grant Obama any benefit of the doubt on my part.

 

The question of whether officials of the Bush administration acted in good faith in formulating and implementing its torture policy is a much different one from whether they violated international law and perhaps in some cases will have to fear travel abroad as a result, even if they never face legal consequences in the United States.

 

Perhaps the discussion could be framed in terms of whether the Bush administration inadvertedly violated international law rather than wilfully violated international law. The end result is the same, but to me there is a difference in how the investigation is conducted. Like the difference between an investor whose tax scheme ended up violating anti-tax avoidance laws despite the investor following legal advice and an investor who deliberately ignored tax laws to make a bigger buck. I don't know.

 

"inadvertedly" violated international law?

That seems to be a problem with the law itself.

See again, the problem here is not that the international standards for torture were clearly laid out and codified. The issue here is that they're a random collection of treaties and ideas which have been historically applied in a haphazard manner by the UN Security Council.

Let me digress with a different example for a moment. A couple of years ago, the state of Montana tried to do away with posted speed limits. Instead of a numerical value, the state went with a legal standard that said "speeds shall be reasonable and prudent." Except what is reasonable to one person might not be reasonable to the other, and so the entire thing was scrapped and Montana returned to using posted speed limits. Someone might claim that Montana was criminally negligent for doing away with speed limits, but the two don't go hand in hand.

This is what this situation is the same as. International law forbids practices that leave permanent disfigurement or heinous injury. Ok, so I'd think everyone agrees that forcing someone's hand into a wood chipper qualifies. What about sleep deprivation? This is the problem that Farraday illustrated. Is 5 days of waking up time fine, but 6 days isn't? Where's the line drawn? That's what the administration tried to do-try to draw the line.

But internationally, we're left with legal concepts like the convention that specifies shooting an enemy with a hollow point bullet is illegal, but blasting the same person with a flame thrower is perfectly fine. There's nothing morally superior about flame throwers compared to bullets, and there's nothing more legally sound about one concept over the other.

If someone developed a hypothetical "flame bullet," it might be allowed under the flame provision, or it might be prohibited under the hollow point idea. There doesn't have to be any desire to violate the law purposefully or inadvertantly by it's very design though.

 

I agree that the idea of putting a specified standard will ultimately have people pushing it just to the limit and possibly beyond it. You give a person 1 hour of sleep every three days for nine days isn't the same as depriving them for 6 full days. But it actually has the same effect on the person not allowed to sleep.

When someone deliberately steps on the line of limits such as these, it becomes difficult to convict because someone MIGHT not have crossed the line. I think that the closer to get to the limit, the more likely you would be to be charged. Limit sleep deprivation to four days and you can charge someone for depriving the victim for three days if they did it for the purpose of torturing the individual.

I think the limits should be like the age limit in a murder case. A 13 year old could be charged as an adult. Make the torture restrictions open ended on one side, so if you push the limits without exceeding them, you can be charged as though you did. Set restrictions, but make it highly variable so you can't push it.

 

That's not really what my point's been throughout this discussion though.

Any government is simply a reflection of its population. If people don't want the government to waterboard terrorists, then all they have to do it make this known to the people who create policy, which is precisely what happened.

But typically, the extremes in these matters also meld together to form the middle ground. No one wants the US to blatantly torture subjects, but then again, tickling these same subjects with extra-soft, goose-down feathers isn't going to get the job done either. The grey area in between is what is what is open to discussion and interpretation.

But my greater point is that such examination can come without all the politically-based, partisan witch-hunting that also seems to happen. That's why I provided all of the other examples.

When JFK made the decision to try and kill Castro, there was no specific legal prohibition on assassination. Sure, such a decision most likely ran smack dab into the spirit of the law, but it wasn't a case of him blatantly, or even inadvertently, violating a legal prohibition. Since then, policy has been changed, at least in the US, but such change didn't involve retroactively going back and charging Kennedy with war crime violations, including any and all vague, perception-based violations that people can think of. It was simply a difficult policy decision in an area that is obviously vague.

That's what puzzles me, because people around here seem to think that the decisions in this case were anything out of the norm. If there was a blatant Nixon-esque violation of any law, it would have been evident long ago.

It's also the problem I have with the entire "I don't know if any law was even broken, but I support an investigation to find out any and all things that might have been illegal..." type of mentality. Special investigations always seem to exist to do nothing but gobble themselves up. The Lewinsky-gate investigation was stupid. The Plame-gate investigation was stupid. Both wasted millions of dollars with not much result besides a conclusion of "someone did something that someone else didn't like."

If a law was broken, go after the violation. If Clinton committed perjury, then make that case and move on. If Bush violated a torture law, then make that case and move on. We don't need these weird politically-based investigations that don't serve any other purpose than to feed themselves, especially if the ultimate goal is simply to change policy.

 

Mr44, how do you know whether a law was broken (allowing you to "go after the violation") unless you investigate it?

 

No, that's not what I said.

You just have to use the procedure that exists everywhere else.

1)Look at a behavior.

2)Look at the law book.

3)Compare if 1), ended up violating 2).

if yes, then file charges. If no, then move on.

That's not what we have here, because the above was carried out years ago. We have a situation of some people not agreeing with a procedure, and even though there's no violation of the letter of the law, they want to start an investigation to see if any "potential" laws have been broken.

But that's also why we ended up with the "Pelosi fiasco," and such for this, because then it does matter who ended up knowing what. As a result, the entire "investigation" ends up with a circle that surrounds just about all of Congress and the Executive branch, and we have a situation where the original focus gets lost, but someone was found to have falsified their dog license or something equally trivia, but is punished because the independent council has to do something to show for its millions of dollars.

Instead, we can simply do like what we did with the US's official foreign leader policy, and say "Hey, something like the Bay of Pigs sure was messy...After this point, we don't officially engage in assasination as a matter of foreign policy" and move on.

 

What do you think we've been discussing this entire time?

 

I must say that the above 'procedure' looks awfully like a textbook definition of an "investigation" to me. I wasn't aware that the above 'procedure' was carried out years ago? What was the finding?

 

I think you have to read that with a healthy dose of sarcasm Smuggler.

 

Hey, guys

What are we talking about here?
Crimes committed (or not committed) under domestic law, or under international law?

 

Several problems with that authors article.

First, Islamic terrorism didn?t start in 1993, as the author implies. As has been repeated ad nauseum, such terrorists killed far more Americans during Reagan?s presidency than any other.

correlation between the anti-terrorist policies of the Bush administration and the homeland security we've enjoyed over the eight years since their implementation

This is another stupid assertion considering we enjoyed ?homeland security? for pretty much every year before 9/11.

And if we are including attacks not on the homeland since 9/11, well, then we must include the various attacks on U.S. targets in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Jordan and last September in Yemen.

This is not to say that Bush?s policies aren?t worthy of discussion. Which worked, which have not, etcetera. The point being rather that the author?s non sequiter regarding the ?homeland security? and Bush?s anti-terrorist policies is wrong. Or to put it in layman?s terms, he?s completely FOS.

 

I've only found the time to read through JS's article just recently. I'm finding it tough going through becuase it's clearly partisan.

Partisan doesn't necessarily mean incorrect, though. JS, what are the salient parts of the article? Also are there any sources other than itself that it uses? I'm seeing one Fox news reference, and I thought I saw two others, but most of them seem to be referencing back to NRO.

 

Something that has been troubling me about this whole thing is how it was claimed that 'enhanced interrogation techniques' yielded valuable information about future terrorist attacks on the US. What info exactly was that and was it obtained before the torture was used? I got the impression that many such 'plots' were never really regarded seriously.

'Attack skyscrapers on the west coast' in itself would seem major, but it's not like they devised something brilliant which would have explained how they would carry out such a task. If you cross referenced when certain info was obtained and by whom, would you be able to confirm that it was torture that brought the truth out? If you can't confirm such facts, then how can you reasonably justify that torture works?