Law To Order
Source: Modification of noncopyright Image:BlankMap-World.png by Carwil.Description: Extraordinary renditions allegedly have been carried out from the countries in dark blue; detainees have allegedly been transported through those in light blue; to the countries in red. The United States and countries with suspected CIA black sites are indicated.Sources: Amnesty International, Wikipedia
The blogosphere has been agog about Bush having admitted publicly (after being forced to do so by the Supreme Court) what we all knew all along, that his administration and their personal spooks at the CIA have been abducting people and torturing them in hidden foreign prisons. The general blogospheric drift seems to be more about the embarassment of it than anything.
But while media and the bloggers were distracted with that, one of Bush’s wormtongues was making sure, with the willing assistance of a compliant GOP-controlled senate, that the Supreme Court can never stop them torturing again:
[…]
Many of the harsh interrogation techniques repudiated by the Pentagon on Wednesday would be made lawful by legislation put forward the same day by the Bush administration. And the courts would be forbidden from intervening.
Go to Election GuideMore Politics NewsThe proposal is in the last 10 pages of an 86-page bill devoted mostly to military commissions, and it is a tangled mix of cross-references and pregnant omissions.
But legal experts say it adds up to an apparently unique interpretation of the Geneva Conventions, one that could allow C.I.A. operatives and others to use many of the very techniques disavowed by the Pentagon, including stress positions, sleep deprivation and extreme temperatures.
?It?s a Jekyll and Hyde routine,? Martin S. Lederman, who teaches constitutional law at Georgetown University, said of the administration?s dual approaches.
In effect, the administration is proposing to write into law a two-track system that has existed as a practical matter for some time.
Two-track? I’d call it bait n’ switch, myself. No prizes, though, for working out who’s in charge of this effort. Guess who? That’s right, it’s torture-fan John Yoo:
The legislation would leave open the possibility that the military could revise its own standards to allow the harsher techniques.
John C. Yoo, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and a former Justice Department official who helped develop the administration?s early legal response to the terrorist threat, said the bill would provide people on the front lines with important tools.
What this bill boils down to is an attempt to legalise by diktat was has already been held to be illegal, combined with a CYA exercise indemnifing the torturers and those who directed them:
A senior intelligence official said that the new legislation, if enacted, would make it clear that the techniques used by the C.I.A. on senior Qaeda members who had been held abroad in secret sites would not be prohibited and that interrogators who engaged in those practices both in the past and in the future would not face prosecution.
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, would not discuss the techniques the agency had used or was prepared to use.
Other senior administration officials, all of whom declined to speak on the record, said there was no intention to undercut the interrogation rules in the new Army Field Manual, which does not include some of the most extreme techniques used on some suspected terrorists in American custody.
The intent of the legislation, they said, is to prevent the prosecution of interrogators under amendments to the War Crimes Act that were passed in the 1990?s.
And if that doesn’t work they’ve always got sovereign immunity to fall back on.
Shorter Bushco – ‘Torture is illegal so we’ll make it legal, and the torturers are criminals so we’ll absolve them too. And if we can’t get this bill through Congress we’ll claim the whole government is immune from prosecution for any reason whatsoever anyway’ :
The bill proposed by the White House would also amend the War Crimes Act, which makes violations of Common Article 3 a felony. Those amendments are needed, the administration said, to provide guidance to American personnel.
The new legislation makes a list of nine ?serious violations? of Common Article 3 federal crimes. The prohibited conduct includes torture, murder, rape, and the infliction of severe physical or mental pain. By implication, some legal experts said, the bill endorses the use of those interrogation techniques that are not mentioned.
The proposed legislation in any event represents a further retreat from international legal standards by an administration already hostile to them, some scholars said. ?It?s strong evidence that this administration doesn?t accept international legal processes,?? said Peter J. Spiro, a law professor at Temple University.
Ths test that Bushco are using in this bill for what constitutes torture is that penned by GOP presidential aspirant John McCain, that it should ‘shock the conscience’.
Uh-huh. First you have to have a conscience to shock. There’s a bunch of sociopaths in charge. I somehow can’t see that test ever being applied.
Some Democrats (cough, Leiberman) might go along with this bill in order to gain a little temporary political advantage. John McCain again:
“We want to act in the national interest on this issue,” McCain said. “The initial desire is a bipartisan agreement. This is too important to get hung up in party politics.”
I can’t say I’d be surprised – principle always goes out the window when it comes to political advantage. After all, what do a few little constitutional and humanitarian issues like torture and illegality and the subversion of the separation of powers matter, when there’re elections to win?
Priorities, people.
read more: US Politics, US Constitution, Supreme Court, International law, Torture, Rendition, Human Rights, Geneva Conventions, Sovereign Immunity.
