Is it OK to
use torture on terrorists? Are there any limits on "what type of
torture?" Who should set the rule? What right does the "public" have
to know about this?
Read Below Then Vote On The Issue
Does the U. S. Government have the "right" to use
torture on a terrorist captured in a foreign country? What type of "proof"
does what level of "authority" need to decide that a person is a "terrorist"
subject to restraint? Who decides? How? Who decides whether some
"terrorist" is eligible to be tortured? What level of authority has to
approve either an individual torture program, or a group of them? Does
Congress have any right or obligation to "oversee" these actions? Does the
"public" have the right to know about them? Is there any obligation by
the Government to get some sort of "public approval" either through Congress
or even a "vote?"
Was it possible that the "abuse" at Abu Grave was one,
primarily, of a loose system that allowed "ordinary soldiers" to "cavort"
with prisoners, take hundreds of photos, and then give them to the media?
And what obligation does the media have to refuse to use such photos? Or to
even break some laws or regulations in order to "blow the whistle?"
Top
The pot is boiling on this one.
There is the standard, STRONG, opinion from those who decry the very concept
of torture:
The top Senate Republican explained:
"The reason why we have these rules of war is
because we have determined over the years that nations such as ours have
got to treat these people with the dignity they deserve because they are
human beings." (source)
The pot is boiling on this one.
There is the standard, STRONG, opinion from those who say that civilization
is at stake and that torture is a necessary tool.
Bush
administration lawyers contended last year that the president wasn't
bound by laws prohibiting torture and that government agents who might
torture prisoners at his direction couldn't be prosecuted by the Justice
Department. (Source)
DERSHOWITZ: Well, in fact, we've done that. Of
course, we've done that. We have bombed civilian targets during every
single one of our wars. We did it in Dresden. We did it in Vietnam
notwithstanding these rules. So you know, having laws on the books and
breaking them systemically just creates disdain ... It's much better
to have rules that we can actually live within. And absolute
prohibitions, generally, are not the kind of rules that countries
would live within. (source)
If we catch the guy who we SAW
planting a bomb and we put him in jail (only) and the notes and
bombings continue? Will we be content with the "vigorous
interrogation" techniques for this guy. Maybe he doesn't know
anything useful? He has already forfeited his life for his past
crime. If there is a chance to get more data from him, prevent more
bombs, can we use torture? If we are wrong, and he knows nothing, we
made a mistake that did cost him his life. Yes he suffered before he
died. (source)
In
this case, if CBS had really cared about the country, about our military,
about doing the right thing, they would have taken these pictures, (which
they had illegally) and asked the military and the Pentagon what was being
done about the abuses (Although they most likely knew it, they would have
been told that the matter was in hand and being taken care of). (source)
In
some of the most incendiary criticism yet of the Iraqi prison abuse scandal,
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is comparing U.S. mistreatment of detained Iraqi
terror suspects to the kind of tactics employed by Adolf Hitler's "Gestapo"
police.
Warning against taking the scandal too lightly, McCain told radio host
Don Imus on Tuesday, "If you go down that slippery slope, OK - you decide,
OK, well, this torture is OK - then what's the difference betw*een us and
the Gestapo?"
Before invoking the specter of the Third Reich's brutal police units,
the Arizona Republican denounced the notion that some of the abuse might
have been justified as a legitimate interrogation tactic.
"What you're saying is that the end justifies the means," he told Imus.
"That's not a Judeo-Christian-Islamic-principled way of treating human
beings."
The top Senate Republican
explained:
"The reason why we have these rules of war is
because we have determined over the years that nations such as ours have got
to treat these people with the dignity they deserve because they are human
beings."
McCain
then followed with his Gestapo comparison.
When Imus countered that "having a pair of women's underwear pulled
over your head was better than having your fingernails pulled out by a pair
of pliers," the former Vietnam War POW replied:
"Oh, absolutely. But, as I say, I worry about it being a slippery
slope and I also hear rumors of things that were worse than that."
When Imus pressed on the distinction between humiliation and torture,
McCain insisted, "Humiliation is one of those [tactics] that is prohibited,
as far as my reading is concerned."
"The fundamental point here [is] we
distinguish ourselves from our enemies by our treatment of our enemies.
And if we engaged in the same kind of abuses that they did, then we're no
longer any different from them."
WASHINGTON (CNN) --Following the capture of
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the question has become whether the senior al
Qaeda leader will reveal key information about the terrorist network.
If he doesn't, should he be tortured to make him tell what he knows?
CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer posed this question to
noted author and Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz and
Ken Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch.
BLITZER: Alan Dershowitz, a lot of our viewers
will be surprised to hear that you think there are right times for
torture. Is this one of those moments?
DERSHOWITZ: I don't think so. This is not the
ticking-bomb terrorist case, at least so far as we know. Of course,
the difficult question is the chicken-egg question: We won't know if
he is a ticking-bomb terrorist unless he provides us information, and
he's not likely to provide information unless we use certain extreme
measures.
My basic point, though, is we should never under
any circumstances allow low-level people to administer torture. If
torture is going to be administered as a last resort in the
ticking-bomb case, to save enormous numbers of lives, it ought to be
done openly, with accountability, with approval by the president of
the United States or by a Supreme Court justice. I don't think we're
in that situation in this case.
BLITZER: Alan, how do you know he doesn't have
that kind of ticking-bomb information right now, that there's some
plot against New York or Washington that he was involved in and
there's a time sensitivity? If you knew that, if you suspected that,
you would say [to] get the president to authorize torture.
DERSHOWITZ: Well, we don't know, and that's why
[we could use] a torture warrant, which puts a heavy burden on the
government to demonstrate by factual evidence the necessity to
administer this horrible, horrible technique of torture. I would talk
about nonlethal torture, say, a sterilized needle underneath the nail,
which would violate the Geneva Accords, but you know, countries all
over the world violate the Geneva Accords. They do it secretly and
hypothetically, the way the French did it in Algeria. If we ever came
close to doing it, and we don't know whether this is such a case, I
think we would want to do it with accountability and openly and not
adopt the way of the hypocrite.
BLITZER: All right. Ken, under those kinds of
rare, extreme circumstances, does Professor Dershowitz make a good
point?
ROTH: He doesn't. The prohibition on torture is
one of the basic, absolute prohibitions that exists in international
law. It exists in time of peace as well as in time of war. It exists
regardless of the severity of a security threat. And the only other
comparable prohibition that I can think of is the prohibition on
attacking innocent civilians in time of war or through terrorism. If
you're going to have a torture warrant, why not create a terrorism
warrant? Why not go in and allow terrorists to come forward and make
their case for why terrorism should be allowed?
DERSHOWITZ: Well, in fact, we've done that. Of
course, we've done that. We have bombed civilian targets during every
single one of our wars. We did it in Dresden. We did it in Vietnam
notwithstanding these rules. So you know, having laws on the books and
breaking them systemically just creates disdain ... It's much better
to have rules that we can actually live within. And absolute
prohibitions, generally, are not the kind of rules that countries
would live within.
I want to ask you a question. Don't you think if
we ever had a ticking-bomb case, regardless of your views or mine,
that the CIA would actually either torture themselves or subcontract
the job to Jordan, the Philippines or Egypt, who are our favorite
countries, to do the torturing for us?
ROTH: OK, there is no moral or legal difference
between torturing yourself and subcontracting torture to somebody
else. They're equally absolutely prohibited.
ROTH: In the case -- the fact that sometimes laws
are violated does not mean you want to start legitimizing the
violation by getting some judge to authorize it. Imagine, you're
always thinking about the U.S. Supreme Court, but any rule you apply
to the United States has to be applied around the world. Do you want
Chinese judges authorizing torture of say, Muslim dissidents?
DERSHOWITZ: It wouldn't make any difference. They
just torture anyway. It wouldn't make any difference. They torture
now.
ROTH: Once you open the door to torture, once you
start legitimizing it in any way, you have broken the absolute taboo.
President Bush had it right in his State of the Union address when he
was describing various forms of torture by Saddam Hussein and he said,
"If this isn't evil, then evil has no meaning."
Keep in mind that
Mr. Dershowitz is a very well known liberal and torture is not the
usual advice of liberals -- I think Dershowitz is taking this
controversial stand for a covert reason. He ties torture to some
"public figure issuing a 'torture certificate.' If that were ever the
policy I cannot imagine any leader who would be willing to admit that
he issued such a certificate. In effect, Dershowitz has tried to
preempt this issue so that it would never become law.
But, he does raise the issue, and
it is worth presenting sane views.
Let's say that a "bad man" has
kidnapped my wife and all six of my children. He kills one of my
children and sends me the severed head. He then writes a "threat
letter" (with no demand -- just intended to terrorize me) tells me that he
intends to kill each of the other children, slowly, by torture, and
then he will rape and torture my wife.
He has proven he can do these
things. Perhaps I even have a photo of him -- there is no doubt that
I can identify him if I find him. I've turned this all over to the
police, but I see no results or success.
Then, he sends me a note, saying
that one of my children has been locked in an underground vault with
no fresh air, and will suffocate in 24 hours. Then, 24 hours later he
sends me the location. I go and find one of my children dead,
suffocated. I tell the police? They can not get any clues -- no
help.
He then writes me that he is
going to do the same to all the rest of the family, one at a time, and
send me notes as he has done. I would probably give this note to the
police, but by now I feel justified that they will not be able to stop
him.
Now, I find him on the street. I
am strong, and "capture" him, handcuffs, if you will. He has with him
an already written note for me that another of my children is now
locked in an air-tight vault, with 5 hours of air left for him before
he suffocates.
Should I try to beat him into
telling me where my family is?
Should I use torture?
I know what my answer is. I
may not know what torture is likely to be effective, but
if
I knew that data, and could "buy" that service for $10, would I?
(Rule out, in this hypothetical example my turning the "professional
torturer" over to the police. On the scale of countries, and
governments, there is no police department who can catch this guy
quickly enough, or even stop the "professional torturer" from doing
his thing.)
There IS a form of 100% effective
torture. The guy won't even be conscious of or be aware of any pain.
He will not die. He will "come out of this" having giving all his
secrets, including locations of the family, and won't even remember he
told all. Yes, he will have been harmed, with drugs and hypnosis, and
with electronic pain that he won't "remember," but he is in a
condition not much different than he had been. You could say that he
would have "mental problems" after this, but these problems would not
prevent him from living and working.
Is this possible? Yes.
Would I use this, in the above
situation? Darn right!
Do I trust Pres. Bush to make
this judgment? Yes. Darn right!
I don't want a public "torture
certificate," because I don't want to advertise this type of torture
-- it is all the better when it is known by only a few, and hardly
anyone believes it is being done, and those who DO IT? They are a
very small, secret group that keep things quiet.
They have to be authorized by a
very high source, not the President, and never publicly.
What would you do?
Turn the guy over the police and
expect that your child will soon be dead, and probably all the rest of
the family? The police won't be using torture, it's too
controversial.
BLITZER: Well, let me interrupt, Ken. Let me ask
you about a hypothetical case. Professor Dershowitz talks about it in
one of his articles and one of his books. There's a terrorist attack.
A lot of people have just been killed in New York. They capture one of
the terrorists, who says, "Guess what, there's another bomb out there,
it is going to kill a lot more, but I'm not telling you where it is."
ROTH: Yes, that's the ticking-bomb scenario,
which everybody loves to put forward as an excuse for torture. Israel
tried that. Under the guise of just looking at the narrow exception of
where the ticking-bomb is there and you could save the poor
schoolchildren whose bus was about to be exploded some place. They
ended up torturing on the theory that -- well, it may not be the
terrorist, but it's somebody who knows the terrorist or it's somebody
who might have information leading to the terrorist.
In my set of morals
when you see a crime and don't report it, you are as guilty as the guy
who does it. When you have evidence of a crime, you have a moral duty
to report what you know. The guy who just participated in a terrorist
attack, no jury needed, is a prime candidate for execution. If he is
such a candidate, he is also a prime candidate for torture.
Whether your certainty that
someone "knows" about a crime or a future crime is 100% is not for
your or me to decide. Someone has to decide that issue. I hope he
does right. In a time of war, such as now, "rights" to life are at
least in limbo, if not suspended.]
They ended up torturing say 90 percent of the
Palestinian security detainees they had until finally the Israeli
supreme court had to say this kind of rare exception isn't working.
It's an exception that's destroying the rule. We have to understand
the United States sets a model for the rest of the world. And if the
United States is going to authorize torture in any sense, you can
imagine that there are many more unsavory regimes out there that are
just dying for the chance to say, "Well, the U.S. is doing it, we're
going to start doing it as well."
Roth may not like my
example, but in my example there is no doubt about the guy's guilt,
and the early prospective death of my family.
The concept of "no doubt" may
well have shades of gray, but there is a lot of "dark gray" that is
very close to absolute black.
It would take a very emotionally
stable person to make such a judgment -- when he does it on behalf of
a nation, but if no one can do this? Then that type of terrorism will
surely come among us -- if only because it would such a "good weapon"
to create terror.
I do not agree with Dershowitz
that this should be publicly acknowledged. There are some jobs that
MUST be delegated, and we MUST be able to trust someone with decisions
such as this. Such action, like most covert action, is done "outside
the law" and is never acknowledged or admitted.
Surely we have been doing "black
operations" for years. If I knew about them I might disagree, but
they system still needs to be in place. If any fixing is needed, then
it is electing people we can trust -- Clinton was certainly not such a
man.
It is not, after all, a matter of
whether one child might die, but whether the terrorists will now have
a new tool of terror -- announcing in advance five cities to be
bombed, and bombing only one of them. Then a month later, announcing
five bridges to be bombed, and doing two of them.
If we catch the guy who we SAW
planting a bomb and we put him in jail (only) and the notes and
bombings continue? Will we be content with the "vigorous
interrogation" techniques for this guy. Maybe he doesn't know
anything useful? He has already forfeited his life for his past
crime. If there is a chance to get more data from him, prevent more
bombs, can we use torture? If we are wrong, and he knows nothing, we
made a mistake that did cost him his life. Yes he suffered before he
died.
But, if the torture technique
does NOT kill him, and even leaves him rather fully functioning, would
it be "kinder" and therefore OK? The current apparent willingness to
use "truth serum" leads directly this more effective technique -- the
drug PLUS hypnosis and pain while "under."
Pain, Drug and Hypnosis have long
been known to psychiatrists as a technique for implanting, and getting
"truth" out of a person who would not otherwise be willing. The drugs
and hypnosis don't leave a very terrible condition. You may not
believe it, but the body can experience pain, while it is unconscious,
that pain gets shoved into the "subconscious" and is NOT remembered
when the guy is "out of the situation." Particularly if he is kept in
a drugged and hypnotized condition for a relatively long time -- the
pain will be long gone. He would be well fed and cared for during his
drugged condition.
It is also well proven that you
can "program" someone to talk and act in accordance with new
"orders." The casual observer would never know that this person is
programmed. So, this guy could have been caught months ago, programmed
to gather data, and arrested in public, and suddenly all the "new"
data would be released.
IF such torture were available,
can you think we would not be using it? The
CIA has
already used extensive mind control techniques -- and only the tip
of that iceberg has ever been exposed. If you ask them now? I'm sure
they would say they don't now do such things. This MUST be hidden
from public view.
DERSHOWITZ: And I think that we're much, much
better off admitting what we're doing or not doing it at all. I agree
with you, it will much better if we never did it. But if we're going
to do it and subcontract and find ways of circumventing, it's much
better to do what Israel did. They were the only country in the world
ever directly to confront the issue, and it led to a supreme court
decision, as you say, outlawing torture, and yet Israel has been
criticized all over the world for confronting the issue directly.
Candor and accountability in a democracy is very important. Hypocrisy
has no place.
Like a great
majority of people, Dershowitz calls us a "democracy" but, in fact, we
are a "republic." One big difference is that, in a republic, we elect
someone close to home, who elects another, a bit further away, and
finally, after several of these layers, a president is elected by a
"congress." We DO NOT try to function where every voter helps decide
on every issue -- we "delegate" decisions, and there should be no
problem in delegating the decision on when to use torture.
Sure, we may make an error, but
how much worse an error could we make than electing Clinton? Even half
of our population thinks he was a good guy! So, popularity does not
mean the guy will make good decisions, and a republican form of
government does not either. But, at least a republican form of
government can allow a top leader to make his decisions in private, or
perhaps share them ONLY with that small group who elected him. The
details would be important, but I'm not trying to settle those here
and now.
How would people not see the
simple logic of this? They would have been educated in our present
system, without phonics, and trying to pass judgment before they
understood the applicable data. The entire destruction of the American
education system is fully revealed, the "gift" to us from psychology
--
HERE.
ROTH: So let's learn the lesson from the
Israelis, which is you can't open the door a little bit. If you try,
you end up having torture left and right. The other alternative,
rather than legitimizing with torture warrants, is to prohibit it and
prosecute the offenders. And we have murder on the street every day.
We don't ask for murder warrants.
BLITZER: Ken, let me just get back to that
ticking time bomb scenario. You would -- you could morally justify
letting this terrorist that you've captured remain silent and allow
hundreds of people to die?
ROTH: Look, we just heard from the chairman of
the Senate Intelligence Committee. You just had him on your show,
Wolf, who said the interrogators at Bagram Air Base or wherever
Mohammed is, they don't need torture. They have other, legitimate ways
of getting at the truth. They're listening in through various wiretaps
and the like.
You notice that Roth
does NOT answer the question.
This claim quoted from Bagram Air
Base COULD be a simple cover-up -- if the pain-drug-hypnosis could get
the truth out of this guy in 100 hours, and the "traditional" vigorous
interrogation techniques might take years, and you would never know if
you "had it all," what would you choose? I don't believe the
government many times. It does not surprise me to think they are
lying. I don't have their level of responsibility. I don't want to
be lied to, but I also don't want my town blown up.
Yes, we are seeing our civil
rights eroded, but yes that is the price I am willing to pay for
security just now and because I feel that I MUST trust the President
to handle this. I am also willing only because I have a better plan
for world peace than war with Iraq, but
MY PLAN can't be
implemented fast enough to stop Iraq -- so the war is necessary.
There is this much better
solution. I offer THIS as a way out of this mess -- so that torture
is never needed. Click and
read an entire website of mine -- promoting a plan for world
peace.
A friend who helps me with the
"click here" reference just above read this and suggested something I
agree with totally:
"Although
it may be true that in an acute situation one might have to take
action to defend oneself against the insanity of another, it is also
true that in the long run we simply must evolve as a species to a
higher level of behavior. Our goal is to create an uplift in the
decency and integrity of man and a reversal of the decay of
society."
ROTH: Torture is not needed. If you start
opening the door, making a little exception here, a little exception
there, you've basically sent the signal that the ends justify the
means, and that's exactly what Osama bin Laden thinks. He has some
vision of a just society. His ends justify the means of attacking the
World Trade Center. If we're going to violate an equally basic
prohibition on torture, we are reaffirming that false logic of
terrorism. We are going to end up losing the war ...
[Karl
Note: After my first drafting this article I have heard
MANY
references to this issue on different news and talk shows. This
is NOT a closed issue in our society. Yes, a poll would probably find
a large majority opposed to use of torture, but my responsibility as
President would be to future survival of our society, not to any
opinion poll. I would never claim to have the moral authority to
torture some stranger to my life, but the guy who kidnapped MY
family? It would be a moral outrage for me to FAIL to use any means,
including torture, to allow my family to live at the expense of
torture or death of someone about whom I have absolute certainty of
guilt.
Our society? I was an Army
Officer for more than two years, never saw combat. But, when the
opportunity for Ranger Training came up -- I jumped at it. There was
a time when the "ranger patch" was
very rare for the students who went through Ranger Training. When I
went through Ranger School, all graduates got the patch. I certainly
wore my Ranger Patch on my Army Uniform with great pride. Does that
color my thinking on torture? I suppose. I've been a patriot all my
life.
When I see the "woman in pink"
protesting the war and claiming that woman in Iraq have better
"rights" than other Arab countries, how do I explain them? I simply
say that they are stupid. They may also be anti-American, but
basically they are stupid. They were educated in a system designed to
make them stupid --
fully
described HERE. Will I lose customers because of these
sentiments? It's OK!
What about the appeaser who asks,
"Well, Karl, wouldn't you admit you could be wrong and pick the wrong
guy to torture?" My moral responsibility to protect myself from harm
is absolute -- self defense is an allowed motive. I would expect to
be called on in the court of justice if someone disagrees with my
decision -- and if some jury finds me wrong, I would expect to pay the
penalty.
Even the law would extend that to
my killing some stranger who was obviously threatening another person
with death.
The possibility that I would be
wrong could and would be settled in court. You are never above the
later rule of law.
The
current prisoner may not elicit much public outcry, but the capture of
bin Laden is yet another matter, as discussed in the Wall Street
Journal.
While Washington
has been in no hurry to prosecute other al Qaeda prisoners, some of
whom have been held without charges for more than a year "there
would be a hue and cry for his head on a stake, and it would be
really hard politically to stem the tide on that front," says one
person involved setting up the tribunals. (Source)
The public law may never come to
condoning torture in any circumstance, but I would not condemn it. If
someone chose to torture one of my family after having made a 'wrong
decision' then he has made that wrong decision. I would never seek
revenge, but I would seek justice. I would be willing to use torture
to PREVENT their death, but not revenge it.
As much as I despise Peter Arnett
for his betrayal of American trust -- appearing on Iraqi State TV to
bash the war, he is NOT a candidate for torture -- jail perhaps.
See article
about HIM.
Torture is never justified as
revenge, only protection.]
Recently,
entertainer Pat Boone wrote NewsMax editor Christopher Ruddy a letter
regarding his feelings on Abu Ghraib and Iraq, the contents of which
are published here with permission:
Mr. Christopher Ruddy
Editor, NewsMax
Dear Chris,
Hasn't anybody got the guts to accuse the worst perpetrator in
this whole Abu Ghraib prison debacle - CBS and 60 Minutes II?
What do you call it when, in time of war, someone takes
military intelligence and turns it over to the enemy, who in turn
uses it to kill Americans?
Isn't that the definition of treason? Did Benedict Arnold do
worse? Did Julias and Ethel Rosenberg pay with their lives for
something like this?
It has already been well established, and CBS certainly knew,
that the military announced to the press back in January that
allegations had been made concerning treatment of prisoners and were
being investigated.
In March there was another announcement that the allegations
were still being investigated and certain service personnel at Abu
Ghraib were relieved of their duties and might be court marshaled.
In other words, while America was fighting a war, the military
had already taken the allegations seriously, were investigating them
and were taking steps to correct the situation. In other words, it
was being handled, and handled well.
These things happen in war on all sides, and though they are
not excusable, they are kindergarten exercises compared to car
bombs, ambushes, rocket launchings and dangling burning bodies over
bridges - and this is what the interrogators at Abu Ghraib were
trying to find ways to stop.
Freedom of the press is precious to us, but you can abuse any
liberty and stretch it out of shape until it becomes license, and
concerned citizens will call for limitations.
In this case, if CBS had really cared about
the country, about our military, about doing the right thing, they
would have taken these pictures, (which they had illegally) and
asked the military and the Pentagon what was being done about the
abuses (Although they most likely knew it, they would have been told
that the matter was in hand and being taken care of).
Indeed, a general implored them not to publish the pictures
because of what he knew would happen as a result.
In their mad competition for rating points, dollars, and
seeing a great way to blast the President and the war effort in Iraq
which they have continually denigrated and opposed, they broadcast
they abhorrent pictures – and not just to the United States, BUT TO
THE WORLD!
Knowing full well that we were walking a tight rope, trying to
fight a war, quell disturbances and build a republic for Iraq in the
midst of all the terrorist resistance, CBS published these abhorrent
pictures knowing they would destroy completely our image and
standing in the Muslim world.
And what about Osama bin Laden? What about the terrorists?
What about America's image with all our allies around the world? And
what about America's own self image and confidence in their leaders?
And what did the beheaders of Nick Berg say, just before they
callously sawed his head off while he screamed, "This is in
retaliation for what you Americans did to our people at Abu Ghraib!"
And how did they know about these interrogation abuses?
Though poor Mr. Berg blames George Bush and Donald Rumsefld,
it is incontrovertible that his son would be home with him right now
had it not been for the publication of those pictures. Mr. Berg is
pointing his finger in the wrong direction.
And as a direct result of CBS callous and patently unpatriotic
action, America is suffering great loss of prestige around the
world, and will for decades.
America has lost credibility with Muslims and the Arab world
internationally, perhaps forever; and every American life is in far
greater danger from terrorist reprisal, no matter who and where we
are!
Freedom of the press is a cherished commodity, guaranteed by
our Constitution. But freedoms, if they are to be maintained and to
have the original meaning, must be treated with grave responsibility
and restraint.
For me, CBS has become "the enemy within", and I hope never to
watch the network again. I think most Americans ought to reflect on
the results of their irresponsible and unpatriotic behavior and
perhaps narrow their viewing options by one network. The next time
America or Americans suffer at the hands of terrorists, thank CBS.
P.S. As of today, May 21St, you can add Brokaw, NBC and The
Washington Post to the list. Have these media pariahs gone mad?!
Who'll be next to fire at our own troops?
Security or Legal Factors
Could Trump Restrictions,
Memo to Rumsfeld Argued
By JESS BRAVIN Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET
JOURNAL June 7, 2004; Page A1
Bush administration
lawyers contended last year that the president wasn't bound by laws
prohibiting torture and that government agents who might torture
prisoners at his direction couldn't be prosecuted by the Justice
Department.
The advice was part of a classified report on
interrogation methods prepared for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
after commanders at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, complained in late 2002
that with conventional methods they weren't getting enough
information from prisoners.
The report outlined U.S. laws and international
treaties forbidding torture, and why those restrictions might be
overcome by national-security considerations or legal
technicalities. In a March 6, 2003, draft of the report reviewed by
The Wall Street Journal, passages were deleted as was an attachment
listing specific interrogation techniques and whether Mr. Rumsfeld
himself or other officials must grant permission before they could
be used. The complete draft document was classified "secret" by Mr.
Rumsfeld and scheduled for declassification in 2013.
The draft report, which exceeds 100 pages, deals
with a range of legal issues related to interrogations, offering
definitions of the degree of pain or psychological manipulation that
could be considered lawful. But at its core is an exceptional
argument that because nothing is more important than "obtaining
intelligence vital to the protection of untold thousands of American
citizens," normal strictures on torture might not apply.
The president, despite domestic and
international laws constraining the use of torture, has the
authority as commander in chief to approve almost any physical or
psychological actions during interrogation, up to and including
torture, the report argued. Civilian or military personnel accused
of torture or other war crimes have several potential defenses,
including the "necessity" of using such methods to extract
information to head off an attack, or "superior orders," sometimes
known as the Nuremberg defense: namely that the accused was acting
pursuant to an order and, as the Nuremberg tribunal put it, no
"moral choice was in fact possible."
According to Bush administration officials, the
report was compiled by a working group appointed by the Defense
Department's general counsel, William J. Haynes II. Air Force
General Counsel Mary Walker headed the group, which comprised top
civilian and uniformed lawyers from each military branch and
consulted with the Justice Department, the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
the Defense Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies. It
isn't known if President Bush has ever seen the report.
A Pentagon official said some military lawyers
involved objected to some of the proposed interrogation methods as
"different than what our people had been trained to do under the
Geneva Conventions," but those lawyers ultimately signed on to the
final report in April 2003, shortly after the war in Iraq began. The
Journal hasn't seen the full final report, but people familiar with
it say there were few substantial changes in legal analysis between
the draft and final versions.
A military lawyer who helped prepare the report
said that political appointees heading the working group sought to
assign to the president virtually unlimited authority on matters of
torture -- to assert "presidential power at its absolute apex," the
lawyer said. Although career military lawyers were uncomfortable
with that conclusion, the military lawyer said they focused their
efforts on reining in the more extreme interrogation methods, rather
than challenging the constitutional powers that administration
lawyers were saying President Bush could claim.
The Pentagon disclosed last month that the
working group had been assembled to review interrogation policies
after intelligence officials in Guantanamo reported frustration in
extracting information from prisoners. At a news conference last
week, Gen. James T. Hill, who oversees the offshore prison at
Guantanamo as head of the U.S. Southern Command, said the working
group sought to identify "what is legal and consistent with not only
Geneva [but] ... what is right for our soldiers." He said Guantanamo
is "a professional, humane detention and interrogation operation ...
bounded by law and guided by the American spirit."
Gen. Hill said Mr. Rumsfeld gave him the final
set of approved interrogation techniques on April 16, 2003. Four of
the methods require the defense secretary's approval, he said, and
those methods had been used on two prisoners. He said interrogators
had stopped short of using all the methods lawyers had approved. It
remains unclear what actions U.S. officials took as a result of the
legal advice.
Critics who have seen the draft report said it
undercuts the administration's claims that it recognized a duty to
treat prisoners humanely. The "claim that the president's
commander-in-chief power includes the authority to use torture
should be unheard of in this day and age," said Michael Ratner,
president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York
advocacy group that has filed lawsuits against U.S. detention
policies. "Can one imagine the reaction if those on trial for
atrocities in the former Yugoslavia had tried this defense?"
Following scattered reports last year of harsh
interrogation techniques used by the U.S. overseas, Sen. Patrick
Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, wrote to National Security Adviser
Condoleezza Rice asking for clarification. The response came in June
2003 from Mr. Haynes, who wrote that the U.S. was obliged to conduct
interrogations "consistent with" the 1994 international Convention
Against Torture and the federal Torture Statute enacted to implement
the convention outside the U.S.
The U.S. "does not permit, tolerate or condone
any such torture by its employees under any circumstances," Mr.
Haynes wrote. The U.S. also followed its legal duty, required by the
torture convention, "to prevent other acts of cruel, inhuman or
degrading treatment or punishment which do not amount to torture,"
he wrote.
The U.S. position is that domestic criminal laws
and the Constitution's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishments
already met the Convention Against Torture's requirements within
U.S. territory.
The Convention Against Torture was proposed in
1984 by the United Nations General Assembly and was ratified by the
U.S. in 1994. It states that "no exceptional circumstances
whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal
political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked
as a justification of torture," and that orders from superiors "may
not be invoked as a justification of torture."
That prohibition was reaffirmed after the Sept.
11 attacks by the U.N. panel that oversees the treaty, the Committee
Against Torture, and the March 2003 report acknowledged that "other
nations and international bodies may take a more restrictive view"
of permissible interrogation methods than did the Bush
administration.
The report then offers a series of legal
justifications for limiting or disregarding antitorture laws and
proposed legal defenses that government officials could use if they
were accused of torture.
A military official who helped prepare the
report said it came after frustrated Guantanamo interrogators had
begun trying unorthodox methods on recalcitrant prisoners. "We'd
been at this for a year-plus and got nothing out of them" so
officials concluded "we need to have a less-cramped view of what
torture is and is not."
The official said, "People were trying like hell
how to ratchet up the pressure," and used techniques that ranged
from drawing on prisoners' bodies and placing women's underwear on
prisoners heads -- a practice that later reappeared in the Abu
Ghraib prison -- to telling subjects, "I'm on the line with somebody
in Yemen and he's in a room with your family and a grenade that's
going to pop unless you talk."
Senior officers at Guantanamo requested a
"rethinking of the whole approach to defending your country when you
have an enemy that does not follow the rules," the official said.
Rather than license torture, this official said that the report
helped rein in more "assertive" approaches.
Methods now used at Guantanamo include limiting
prisoners' food, denying them clothing, subjecting them to
body-cavity searches, depriving them of sleep for as much as 96
hours and shackling them in so-called stress positions, a
military-intelligence official said. Although the interrogators
consider the methods to be humiliating and unpleasant, they don't
view them as torture, the official said.
The working-group report elaborated the Bush
administration's view that the president has virtually unlimited
power to wage war as he sees fit, and neither Congress, the courts
nor international law can interfere. It concluded that neither the
president nor anyone following his instructions was bound by the
federal Torture Statute, which makes it a crime for Americans
working for the government overseas to commit or attempt torture,
defined as any act intended to "inflict severe physical or mental
pain or suffering." Punishment is up to 20 years imprisonment, or a
death sentence or life imprisonment if the victim dies.
"In order to respect the president's inherent
constitutional authority to manage a military campaign ... (the
prohibition against torture) must be construed as inapplicable to
interrogations undertaken pursuant to his commander-in chief
authority," the report asserted. (The parenthetical comment is in
the original document.) The Justice Department "concluded that it
could not bring a criminal prosecution against a defendant who had
acted pursuant to an exercise of the president's constitutional
power," the report said. Citing confidential Justice Department
opinions drafted after Sept. 11, 2001, the report advised that the
executive branch of the government had "sweeping" powers to act as
it sees fit because "national security decisions require the unity
in purpose and energy in action that characterize the presidency
rather than Congress."
The lawyers concluded that the Torture Statute
applied to Afghanistan but not Guantanamo, because the latter lies
within the "special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the
United States, and accordingly is within the United States" when
applying a law that regulates only government conduct abroad.
Administration lawyers also concluded that the
Alien Tort Claims Act, a 1789 statute that allows noncitizens to sue
in U.S. courts for violations of international law, couldn't be
invoked against the U.S. government unless it consents, and that the
1992 Torture Victims Protection Act allowed suits only against
foreign officials for torture or "extrajudicial killing" and "does
not apply to the conduct of U.S. agents acting under the color of
law."
The Bush administration has argued before the
Supreme Court that foreigners held at Guantanamo have no
constitutional rights and can't challenge their detention in court.
The Supreme Court is expected to rule on that question by month's
end.
For Afghanistan and other foreign locations
where the Torture Statute applies, the March 2003 report offers a
narrow definition of torture and then lays out defenses that
government officials could use should they be charged with
committing torture, such as mistakenly relying in good faith on the
advice of lawyers or experts that their actions were permissible.
"Good faith may be a complete defense" to a torture charge, the
report advised.
"The infliction of pain or suffering per se,
whether it is physical or mental, is insufficient to amount to
torture," the report advises. Such suffering must be "severe," the
lawyers advise, and they rely on a dictionary definition to suggest
it "must be of such a high level of intensity that the pain is
difficult for the subject to endure."
The law says torture can be caused by
administering or threatening to administer "mind-altering substances
or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the sense of
personality." The Bush lawyers advised, though, that it "does not
preclude any and all use of drugs" and "disruption of the senses or
personality alone is insufficient" to be illegal. For involuntarily
administered drugs or other psychological methods, the "acts must
penetrate to the core of an individual's ability to perceive the
world around him," the lawyers found.
Gen. Hill said last week that the military
didn't use injections or chemicals on prisoners.
After defining torture and other prohibited
acts, the memo presents "legal doctrines ... that could render
specific conduct, otherwise criminal, not unlawful." Foremost, the
lawyers rely on the "commander-in-chief authority," concluding that
"without a clear statement otherwise, criminal statutes are not read
as infringing on the president's ultimate authority" to wage war.
Moreover, "any effort by Congress to regulate the interrogation of
unlawful combatants would violate the Constitution's sole vesting of
the commander-in-chief authority in the president," the lawyers
advised.
Likewise, the lawyers found that "constitutional
principles" make it impossible to "punish officials for aiding the
president in exercising his exclusive constitutional authorities"
and neither Congress nor the courts could "require or implement the
prosecution of such an individual."
To protect subordinates should they be charged
with torture, the memo advised that Mr. Bush issue a "presidential
directive or other writing" that could serve as evidence, since
authority to set aside the laws is "inherent in the president."
The report advised that government officials
could argue that "necessity" justified the use of torture.
"Sometimes the greater good for society will be accomplished by
violating the literal language of the criminal law," the lawyers
wrote, citing a standard legal text, "Substantive Criminal Law" by
Wayne LaFave and Austin W. Scott. "In particular, the necessity
defense can justify the intentional killing of one person ... so
long as the harm avoided is greater."
In addition, the report advised that torture or
homicide could be justified as "self-defense," should an official
"honestly believe" it was necessary to head off an imminent attack
on the U.S. The self-defense doctrine generally has been asserted by
individuals fending off assaults, and in 1890, the Supreme Court
upheld a U.S. deputy marshal's right to shoot an assailant of
Supreme Court Justice Stephen Field as involving both self-defense
and defense of the nation. Citing Justice Department opinions, the
report concluded that "if a government defendant were to harm an
enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might
arguably violate criminal prohibition," he could be justified "in
doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by
the al Qaeda terrorist network."
Mr. LaFave, a law professor at the University of
Illinois, said he was unaware that the Pentagon used his textbook in
preparing its legal analysis. He agreed, however, that in some cases
necessity could be a defense to torture charges. "Here's a guy who
knows with certainty where there's a bomb that will blow New York
City to smithereens. Should we torture him? Seems to me that's an
easy one," Mr. LaFave said. But he said necessity couldn't be a
blanket justification for torturing prisoners because of a general
fear that "the nation is in danger."
For members of the military, the report
suggested that officials could escape torture convictions by arguing
that they were following superior orders, since such orders "may be
inferred to be lawful" and are "disobeyed at the peril of the
subordinate." Examining the "superior orders" defense at the
Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals, the Vietnam War prosecution
of U.S. Army Lt. William Calley for the My Lai massacre and the
current U.N. war-crimes tribunals for Rwanda and the former
Yugoslavia, the report concluded it could be asserted by "U.S. armed
forces personnel engaged in exceptional interrogations except where
the conduct goes so far as to be patently unlawful."
The report seemed "designed to find the legal
loopholes that will permit the use of torture against detainees,"
said Mary Ellen O'Connell, an international-law professor at the
Ohio State University who has seen the report. "CIA operatives will
think they are covered because they are not going to face
liability."
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The top Senate Republican explained:
ERSHOWITZ: Well, in fact, we've done that. Of
course, we've done that. We have bombed civilian targets during every
single one of our wars. We did it in Dresden. We did it in Vietnam
notwithstanding these rules. So you know, having laws on the books and
breaking them systemically just creates disdain ... It's much better
to have rules that we can actually live within. And absolute
prohibitions, generally, are not the kind of rules that countries
would live within. (
If we catch the guy who we SAW
planting a bomb and we put him in jail (only) and the notes and
bombings continue? Will we be content with the "vigorous
interrogation" techniques for this guy. Maybe he doesn't know
anything useful? He has already forfeited his life for his past
crime. If there is a chance to get more data from him, prevent more
bombs, can we use torture? If we are wrong, and he knows nothing, we
made a mistake that did cost him his life. Yes he suffered before he
died. (
In
this case, if CBS had really cared about the country, about our military,
about doing the right thing, they would have taken these pictures, (which
they had illegally) and asked the military and the Pentagon what was being
done about the abuses (Although they most likely knew it, they would have
been told that the matter was in hand and being taken care of). (
Don Imus on Tuesday, "If you go down that slippery slope, OK - you decide,
OK, well, this torture is OK - then what's the difference betw*een us and
the Gestapo?" 
McCain
then followed with his Gestapo comparison. 
Let's say that a "bad man" has
kidnapped my wife and all six of my children. He kills one of my
children and sends me the severed head. He then writes a "threat
letter" (with no demand -- just intended to terrorize me) tells me that he
intends to kill each of the other children, slowly, by torture, and
then he will rape and torture my wife. 
handcuffs, if you will. He has with him
an already written note for me that another of my children is now
locked in an air-tight vault, with 5 hours of air left for him before
he suffocates.
was
very rare for the students who went through Ranger Training. When I
went through Ranger School, all graduates got the patch. I certainly
wore my Ranger Patch on my Army Uniform with great pride. Does that
color my thinking on torture? I suppose. I've been a patriot all my
life. ![[Osama bin Laden]](../Data/images/Laden_Osamabin-EH03711142001180612.gif)
