Comments Posted By Napewaste
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PROSECUTING TORTURE AS A DISTRACTION FROM THE ECONOMY
A really well reasoned article. I'm sorry to say that I disagree, but at least you were writing it sincerely and weren't just flat out lying like a lot of right wing blogs do (I may have to come back and read more of your stuff :) I'm not in the tank for either one of these scumbag parties, but I will tell you that Karl Rove and Dick Cheney (with his neocon buddies, Perle, Wolfowitz) played lifelong loser Bush Jr. like a fiddle. It's always been about the oil, boys and girls.
And torture is illegal and we did it- there's absolutely no way around that and to pretend otherwise is just juvenile. I saw torture first hand in Nam and nothing was accomplished whatsoever. You get confessions from scaring a man, not intelligence. You individuals that automatically rush to defend your party from some tribalistic reflex are just as bad as the "Obamabots". Blind obedience and unquestioning loyalty is NOT what the Founding Fathers intended for the free citizen to be. Always question authority, be it "your" team or "theirs". After all, they're all just damned politicians.
I didn't fight for this country to come home and see how cowards have taken over the controls. We're supposed to be better than the people we fight, but if we lower ourselves to barbarity, what's the friggin' point?“Should any American soldier be so base and infamous as to injure any [prisoner]. . . I do most earnestly enjoin you to bring him to such severe and exemplary punishment as the enormity of the crime may require. Should it extend to death itself, it will not be disproportional to its guilt at such a time and in such a cause... for by such conduct they bring shame, disgrace and ruin to themselves and their country.” - George Washington, charge to the Northern Expeditionary Force, Sept. 14, 1775
Art. 16. Military necessity does not admit of cruelty - that is, the infliction of suffering for the sake of suffering or for revenge, nor of maiming or wounding except in fight, nor of torture to extort confessions. ... in general, military necessity does not include any act of hostility which makes the return to peace unnecessarily difficult. (Lincoln Administration's General Order 100)
Convention Against Torture -- signed by Reagan in 1988, ratified in 1994 by Senate:
Each State Party shall ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law (Article 4) . . . . The State Party in territory under whose jurisdiction a person alleged to have committed any offence referred to in article 4 is found, shall in the cases contemplated in article 5, if it does not extradite him, submit the case to its competent authorities for the purpose of prosecution.
No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture. . . . An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.Geneva Conventions, Article 146:
Each High Contracting Party shall be under the obligation to search for persons alleged to have committed, or to have ordered to be committed, such grave breaches, and shall bring such persons, regardless of their nationality, before its own courts.Charter of the International Tribunal at Nuremberg, Article 8:
The fact that the Defendant acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior shall not free him from responsibility, but may be considered in mitigation of punishment if the Tribunal determines that justice so requires.U.S. Constitution, Article VI:
[A]ll Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land.Well... there you have it, boys. I didn't make a word of it up. You have two Republican Presidents and the Founding President of these United States all saying that torture isn't worth a damned.
Comment Posted By Napewaste On 12.07.2009 @ 18:59
And yes, G.W. Bush Jr. was the worst offender this country's ever seen. If Democrats are complicit, by all means put them in a dock too, but these war crimes are in need of investigation and if proven guilty- convicted to the furthest extent of the law, up and including execution. That's what the Rule of Law (courtesy of the Magna Carta) means. I enjoyed your article, nonetheless. Good show.
