| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
|
 Posted: Fri Apr 17, 2009 10:55 am Post subject: The Nuremberg Precedent and the Obama Admnistration |
 |
|
| Quote: |
The Nuremberg Precedent and the Obama Admnistration
Nicolaus Mills - April 17, 2009
The Nuremberg Precedent and the Obama Admnistration Image
WE NOW have what the Central Intelligence Agency wanted kept secret: memos showing the Bush Justice Department authorized the CIA use of interrogation techniques ranging from waterboarding to facial slapping in order to get information from senior Al Qaeda operatives.
The CIA�s fears about the damage inherent in the memos are understandable. The memos with their �doublethink� read as if they were taken from George Orwell�s 1984.
Waterboarding: According to the Bush Justice Department, waterboarding by the CIA was permissible despite the fact that it �produces the perception of suffocation.� The �feeling of drowning,� Bush officials told the CIA, is legal because it �does not inflict physical pain� and because relief is almost immediate when the wet cloth �is removed from the nose and mouth� of the subject.
Facial slapping: It causes shock and humiliation, Bush Justice Department officials conceded. But it was legal for the CIA to carry out facial slapping because it �does not produce pain that is difficult to endure.�
Walling: Pushing an individual into a wall may hurt, Bush Justice Department officials told the CIA, but �any pain experienced is not of the intensity associated with serious physical injury.� Walling was thus all right in the end because �the sound of hitting the wall will actually be far worse than any possible injury to the individual.�
Attorney General Eric Holder has already declared that waterboarding is illegal, and it is safe to say that that the CIA, under its new director Leon Panetta, is going to be run very differently from the CIA in the Bush years. But the bigger question is, What is going to happen to the officials in the Bush Justice Department who made waterboarding, facial slapping, and walling business as usual? Senator Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has said the memos illustrate the need for an independent commission or inquiry.
The irony is that for the moment President Obama stands in the way of such an inquiry. �Nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past,� he has declared. It is hard to imagine the president of the Harvard Law Review making such a statement. It is as if he has been blindsided by his well-known dislike of confrontational politics.
It is not simply the specter of Abu Ghraib that the Bush Justice Department memos evoke, but the specter of Nuremberg. This is not to say that the brutality sanctioned by the Bush Justice Department was equivalent to that of the Nazis, but it is to say that the Nuremberg precedent of holding government officials responsible for the human rights violations of their subordinates applies here.
The Bush Justice Department memos show that various forms of torture were authorized by government officials at the highest level. To back off from exposing how the Bush Justice Department gave the CIA permission to use such brutal interrogation tactics is to suggest that we cannot learn from the past. Today we are in a situation very much like the one Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson described in 1946 when, in his opening statement at the Nuremberg Trials, he said that the brutality of Nazi Germany had �brought shudders to civilized people everywhere.�
For Jackson, it was crucial to prosecute those individuals who had carried out Germany�s crimes. On this matter, he was outspoken. �While it is quite proper to employ the fiction of responsibility of a state or a corporation for the purpose of imposing a collective liability, it is quite intolerable to let such a legalism become the basis of personal immunity,� he declared.
We may�just may�not want to go that far in the case of the Bush Justice Department. But if we don�t at least deal with the collective failures that occurred in the Bush Justice Department immediately following 9/11, we are setting ourselves up for a time when a future administration will see no risk in again sanctioning torture. This is a problem that the Obama administration cannot duck�no matter how much it would like to. |
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/online.php?id=234
Those responsible must be punished.
The United States must not be a society where "youts" selling blow to one another have the full weight of the legal system crashing down on them and the elite may do what they please to other humans, including torture and murder. That is not a just society and the United States was constructed with justice in mind. |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
Hater Depot
Joined: 29 Mar 2005
|
| Posted: Fri Apr 17, 2009 5:39 pm Post subject: |
|
|
The memos are downloadable here. They are quite shocking. And frankly, the "legal advice" contained within them is unbelievably shoddy. Their authors could very well be prosecuted.
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general/olc_memos.html
It is now utterly impossible to claim the US did not torture anyone over the past 7 years. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
rollo
Joined: 10 May 2006
Location: China
|
| Posted: Sat Apr 18, 2009 8:27 am Post subject: |
|
|
For some time there has been a growing mood to prosecute criminals who authorized this. even in the Repulican party these have been calls to hold the bush Administration responsible. The release of these memos I feel makes it impossible for the justice department to not act on this.
They didnt even bother getting a decent legal opinion organized they relied on what was called an f-minus paper by a first year law student they were so anxious to draw blood. This is no longer about an administration which might have been overzealous in getting information it is about a planned indecent program of torture that went far beyond , a little sleep deprivation, and loud music, produced little and did much more damage than good. There is an element in this ver very disturbing that it was done because some took pleasure in it. They should be prosecuted and that prosecution should not exclude the ex-president!! |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
bacasper
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
|
| Posted: Sat Apr 18, 2009 10:10 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Hater Depot wrote: |
| It is now utterly impossible to claim the US did not torture anyone over the past 7 years. |
Really? Just wait until Urban Myth gets here. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
|
| Posted: Sat Apr 18, 2009 12:31 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Mises,
You seem to believe that America's been bought. I rather think its a little more like Americans have allowed America to be bought, and would prefer others take care of the mess for them. Ditto nat'l security.
Torture
| TNC wrote: |
| what really disturbs me about all of this, is that most Americans still don't think torture is a big deal. I think in the case of Bush, particularly after 2004, we--the American people--got the government we deserved. I think Bush said a lot about who we were post-9/11. I'd like to see some exploration into how to make this torture argument directly to the people. Maybe we can't. Maybe people really don't care that much. But if we're wondering why Obama isn't willing to press forward, I think it's fair to also wonder why the people aren't pressing him to press forward. |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
|
| Posted: Sat Apr 18, 2009 1:10 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| I'm torn on this issue. I think Obama has made the correct short-term choice but I am convinced it will come back to haunt us in the long-term. I don't mind so much that he more or less amnestied the ones 'just following orders'; I mind very much that nothing is being done to go after those responsible for the orders. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Hater Depot
Joined: 29 Mar 2005
|
| Posted: Sat Apr 18, 2009 4:08 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Obama's is probably the best approach for two reasons.
First, from what I know, securing a conviction against someone who was following an OLC memo is likely impossible even if the memo was not written in good faith.
Second, it is obviously a political minefield. Many, many Republicans stand ready to block any investigation. Ultimately, political will has to come from the people. Obama has opened the door, and we can choose whether to walk through it. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
|
| Posted: Sun Apr 19, 2009 8:41 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Hater Depot wrote: |
| Ultimately, political will has to come from the people. Obama has opened the door, and we can choose whether to walk through it. |
That's true. Obama has said that the DoJ will defend all CIA officers, which means that they could be prosecuted. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
|
| Posted: Mon Apr 20, 2009 10:28 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Kuros wrote: |
Mises,
You seem to believe that America's been bought. I rather think its a little more like Americans have allowed America to be bought, and would prefer others take care of the mess for them. Ditto nat'l security. |
Dunno. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
TheUrbanMyth
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Location: Retired
|
| Posted: Mon Apr 20, 2009 4:58 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| bacasper wrote: |
| Hater Depot wrote: |
| It is now utterly impossible to claim the US did not torture anyone over the past 7 years. |
Really? Just wait until Urban Myth gets here. |
When have I made a claim to the contrary? There you go yet AGAIN, making up stuff. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
rollo
Joined: 10 May 2006
Location: China
|
| Posted: Mon Apr 20, 2009 6:48 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Legally I think it would be difficult to prosecute the C.I.A officers. They seem to have been protected by the Bybee memo. It's Bybee who needs to be looked at. He is now a federal judge. I think an impeachment hearing is called for. His legal reasoning in this memo is flawed , perhaps even criminal and certainly calls into his qualifications to be a federal judge. It would be interesting to get him under oath and hear if he was pressured to form and write this "opinion." |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
lithium
Joined: 18 Jun 2008
|
| Posted: Mon Apr 20, 2009 10:50 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Hater Depot wrote: |
The memos are downloadable here. They are quite shocking. And frankly, the "legal advice" contained within them is unbelievably shoddy. Their authors could very well be prosecuted.
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general/olc_memos.html
It is now utterly impossible to claim the US did not torture anyone over the past 7 years. |
You liberals think that everything that is wrong with the world starts with the USA. If you hate the USA that much....leave. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
|
| Posted: Tue Apr 21, 2009 5:32 am Post subject: |
|
|
| I'm conservative, kinda. I don't think it is conservative to torture. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
