[Osx-nutters] Anti-Torture Bill Fails in Senate

[David Cake]

At 9:25 AM -0500 18/12/07, Charles Bennett wrote:
>OTOH, the manual only deals with POWs.    Not illegal combatants (or 
>whatever they are called) so I suspect that that is the point of 
>contention.  
>
>If you agree to use this standard, then you may be in effect 
>agreeing that they are POWs.   Agree or not, I'm pretty sure that 
>the admin wants to avoid that.

	You are certainly agreeing that there does not exist a secret 
category of people, somehow never mentioned in Geneva Convention but 
implicit within it, that the Geneva Convention allows you to torture. 
But I doubt anyone outside the Bush White House seriously believes 
that.


>OTOOH, if you DID decide that they are members of an organized army, 
>then their attacks against civilian targets would make hanging a 
>reasonable outcome and not require civilian involvment at all, since 
>they would be dealt with is POWs that had committed violations of 
>the rules of warefare.

Not all of them, you'd have to actually prove it in at least a miltary court.
Its the administrations sleight of hand that if they can avoid ruling 
them as covered by other military or civilian courts, then you can 
give them no rights at all - but again, does anyone believe this 
outside of the White House?

>Doing it out of uniform would open them to immediate battlefield 
>execution as non uniformed combatants. (though we would get less 
>information out of them that way)

	Only the ones that actually got caught doing anything during 
battle. You can't claim battlefield execution except during an actual 
battle, and even then it has to be justified. Normally, they get 
counted as civilian criminals, and may well be covered by the death 
penalty, but only after a trial.
	And, of course, most of the people in Gitmo were captured 
post battle in Afghanistan, and aren't accused of anything specific, 
and quite often engaged in combat IN insignia (a Taliban black turban 
is clearly sufficient to be a militia under the Convention).

>Perhaps there *is* an upside to following this document..

	No.
	The point of wanting the Geneva Convention observed, and 
torture forbidden, isn't about treating the terrorists nicely. Its 
about having a trial, and justice, and forcing the administration to 
justify what it does. Maybe many of them are guilty of hideous crimes 
and may be legally up for the death penalty - but we only have the 
word of administration so far proven to be frequently wrong, if not 
deliberately lying, to say so.


>
>>Mukasey Blocks Congressional Probe of Destroyed CIA Tapes
>>
>>Attorney General Michael Mukasey is coming under intense criticism 
>>by Democrats for his handling of the scandal surrounding the CIA's 
>>destruction of hundreds of hours of videotape showing 
>>interrogations inside secret CIA prisons. Within a single 24-hour 
>>period, the Justice Department warned a federal judge to back-off 
>>of his inquiry into the destruction of the tapes, told Congress to 
>>delay its own investigation into the matter, and refused to 
>>cooperate with congressional inquiries into the Justice 
>>Department's role in the elimination of the tapes. The American 
>>Civil Liberties Union called the Justice Department's actions a 
>>stunning rebuke of the constitutional system of checks and balances.
>>
>
>I think the tapes should not have been destroyed, but simply marked 
>as classified, top secret.  (shows convert peoples faces and reveals 
>methods..)   That way congress could have seen whatever they wanted, 
>after being read into the program, but the first time a tape was 
>leaked, or they spoke about what they saw, they could charge the 
>congress critter with treason.   Win, Win as far as I'm concerned.

	Sure.
	Such items can still be introduced into court. And Congress 
still gets some privilege to do things in the national interest.
	Cheers
		David
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