In his recently published book, former President George W. Bush admits that when asked to approve waterboarding, long considered torture under US and international precedents, his response was, "Damn right." This admission has created a difficult dilemma for President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder.
Torture is a federal crime punishable by up to twenty years in prison. When President Nixon was forced to release a White House tape recording showing that he had orchestrated the cover up of the Watergate burglary, he immediately exposed himself to criminal prosecution and likely conviction for obstruction of justice. His successor, President Gerald Ford, quickly pardoned Nixon, who had resigned, to avoid that result. The pardon cost Mr. Ford his election.
President Obama has the power to pardon Mr. Bush. As with the Ford pardon, it would generate outrage among many Americans, and, in my opinion, would be wrong.
The other options facing President Obama and Attorney General are to do nothing or to enforce the anti-torture law by commencing a full and fair investigation of the facts by an independent prosecutor to determine whether criminal charges are warranted.
Under the US Constitution, the president is required to "faithfully execute the laws." It is hard to think of a more blatant confession of a crime than the one made by George W. Bush. To leave it unexamined is to reject the constitutional obligation and to create a corrosive sense that the law applies, when it does, only to lesser mortals, but not to higher-ups and certainly not to presidents. A dual standard of justice is intolerable in a democracy. Doing nothing, then, is not a constitutionally acceptable response.
There is another reason to investigate. The Convention Against Torture, ratified under Ronald Reagan, obliges our government to ensure "a prompt and impartial investigation" when there are "reasonable grounds to believe" torture has occurred (Article 12). To ignore former President Bush's admission is to disrespect our solemn treaty obligation.
It is not a sufficient justification for inaction to claim, as Attorney General Holder has in the past, that anyone acting on a basis of the notorious Torture Memos written by the former President's Justice Department (and later withdrawn) is free from prosecution. Those Memos purported to allow torture by contending -- incorrectly -- that a US president had the right to violate US criminal laws. They also concocted an absurd definition of torture. Torture, said the Memos, required a pain equivalent to the pain of death. But no one knows what the pain of death is, and the author of the Memos admitted that he didn't know either. Clearly, the definition was a sham and the Memos were a sham.
To suggest that these sham Memos -- a Justice Department official characterized them as "insane" on their face -- constitute a defense runs into big obstacles. The Convention against Torture permits "no exceptional circumstances whatsoever" to its absolute ban. That should mean there is no exception for torture committed on advice of counsel -- particularly the obviously faux advice of the Torture Memos. Reading an exception into the anti-torture statute, which is intended to carry out the treaty, would seriously derogate from our government's obligations to carry out the treaty.
More important, the Torture Memos were written under the auspices of the Bush White House itself, as part of a scheme to create immunity from criminal prosecution. To the extent that George W. Bush was part of that effort, he cannot claim protection from it--he cannot have relied on the Memos in good faith.
The Attorney General should not be the one to judge whether the Justice Department's discredited Torture Memos provide a complete defense to former President Bush. Because Mr. Holder has the reputation and clout of the Justice Department to uphold, he has a conflict of interest in determining what weight, if any, to give those Memos.
That is why he needs promptly to name a special prosecutor to decide whether the anti-torture act, or any other federal laws, were broken by former President Bush in authorizing the water boarding and torture.
Failing to act will cast a long shadow over the rule of law in America and our commitment to justice and accountability. No country should tolerate criminal impunity in its top officials, least of all the United States. President Obama himself has attacked the idea of impunity when talking about foreign governments.
Naming a special prosecutor to investigate whether there are grounds to charge former President Bush is the constitutionally, and morally, correct action to take. The ACLU and others are calling for this to happen. As long as the process is fair, lawful and professional, it is one that the country will accept whatever the results.
Dr. David P. Gushee: Loyalty and Passion in the American Christian Torture Debate
The amazing thing to consider is this, if Obama did grow a spine, and did stand up against the Republican juggernaut, he would gain approval ratings the likes of which haven't been seen for decades. But, the likelihood is, he's going to continue picking himself up after each kick in the groin that the Republicans are guaranteed to deliver, and pleading for "bi-partisanship" and "compromise". It's as if Charlie Brown became President, and Lucy is on the opposing team pulling the football out EVERY SINGLE TIME....and Obama keeps coming back for more. Sad.
I hope he changes course and realizes Republicans are truly his enemies. They hate him even more than they hated Clinton, and that is not going to stop. Trying to compromise with scorpions guarantees a nasty sting every time...and so it has been throughout his Presidency. Get a clue sir...the hour is late.
2) "The Convention against torture " is ambiguous at best and was not ratified under Reagan
3) The debate that waterboarding is torture would be a huge part of any trial
and 4) the Torture memos are more than a substantive defense against any frivolous trial
(and you have to know Pres Bush consulted with attorneys and advisers before he wrote those remarks)
On October 21, 1994, President Clinton deposited the United States instrument of ratification of the Convention with the Secretary General of the United Nations.
Consistent with its terms, the Convention Against Torture entered into force for the United States on November 20, 1994.
Pursuant to conditions imposed by the treaty, Section 2340 -- the "torture statute" was added by Congress to Title 18 of the United States Code, making torture a crime under U.S. domestic law.
http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/fallacies.html
Your argument is invalid.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/16/guantanamo-bay-compensation-claim
"Lawyers told him it wasnt illegal..he did it."
No... first they did it, and then they instructed the lawyers to write a paper saying that it was OK... months after the fact. The lawyers were made part of the torture conspiracy by becoming part of the cover-up.
Waterboarding is NOT used on ANY U.S. service members during training. It was discontinued by the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency sometime prior to July, 2002.
The "big deal" is that the United States led the world to adopt a treaty forbidding torture... got it passed and adopted by the United Nations... got it ratified by the Senate (making it equivalent law to the Constitution itself)... added an anti-torture statute to its domestic criminal law, pursuant to the treaty... and has used the treaty to prosecute torturers -- including heads-of-state -- all around the world... AND NOW, the president of the United States admits to having violated that law and that treaty.
Torture is a war crime. That is a Big Deal.
Torture is the denial, the deliberate trashing, of our entire system of law and justice in the United States. That is a Big Deal.
Torture turns the United States into a lying hypocrite before the world... a pariah state, a criminal nation. That is a Big Deal.
Fanned.
And the Obama administration is too gutless to do anything about it.
The same is true for Holder.
Those who can ought to take actions which push on the obstruction and keep it going so that statutes of limitations are not allowed to run out.
The first torture done -- on Ibn Sheik al-Libi, in Egypt (later murdered, under extremely suspicious circumstances, in a Libyan prison) -- was done to procure false testimony to a non-existent connection between al-Qaeda and Iraq and a WMD program in Iraq. They needed something to bolster their case for a decision already made by Bush (made before he even took office, actually)... the intelligence was "being fixed around the policy," as the British Downing Street Memo said.
It was all a sham and a show... to justify an illegal war which made that cabal untold billions in cold, hard cash.
The Senate ratified the treaty on October 27, 1990.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ntquery/z?trtys:100TD00020:
The United States IS bound by it.
Why bother to invent things that anyone can debunk with a few seconds' research?
Now, onto the ratification. Based on your pointing out that I was wrong, I did a bit of research. The US is bound by it subject to the specified reservations. Have you actually read it the advise and consent of the Senate?
Also:
Tell me, has any State, or the UN itself, made a claim that the US violated this Convention with its use of waterboarding? Provide your citations.
Waterboarding causes no actual physical or mental harm. It causes a physiological reflex called the "mammalian diving reflex" (the same reflex triggered in an infant whose face is dunked under water in infant swim lessons). Pouring cold water on one's face induces MDR, a reflex that actually PROMOTES survivability rather than promoting death. What one calls "torture" is what another calls a life-extending mammalian natural reflex http://divingindepth.com/mammalian-diving-reflex/.
That evolution thing is a real bitch.
The truths reflected in this article await their consequences. The cabal that condoned and hid torture will have an ineluctable meeting with justice. It’s just a matter of time.
Don't like torture? You can take personal action against it.
Please read the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) at the Hague:
http://www.icc-cpi.int/NR/rdonlyres/EA9AEFF7-5752-4F84-BE94-0A655EB30E16/0/Rome_Statute_English.pdf
Article 7 defines crimes against humanity. Article 8 defines war crimes. Article 15 describes the process of prosecution.
You can contact the Prosecutor with evidence:
http://www.icc-cpi.int/Menus/ICC/Contact
Stories like this are great examples of evidence for the ICC.
And then, there is the War Crimes Act of 1996, signed by President Bill Clinton:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/718/usc_sec_18_00002441----000-.html
Where is the outrage? Please take your keystrokes to places in addition to HP and make a difference. Feel free to share this post with your friends.
Peace from Austin
But there are many reasons to believe that they knew very little, if anything.