Tuesday, June 08, 2004

Bush; Setting Aside Laws and Torture

In yesterday's Wall Street Journal (via Josh Marshall) we learn that White House counsel advised that prisoners and detainees in the Middle East could be treated more harshly than would be allowed under the Geneva Conventions and the Conventions Against Torture.

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."
Besides the outrageous - and completely false - claim of extraconstitutional powers in this statement, it is disgusting to see the de-facto acceptance of torture in our actions in Afghanistan, Iraq and GITMO. And yet, we can see from the little evidence that we have seen that, indeed, this statement was not only accepted at face value by the administration, but its propagation down the chain-of-command was "successful."

In an interesting juxtaposition, an article in today's Wall Street Journal (subscription) notes that military lawyers were, and remain, uncomfortable with the liberties being taken with international and US law by the Bush administration.

Some top military lawyers in the Pentagon are questioning the propriety of interrogation techniques currently being employed to question al Qaeda captives at the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, senior defense officials said.

[snip]

Military lawyers, many of whom worked closely in drafting the interrogation rules, have conveyed their concerns to Bush administration officials in the Pentagon, the defense officials said. Their objections to many of the tactics approved for use at Guantanamo illustrate a rift between senior military lawyers and Bush administration lawyers inside the Pentagon about which extreme interrogation measures are legal.
The highlighted sentence provides a peek into this world of chickenhawks versus the military. The military lawyers know that it is vital to the interests of the soldiers that the US been seen as holding the high moral ground in how we treat our prisoners and detainees. The civilian lawyers under the thrall of neo-con Pentagon advisors and their leash holders, are more interested in results - any results - regardless of the efficacy, the legality or the morality of their methods.

Having been in the military, I can tell you that it pains me to say this, but in this instance, the military lawyers, the folks from the JAG Corps, are the ones upholding the honor and the best interests of the military. We were let down by the commanders and the soldiers - by everyone in the chain-of-command - who let the abuse and torture of prisoners happen. Cooler heads did not prevail.

I hope that they kept all of their briefing notes. They may be needed at the Hague.

No comments: