So what if the President of lets say North Korea says its OK for his secret service to kidnap and torture Americans....would that be OK too, cuz the President of the country says so?

---

----------------------------------------------------------
"A society is defined not only by what it creates, but by what it refuses to destroy."
John Sawhill

Sorry Ken, just not familar with those requirements and how they get interpreted.

One for you.

So what if the President of lets say North Korea says its OK for his secret service to kidnap and torture Americans....would that be OK too, cuz the President of the country says so?




I guess it would be OK for them if that was their law.



You seem to think that if terrorists see we are giving their prisoners the same rights afforded American citizens that they will treat American prisoners the same way. I've got news for you. It ain't gonna happen. Their behaviors and treatment of prisoners, American or otherwise, is not dictated by what we do to them.

I don't need to refine anything. CIA operatives generally work undercover, they are spies. They don't wear uniforms and if we use your qualifiers they are illegal combatants. Is it OK to imprison and torture them?

And for the record, how many detainees have died in American prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan and Gitmo....the ones we know about? and how many more have died in the secret prisons? How many people have we tortured to death?

Are we any better than Al Qaeda or Saddam? Once you go down the path that Bush is taking us there is no coming back. Every US soldier in the field is at risk of capture and torture because George Bush flushed all semblance of civility and human rights down the shitter. How can we expect the enemy to treat Americans with any civility when we are torturing our prisoners?

---

----------------------------------------------------------
"A society is defined not only by what it creates, but by what it refuses to destroy."
John Sawhill

I don't think you are looking at this the right way. POTUS is required to protect this country. POTUS, or his successors don't want to be in the position of having to make a nasty decision and be subject to impeachment after the fact. Remember the Boland Amendments?

Congress, on the other hand, has to be complimented for trying to make a decision. I have laughed as you and others whine how everything is illegal, but Congress won't pass a law to actually make it illegal.

North Korea engages in that behavior all the time. Just ask South Korea and Japan. They don't seem to care whether we think it is OK for some reason.

John McCain thinks it is.



"Mr. President, to fight terrorism we need intelligence. That much is obvious. What should also be obvious is that the intelligence we collect must be reliable and acquired humanely, under clear standards understood by all our fighting men and women. To do differently would not only offend our values as Americans, but undermine our war effort, because abuse of prisoners harms – not helps – us in the war on terror. First, subjecting prisoners to abuse leads to bad intelligence, because under torture a detainee will tell his interrogator anything to make the pain stop. Second, mistreatment of our prisoners endangers U.S. troops who might be captured by the enemy – if not in this war, then in the next. And third, prisoner abuses exact on us a terrible toll in the war of ideas, because inevitably these abuses become public. When they do, the cruel actions of a few darken the reputation of our country in the eyes of millions. American values should win against all others in any war of ideas, and we can’t let prisoner abuse tarnish our image."

---

----------------------------------------------------------
"A society is defined not only by what it creates, but by what it refuses to destroy."
John Sawhill

(vitus will have to forgive me for comparing US policy to Nazi Germany)

From Human Rights Watch (http://www.hrw.org/...4/4.htm#_Toc84652972):

"“Disappearances” have come to be regarded as a quintessential evil practiced by abusive governments. The method seems to have been invented by Adolf Hitler in his Nacht und Nebel Erlass (Night and Fog Decree) of December 7, 1941. The purpose of this decree was to seize persons in occupied territories “endangering German security” who were not immediately executed and to transport them secretly to Germany, where they disappeared without trace. German authorities prohibited officials from giving any information in order to achieve the desired intimidating effect."

Sound eerily familiar?

But more to your point:

"International law also bars incommunicado detention, even when it does not constitute “disappearance.” The authoritative Restatement (Third) of Foreign Relations Law of the United States lists categories of acts that violate customary international law. Section 702 (Customary International Law of Human Rights) provides that a state violates international law if, as a matter of state policy, it practices, encourages, or condones (a) genocide, (b) slavery or slave trade, (c) the murder or causing the disappearance of individuals, (d) torture or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, (e) prolonged arbitrary detention, (f) systematic racial discrimination, or (g) a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.

Under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which the United States has ratified, all prisoners are to be treated “with humanity and with respect for the inherent dignity of the human person.” States have a duty to take effective action to minimize the risk of torture. The elected Human Rights Committee, which monitors the ICCPR, has stated:

To guarantee the effective protection of detained persons, provisions should be made for detainees to be held in places officially recognized as places of detention and for their names and places of detention, as well as for the names of persons responsible for their detention, to be kept in registers readily available and accessible to those concerned, including relatives and friends. To the same effect, the time and place of all interrogations should be recorded, together with the names of all those present and this information should also be available for purposes of judicial or administrative proceedings. Provisions should also be made against incommunicado detention.

The Third Geneva Convention in article 126 (concerning prisoners of war) and the Fourth Geneva Convention in article 143 (concerning detained civilians) requires the ICRC to have access to all detainees and places of detention. Visits may only be prohibited for “reasons of imperative military necessity” and then only as “an exceptional and temporary measure.” These provisions also require that prisoners be documented, and that their whereabouts be made available to their family and governments.

It is also not clear what U.S. law allows officials to hold these suspects in prolonged incommunicado detention. In June 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Authorization for Use of Military Force Act, which Congress passed after September 11 authorizing the President to pursue al-Qaeda and its supporters, gave him the power to detain enemy forces captured in battle. Speaking for the plurality of the Court, however, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor said, “Certainly, we agree that indefinite detention for the purposes of interrogation is not authorized.” United States law considers both “prolonged detention without charges and trial,” and “causing the disappearance of persons by the abduction and clandestine detention of those persons” to constitute “gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.”"

---

----------------------------------
"Go yell at an M&M"

Actually, you are wrong. Here's the Oath of Office:

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Note that it is his job to protect the Constitution. The Constitution says that international treaties to which the US is a signatory are considered legally binding. Holding prisoners incommunicado is a violation of said treaties. Is he preserving and protecting the Constitution? I will admit that nowhere in the Oath is it said that he must actually obey the Constitution, so I guess Cheney can non-say his way around that one.

---

----------------------------------
"Go yell at an M&M"

So you think its OK for a President or dictator or a mad mullah who just so happens to run a country, to arbitrarily announce that he's going to begin rounding up and torturing people he thinks is a threat to his security?

Why did we overthrow Saddam again? I'm confused.

---

----------------------------------------------------------
"A society is defined not only by what it creates, but by what it refuses to destroy."
John Sawhill

Interesting post Ken.

I am not sure whether anything the US is alleged to have done, excepting the obvious abuses at Abu Graib, violate any of this or not.

I don't see any prolonged arbitrary detentions, with the operative word be arbitrary. I also agree with O,Conner that they can't be indefinite detentions.

The answer is no.

Now will you answer some of my questions?

Fire away.



(And if you don't think its OK for a President to arbitrarily announce that he's going to round people up and torture them, why are you arguing in favor of the existence of these secret prisons where people have been rounded up and are being tortured?...just curious)

---

----------------------------------------------------------
"A society is defined not only by what it creates, but by what it refuses to destroy."
John Sawhill

They are above. You dodged them all.

(vitus will have to forgive me for comparing US policy to Nazi Germany)


No, in this case I agree with you. More to the point, you're freely admitting the comparison, which I appreciate.

---

"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."

don't think Cheney is seeking an exemption for the things you mentioned. I think he is seeking to allow the president the authority to authorize (to the CIA) using whatever means neccessary if it means saving American lives.

Then I don't understand your continued insistence that what you think consitutes torture might be different than what I think constitutes torture, and that you don't think abusing the Koran is torture, etc etc. It seems a fairly irrelevent point if we both agree that what Cheney is seeking is, in fact, the ability to torture someone.

What you seemed to be saying earlier is that Cheney is not really looking for the ability to torture someone. Now you seem to be saying that he is seeking the ability to torture someone if the president thinks it's necessary. I agree with your current analysis, if I'm understanding you correctly.

---

"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."

I think the bee up your ass is in relation to some supposed double standard in the investigation surrounding the outing of Valerie Plame and the lack of an investigation surounding the leaking of information which led to the secret prison story?

OK.

A. Karl Rove, Scooter Libby and Dick Cheney outed a covert CIA field agent to exact political revenge against her husband who refused to lie about the non existent Niger uranium deal. In my opinion that warrants an investigation.

B. Someone in the administration or the CIA found out about secret prisons that violate just about every international convention this country has signed, where people are being kidnapped off the streets of sovereign nations and flown to these remote locations by the CIA for "interrogation"...and he blew the whistle. In my opinion that is a person doing their job and uncovering Govt corruption. That person doesn't need to be investigated, the Government does.



Happy now?

---

----------------------------------------------------------
"A society is defined not only by what it creates, but by what it refuses to destroy."
John Sawhill

Vitus - isn't this an inane argument? Why are we arguing about whether torture is wrong? Is this a conversation we would have had 10 years ago? If not, then why does this suddenly become questionable now unless we are not as principled as we claim we are?

Next we'll be arguing about whether its okay to execute 12 yr olds without trial if we "know" they're terrorists.

---

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security" - Benjamin Franklin
"Don't you see the rest of the country looks upon New York like we're left-wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers? I think of us that way sometimes and I live here." - Alvy Singer, "Annie Hall"

Perfect hypocracy, even given the assumptions you state in your inflamatory spin, most of which you know are simply not true.

My position is much simpler. Let's have a journalist witch hunt every time or basically never.

With your approach, we need a "what is OK to leak and what is not OK to leak czar." Have you applied? Maybe that was your promotion.

isn't this an inane argument?

Yes. But inanity has never been a defense against the need to have the conversation, sadly.

If not, then why does this suddenly become questionable now unless we are not as principled as we claim we are?

It saddens me to say it, but it seems at times like this that we aren't nearly as principled as we so like to think we are when times are easy.

It really is sad, to be forced into a conversation of whether or not the United States of America should be secretly imprisoning people, and engaging in torture, and it's most distressing to think of the possibility that a majority of Americans think we should.

---

"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."

Maybe I don't recall my own posts but I don't think I ever said "that Cheney is not really looking for the ability to torture someone." Our whole conversation, and my answers to your questions, were what I thought torture was and is. I think you are really taking liberty by saying "that what Cheney is seeking is, in fact, the ability to torture someone." I think what he is seeking is a provision to allow the president the right to grant the CIA the authority to use torture in extreme circumstances where the prisoner may have information that would keep Americans from being killed.

Maybe I don't recall my own posts but I don't think I ever said "that Cheney is not really looking for the ability to torture someone."

I think it's funny that you accused me of playing word games just recently.

We were engaged in a discussion of Cheney's lobbying for an exemption allowing cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment, which I took as nothing more than an exemption allowing torture. You replied saying that what you think is torture might not be what I think is torture, and therefore, I guessed, tried to make that case that what Cheney is after is only the authority to engage is cruel treatment that doesn't amount to torture. Then you asked me if I thought abusing the Koran was torture, and gave me a laundry list of behavior's Saddam engaged in, but we presumably would not, because that stuff is just Bad.

I think you are really taking liberty by saying "that what Cheney is seeking is, in fact, the ability to torture someone." I think what he is seeking is a provision to allow the president the right to grant the CIA the authority to use torture in extreme circumstances where the prisoner may have information that would keep Americans from being killed.

I think there's no real difference between those statements.

---

"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."

There is a lot of difference between those statements, and you know it.

Difference being?

---

"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."

The most important difference from a practical point of view is to prevent later charges of illegal torture as part of an Irancontra style witchhunt. Having a law as proposed by Congress on the books invites a future witchhunt whether justified in fact or not.

As Tip O'Neil said, it is not the nature of the evidence that warrants the investigation, but the seriousness of the charge.

The President needs this authority. He also needs to never use this authority.

Just like Congress has the authority to impeach the President and VP and insert the Speaker into the Presidency. It needs that authority. It also needs to never use that authority.

"Since you think its OK for America to kidnap and imprison enemy combatants and perceived threats to our security without any recourse in international law, do you think our enemies would be justified in ignoring international law when dealing with US combatants? "

American combattants are not comparable to illegal terrorist combatants. They have different statuses under international law.



"What if Al Qaeda kidnapped an undercover CIA operative, how would you like him/her to be treated? "

I think it's pretty clear to covert CIA officers that if caught, they will be treated however the enemy wants since they are spies and not legal combatants under the protection of the Geneva Conventions

---

Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)