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Corrupt Government
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Title: We Should Thank Those Who Torture (Michael Reagan)
Source: Lew Rockwell
URL Source: http://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog ... hould-thank-those-who-torture/
Published: Dec 25, 2014
Author: Laurence M. Vance
Post Date: 2014-12-26 05:54:32 by Deckard
Keywords: None
Views: 7467
Comments: 23

Says Michael Reagan, the son of conservative god Ronald Reagan. “We shouldn’t be second-guessing and beating up on the CIA, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and all the other men and women who’ve helped to keep us safe for the last 14 years. We should be thanking them.” He especially likes it when someone’s genitals are put in a vice.

Guess he never read what his father said when he signed the Convention Against Torture in 1988: “Ratification of the Convention by the United States, will clearly express United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice unfortunately prevalent in the world today.”

I wonder how many unsolved crimes Michael Reagan would confess to if the CIA put his genitals in a vice?

7:54 pm on December 25, 2014

Post Comment   Private Reply   Ignore Thread  


TopPage UpFull ThreadPage DownBottom/Latest

#1. To: Deckard (#0)

The claim the author makes about Reagan's 'especially liking putting nuts in a vice' claim seemed a little off to me. Being that the Internet is full of falsehoods, I read the op-ed myself, rather than have someone read it and write about it to tell me what was in it. I didn't get the same impression.

http://m.albanyherald.com/news/2014/dec/21/michael-reagan-a-time-for-torture/?templates=mobile

Nexus6  posted on  2014-12-27   1:42:29 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#2. To: Nexus6, Deckard (#1)

The claim the author makes about Reagan's 'especially liking putting nuts in a vice' claim seemed a little off to me. Being that the Internet is full of falsehoods, I read the op-ed myself, rather than have someone read it and write about it to tell me what was in it. I didn't get the same impression.

From the Michael Reagan Op-Ed.

I asked one of the unshaven, rugged, glass-eating Italian secret servicemen working in our motorcade detail how they finally found out where General Dozier was being held.

He told me that after his colleagues caught a few members of the Red Brigade they were taken to the basement and interrogated.

The terrorists became very talkative after their genitals were placed in a vise.

The agents who used this persuasive technique — which also led to the capture of hundreds of Red Brigade members and put the deadly terrorist group out of business — were disciplined by their superiors.

They were suspended for five days and went to the beach.

As the Italians proved, sometimes in war you have to use “enhanced” interrogation methods to get the successful ending you want.

In 2001 we found ourselves in a bloody war against terrorists. The White House knew it. The CIA knew it. Even the media and Democrats in Congress knew it. The American people figured it out too.

What the CIA did to extract information from the Islamist terrorists was not nice, but it was not really torture.

We shouldn’t be second-guessing and beating up on the CIA, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and all the other men and women who’ve helped to keep us safe for the last 14 years.

We should be thanking them.

To correct Michael Reagan, torture is torture, regardless of purported excuses or alleged or real extenuating circumstances. Crushing testicles in a vice is torture. It is a violation of law at all times and under all circumstances. It is a violation of customary international law which cannot be opted out of. The United States has participated in the prosecution and conviction of people based on this law. Torture is practiced on the principle of might makes right, not actual lawfulness. The criminals depend on the government to protect them from prosecution. This did not work out too well for some perpetrators for WW2 Germany or Japan, or the former Yugoslavia when the government lost the ability to protect from prosecution.

Credit for G.W. Bush administration public support for crushing testicles should go to John "Testicle Crusher" Yoo, adviser to President George W. Bush.

http://revcom.us/a/028/john-yoo.html

John Yoo – Presidential Powers Extend to Ordering Torture of Suspect's Child

by Philip Watts

December 30, 2005, posted at revcom.us

John Yoo publicly argued there is no law that could prevent the President from ordering the torture of a child of a suspect in custody – including by crushing that child’s testicles.

This came out in response to a question in a December 1st debate in Chicago with Notre Dame professor and international human rights scholar Doug Cassel.

What is particularly chilling and revealing about this is that John Yoo was a key architect post-9/11 Bush Administration legal policy. As a deputy assistant to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, John Yoo authored a number of legal memos arguing for unlimited presidential powers to order torture of captive suspects, and to declare war anytime, any where, and on anyone the President deemed a threat.

It has now come out Yoo also had a hand in providing legal reasoning for the President to conduct unauthorized wiretaps of U.S. citizens. Georgetown Law Professor David Cole wrote, “Few lawyers have had more influence on President Bush’s legal policies in the ‘war on terror’ than John Yoo.”

This part of the exchange during the debate with Doug Cassel, reveals the logic of Yoo’s theories, adopted by the Administration as bedrock principles, in the real world.

Cassel: If the President deems that he’s got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person’s child, there is no law that can stop him?

Yoo: No treaty.

Cassel: Also no law by Congress. That is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo.

Yoo: I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2005/nov/17/what-bush-wants-to-hear/

Volume 52, Number 18 · November 17, 2005

Review

What Bush Wants to Hear
By David Cole

The Powers of War and Peace:The Constitution and Foreign Affairs After 9/11 by John Yoo

University of Chicago Press, 366 pp., $29.00

[Excerpt]

Yoo’s most famous piece of advice was in an August 2002 memorandum stating that the president cannot constitutionally be barred from ordering torture in wartime—even though the United States has signed and ratified a treaty absolutely forbidding torture under all circumstances, and even though Congress has passed a law pursuant to that treaty, which without any exceptions prohibits torture. Yoo reasoned that because the Constitution makes the president the “Commander-in-Chief,” no law can restrict the actions he may take in pursuit of war. On this reasoning, the president would be entitled by the Constitution to resort to genocide if he wished.

[emphasis added]

In comment about torture under the Obama administration, Testicle Crusher Yoo expressed a negative opinion about the troubling rectal feeding.

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/even-john-yoo-cant-get-behind-forced-rectal-feeding/

Even John Yoo Can’t Get Behind Forced Rectal Feeding

by Evan McMurry
3:34 pm, December 14th, 2014
Mediaite

Former Bush counsel John Yoo, author of the famous “torture memos” that allegedly discovered legal justification for the Bush administration’s use of enhanced interrogation techniques, told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria Sunday morning that forced rectal feeding and other gruesome acts detailed in the Senate Intelligence Committee report released last week were not approved by the Justice Department and should not have been carried out.

“Those are very troubling examples,” he said. “They would not have been approved by the Justice Department. They were not approved by the Justice Department at the time…They were not supposed to be done and those people who did those are at risk legally because they were acting outside their orders.”

The Law of Armed Conflict, International Humanitarian Law in War, Gary D. Solis, U.S. Military Academy, Cambridge University Press, New York, First published 2010, Reprinted 2010 (thrice), 2011

At page 446: [footnotes omitted]

12.2.1 Defining Torture as a LOAC Violation

Torture is prohibited by 1907 Hague Regulation IV, Article 4 (by implication); by 1949 Geneva Convention common Article 3, and common Article 50/51/130/147; by 1977 Additional Protocol I, Article 75.2 (ii); Additional Protocol II, Article 4.2.(a); and by the Statutes of the ICTY and ICTR. "State practice establishes this rule [against torture] as a norm of customary international law applicable in both international and non-international armed conflicts." LOAC/IHL similarly prohibits cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. The prohibitions against torture – international, domestic, military, civilian – are universal and comprehensive, yet torture appears to be more common today than in any recent time.

LOAC = Law of Armed Conflict
IHL = International Humanitarian Law
ICTY = International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia
ICTR = International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda

At page 440: [footnotes omitted]

In international law, the 1984 UN Convention against Torture (CAT), and its Optional Protocol, prohibit torture, as does the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The United States ratified the CAT in 1994. Torture is a jus cogens offense – a peremptory norm in international law; a state may not "opt out" of the criminality of torture or of the enforcement of international legal provisions against it. "[P]erpetrators may be held criminally responsible notwithstanding national or even international authorization by legislative or judicial bodies to apply torture."

From the UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment

Part I

Article 1

For the purposes of this Convention, torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

This article is without prejudice to any international instrument or national legislation which does or may contain provisions of wider application.

Article 2

Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction.

No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.

An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.

Article 3

No State Party shall expel, return ("refouler") or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.

For the purpose of determining whether there are such grounds, the competent authorities shall take into account all relevant considerations including, where applicable, the existence in the State concerned of a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights.

Article 4

Each State Party shall ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law. The same shall apply to an attempt to commit torture and to an act by any person which constitutes complicity or participation in torture.

Each State Party shall make these offences punishable by appropriate penalties which take into account their grave nature.

http://armypubs.army.mil/doctrine/DR_pubs/dr_a/pdf/fm2_22x3.pdf

FM 2-22.3, Human Intelligence Collector Operations, Headquarters, Department of the Army, September 2006

Pages M-4 - M-5

GENERAL CONTROLS AND SAFEGUARDS HUMANE TREATMENT

M-15. All captured or detained personnel shall be treated humanely at all times and in accordance with DOD Directive 3115.09, "DOD Intelligence Interrogations, Detainee Debriefings, and Tactical Questioning"; DOD Directive 2310.1E, “Department of Defense Detainee Program,” and no person in the custody or under the control of the DOD, regardless of nationality or physical location, shall be subject to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment as defined in US law, including the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005. All intelligence interrogations, debriefings, or tactical questioning to gain intelligence from captured or detained personnel shall be conducted in accordance with applicable law and policy.

M-16. Any inhumane treatment—including abusive practices, torture, or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment as defined in US law, including the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005—is prohibited and all instances of such treatment will be reported immediately in accordance with paragraph 5-69 thru 5-72. Beyond being impermissible, these unlawful and unauthorized forms of treatment are unproductive because they may yield unreliable results, damage subsequent collection efforts, and result in extremely negative consequences at national and international levels. Review by the servicing SJA is required prior to using separation. Each interrogation plan must include specific safeguards to be followed: limits on duration, interval between applications, and termination criteria. Medical personnel will be available to respond in the event a medical emergency occurs.

http://balkin.blogspot.com/2006/10/when-lawyers-are-war-criminals.html

Sunday, October 08, 2006

When Lawyers Are War Criminals

Scott Horton

[excerpt]

United States v. Altstoetter: Lawyers As War Criminals

Concerned about the level of resistance faced by German troops in the occupied territories, Hitler instructed Field Marshall Keitel to issue a special decree authorizing extraordinary measures pursuant to which political suspects would simply "disappear" to special detention facilities and might face summary court proceedings. The death penalty appears as the punishment most frequently contemplated. The decree, issued on the same day the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941) and as the German drive on Moscow stalled and the Soviet counteroffensive had begun, is known as the "Night and Fog Decree" (Nacht- und Nebelerlass), a reference to the covert action it authorized. Contemporaneous documents make clear that it was motivated by the high level of casualties German soldiers were sustaining behind the front in occupied territory. Pacification of this territory was given a high priority.

A team of Justice Department lawyers worked with Keitel and his team at the German General Staff (OKW) on the drafting of the decree and further steps for its implementation. This included a series of highly particularized rules setting out how such detainees were to be treated by police, justice officials and others. The rules specified how such individuals would be permitted to make wills, issue final letters of farewell, what would be done with children born to detainees and how their death could be recorded in the registry. Other lawyers prepared parallel orders creating special secret courts and detention facilities for those interned under the Nacht- und Nebelerlass. These courts were crafted under domestic German law and thus constituted a projection of German law into the occupied territories.

These arrangements flouted the protections of the Hague Convention, specifically the right of "family honor, lives of persons" and the right "to be judged under their own laws." To the extent applied against uniformed service personnel, they also violated the Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War of 1929. However, the Justice Department lawyers advanced the view that the Hague and Geneva Conventions were inapplicable because their adversaries did not subscribe to these documents. This decree was applied brutally, and with particular force in France. A total of at least 7,000 persons were detained; a large number of them perished.

The Justice Department lawyers justified these acts as steps available to an occupying power in order to protect its troops against terrorist acts or insurgency. Further, the occupied territories could be divided, roughly, into three categories: (i) areas directly incorporated into the German State (for instance, Austria, Alsace-Lorraine, the Eupen-Malmédy region of Belgium, Danzig and portions of Poland); (ii) areas under German occupation and direct administration (such as Bohemia and Moravia); and (iii) areas under puppet régimes (such as Hungary and Slovakia). As for the first, they asserted the right to treat persons found within those territories under German law. As to the second, they claimed the right as occupier to promulgate new rules and orders, and to derive them from Germany. As to the third, they relied on the acquiescence of régimes like Vichy France and Hungary. Their positions on these points were at least colorable from a legal perspective.

The Justice Department lawyers were indicted and charged with crimes against humanity and war crimes arising out of the issuance and implementation of the Nacht- und Nebelerlass. The United States charged that as lawyers, "not farmers or factory workers," they must have recognized that their technical justifications for avoiding the application of the Hague and Geneva Conventions were unavailing, because these conventions were "recognized by all civilized nations, and were regarded as being declaratory of the laws and customs of war." That is to say, they were customary international law. Further, the United States charged, this decree "would probably cause the death of human beings," grounding a charge of homicidal intent.

After trial, the two principal Justice Department lawyers, one a deputy chief of the criminal division, were convicted and sentenced to ten years' imprisonment, less time served. This judgment clearly established the concept of liability of the authors of bureaucratic policies that breach basic rules of the Hague and Geneva Conventions for the consequences that predictably flow therefrom. Moreover, it establishes a particularly perilous standard of liability for government attorneys who adopt a dismissive attitude towards international humanitarian law.

nolu chan  posted on  2014-12-27   19:35:23 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#3. To: nolu chan, Deckard (#2)

I do understand that there is a vigorous debate over use of torture and even the definition of torture. I was more concerned that the original poster shared a piece that incorrectly stated something as fact. It is impossible to have a full and fair debate if one party arbitrarily invents things to support their narrative.

Nexus6  posted on  2014-12-27   19:52:12 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#4. To: Nexus6, Deckard (#3)

I do understand that there is a vigorous debate over use of torture and even the definition of torture.

I am concerned that the article imputes that there is any debate over the use of torture or the definition of torture. Torture has been a defined criminal offense since the 1863 Lieber Code which was replaced by the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) in 1951. United States treaty law, constitutionally considered the supreme law of the land, defines and prohibits torture. U.S. Federal statute law enacted to comply with the treaty law, defines and makes torture a criminal offense (18 U.S.C. § 2340, Torture, Definition, and 18 U.S.C. § 2340A, Torture, Criminal Offense). The criminal offense has been successfully prosecuted in a United States federal court against Charles Taylor, Jr., son of the former leader of Liberia, for torture committed in Liberia (U.S. v. Roy M. Belfast, aka Charles Taylor, Jr., aka Charles M. Emmanuel, FLSD, Miami Division, 2008). The United States Supreme Court has held that Geneva Convention Common Article 3 applies to Taliban and al Qaeda detainees (Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 2006). In Nicaragua v. United States, 1986, the International Court of Justice found Common Article 3 "serves as a 'minimum yardstick of protection in all conflicts, not just internal armed conflicts.'" And the United States is a party to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT). The CAT defines torture at Article 1 and at Article 4 states, "Each State Party shall ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law." The U.S. Federal statutes cited above implemented compliance with this voluntarily adopted requirement.

Domestic debate about established international law is irrelevant to any international inquiry. Such "debate" is not for judicial purposes but for public domestic consumption. See, for example, Yale professor W. Michael Reisman, "Editorial Comment: Holding the Center of the Law of Armed Conflict," 100-4 AJIL (Oct. 2006), 852, 854

[T]he national debate as to whether the president, as commander in chief in wartime has an inherent "constitutional" power to order subordinates to torture in self-defense is irrelevant to an international inquiry . . . [V]iolations of international law by any organ or agency of a state will engage that state's responsibility; insofar as international law provides for individual responsibility, that responsibility now tracks up and down the chain of command that has ordered a violation of international law. Contrary national legal commands do not provide a defense.

As contrary national legal commands provide no defense, the real defense is not a legal one but having the biggest, baddest armed forces on the planet which enables a blatant disregard for the law. The national "debate" is a domestic public relations campaign for domestic consumption.

There is no real debate over the definition of torture or whether it is unlawful or prosecutable. It is well established in domestic and recognized customary international law. Customary law is a legal term of art denoting the wide acceptance of the provision until it becomes a custom, binding on all states.

nolu chan  posted on  2014-12-28   22:26:06 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#5. To: Nexus6 (#3)

Welcome to the site. I have upgraded you to full posting.

A K A Stone  posted on  2014-12-29   0:56:08 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#6. To: A K A Stone (#5)

Thank you. I was considering signing up on a couple of different conservative or libertarian sites, but this looked like a better option. FreeRepublic seemed to be a place peopled entirely by Republican Party loyalists and Liberty Post looked more like a lunatic asylum.

Nexus6  posted on  2014-12-29   1:17:46 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#7. To: Nexus6 (#6)

was considering signing up on a couple of different conservative or libertarian sites, but this looked like a better option. FreeRepublic seemed to be a place peopled entirely by Republican Party loyalists and Liberty Post looked more like a lunatic asylum.

I will take that as a compliment. I would hope that this place grows again. It rises and falls.

A K A Stone  posted on  2014-12-29   8:58:18 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#8. To: nolu chan (#4)

There is no real debate over the definition of torture or whether it is unlawful or prosecutable. It is well established in domestic and recognized customary international law. Customary law is a legal term of art denoting the wide acceptance of the provision until it becomes a custom, binding on all states.

In a nation where millions of babies are snuffed out by evil mothers to be. Torture is par for the course.

A K A Stone  posted on  2014-12-29   9:01:42 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#9. To: A K A Stone (#8)

In a nation where millions of babies are snuffed out by evil mothers to be. Torture is par for the course.

Indeed, life to the souless minions of liberalism is cheap.

But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name (John 1:12)

redleghunter  posted on  2014-12-29   10:37:36 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#10. To: A K A Stone (#8)

There is no real debate over the definition of torture or whether it is unlawful or prosecutable. It is well established in domestic and recognized customary international law. Customary law is a legal term of art denoting the wide acceptance of the provision until it becomes a custom, binding on all states.

In a nation where millions of babies are snuffed out by evil mothers to be. Torture is par for the course.

There is no discussion going on about whether the President or his administration have the power to make abortion unlawful by means of having one of its lawyers write a secret opinion to the effect that the governing law did not apply to abortion. That would be analagous to what the W. Bush administration did regarding torture.

There is discussion considering whether the U.S. Supreme Court should take a case and change its opinion expressed in Roe v. Wade. Little attention is given to the possibility of a constitutional amendment, presumably due to lack of support. It seems most abortion opponents favor having the Court reverse itself in Roe v. Wade and opine that all abortions are unlawful. I find that idea quite objectionable. I would favor the Court overturning the Roe decision and holding that jurisdiction over abortion belongs to the states.

There is a moral or religious component to the argument over abortion regarding the question of when does life begin. People of good intent can find that life begins at conception, birth, or somewhere inbetween.

The torture "discussion" is different as the Bush administration, knowing that torture had been explicitly forbidden since the Civil War, chose to have its legal staff wordsmith torture out of existence, as explained in this excerpt from an editorial by Toni Pfanner, Editor in Chief, in the International Review of the Red Cross, No. 867, 9 September 2007:

Torture violates a basic understanding of how individuals are to be treated and defies treaties and statutes. Torture is feared by and alienates everyone and disrupts communities. Even though the use of torture is emphatically denied in all states and by all perpetrators, the issue of implicit justifications of torture and inhuman treatment reappears even in democratic societies when they consider themselves under threat. Blunt denial of the occurrence of torture or inhuman treatment is replaced by legalistic interpretations of what constitutes torture, as opposed to ‘‘only’’ cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, or by considerations as to which measures should be allowed in so-called ‘‘highly coercive’’, ‘‘enhanced’’ or ‘‘in-depth’’ interrogation. A narrow interpretation of torture would render its prohibition virtually meaningless. An absurd interpretation of that kind culminated in an infamous memorandum which authorized all interrogation measures except those leading to pain ‘‘equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injuries, organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death’’, thus potentially allowing the ripping out of toenails. Once interrogators are authorized to start going down that path, torture is not far away.

Excerpt from The War on Terror and the Laws of War, A Military Perspective, Michael W. Lewis, Ed., Oxford University Press 2009, Chapter 4, Interrogation and Treatment of Detainees in the Global War on Terror, by Dick Jackson, Special Assistant to the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General for Law of War Matters. The excerpt is taken from pages 158-59 of the book which is a series of essays by different authors.

CONCLUSION

The treatment and interrogation standards to be applied in the Gloobal War on Terror have come full circle. Begining with the first set of policy discussions over interrogation techniques, prior to the president's Memorandum of February 7, 2002, the State Department and Defense Department attorneys with the experience in applying the law of war to military operations (and the judgment to see the consequences of applying a new standard) opposed limiting the application of the standards embodied in GCIII and GCIV to detainees picked up on this "new battlefield." Even when these standards were not available, as a matter of law (largely due to legal interpretations made by OLC or the White House), the GCIII or GC IV standards were applied as a matter of policy in the field manuals developed and promulgated in the last several years. As the discussion above indicates, the available evidence suggests that, in policy discussions and battlefield application of the interrogation and treatment standards, Judge Advocates usually tok the "high road" in offering advice to commanders, applying GCIII or GCIV standards to the problems they encountered, and counseling caution in appplying techniques that were close to the lines on torture and "cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment."

In the policy discussions and field application of the law, three attempts by army Judge Advocates to stop the inevitable slide of standards stand out. The first is Colonel John Ley's memorandum, in November 2002, opposing the Category II and III techniques for Guantanamo. The second is Colonel Manuel Superveille's assistance to General Lehnart, the CJTF-160 Comander at Guantanamo, to apply GCIII standards to the new camp, with ICRC help. And the third is the decision, advised by Colonel Marc Warren to LTG Sanchez, the Commander of CJTF-7, to apply GCIV standards, protecting security detainnees captured during the occupation of Iraq, as if they were "protected persons" and "civilian internees," under the Fourth (Civilians) Convention. The policy battles in Washington pale in comparison to the tough decisions made by soldiers in the field to stick to the moral high ground, except for a few isolated instances. The advice of each of these senior legal advisors, involved in both policy development and application of the policy on the battlefield, was essential to establish and maintain a Geneva Convention-based humane treatment approach that was consistent in most circumstances and resulted in a high standard of treatment across the GWOT battlefield.

But it was those isolated instances of criminal conduct that caused the light of day to shine on the deficiencies in military interrogation and treatment of detainees. Without the conclusions of investigating officers and the force of public opinion, the policy, which was limited in its formal application but insidious in its influence, could nt have been changed. Thanks to to judgment of those senior officers, Major General Taguba and Major General Fay, and the Schlesinger Report, the reaffirmation of Geneva Convention-based treatment and interrogation standards was not long delayed.

The U.S. Army is left with the standards it began the War on Terror with—the minimum humane treatment standards of Comon Article 3 as a legal baseline in all conflicts, supplemented, as a matter of policy, with the protections afforded by GCIII and GCIV, to treat all those that are hors de combat (no longer taking an active part in hostilities) as decently and humanely as the conscience of our individual soldiers and the dictates of the public conscience demand.

nolu chan  posted on  2014-12-29   23:46:02 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#11. To: nolu chan (#10)

I've read your points. Here is what I am saying. Immoral people do immoral things. We have become a very immoral society by in large.

Our laws reflect our morality.

Abortion is murder and always will be. Even if someone doesn't think it is.

Just like 2 plus two is four.

A K A Stone  posted on  2014-12-30   10:22:50 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#12. To: nolu chan (#2)

Crush an innocent child's testicles for any reason, including saving your troops, or yourself, from being killed, and when you die you will be thrown into the flames by God. So will everybody who assists you: whoever holds the child, whoever guards the door.

In fact, when you put the child's testicles into the vice, the PROPER reaction of every other man in the room should be to command you to stop, regardless of the formal differences in rank, and to shoot you dead if you refuse to obey the order.

If that means that Corporal Jones is commanding General Graves, at gunpoint, to cease committing that crime, then that is what it means. If General Graves will not stop, then Corporal Jones will be doing the General a FAVOR by shooting him and thus preventing him, for if the General is prevented from actually doing it by the good sense of another, God may be more lenient then he will be if the act is committed.

Of course, this applies universally to the killing of innocent children. If you're doing it, you're doomed and damned. And believing that Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior but doing it anyway merely means that you already know the name and face of the judge who will say to you "Depart into the fire, you worthless servant!"

Vicomte13  posted on  2014-12-30   12:42:09 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#13. To: nolu chan (#10)

It seems most abortion opponents favor having the Court reverse itself in Roe v. Wade and opine that all abortions are unlawful. I find that idea quite objectionable. I would favor the Court overturning the Roe decision and holding that jurisdiction over abortion belongs to the states.

There is a moral or religious component to the argument over abortion regarding the question of when does life begin. People of good intent can find that life begins at conception, birth, or somewhere inbetween.

I favor the Court ruling that the taking of the life of the unborn child is murder without trial, and banning it as a matter of Constitutional law.

By no means is the decision of whether or not the innocent may be murdered a question to be determined by the political vagaries of the states. If a state decides, by vote, that it is licit to kill anybody over the age of 100, I expect federal courts to rule that unconstitutional, because it is, just exactly as it is to kill anybody under the age of 1.

People of good intent may find that the question of when life begins is as an open question, but it is not an open question to Christians: it is perfectly clear in Scripture that life begins at the father's "begetting", which is conception. Christians who say otherwise are not people of goodwill at all, they are willfully ignorant men and women of bad will who are in fact servants of Satan.

All Christians must oppose abortion from the moment of conception, when life begins, as the Bible states. Any "Christian" who takes a different stance has denied the Scripture. Catholic Christians have no latitude on the matter either.

So, who are the "people of good intent" who could find that life doesn't begin at conception? Illiterate Jews, I suppose (literate ones see it written in the same Scriptures as the Christians). Secular atheists...but of course secular atheists are not people of good intent. Muslims...but then, Islam opposes abortion.

So who does that leave? It leaves nobody. Life begins at conception. Whoever says otherwise is a liar, and is an evil person, a manipulative person, not a person of good intent.

There is no such thing as a "person of good intent" who does not oppose abortion from the moment of conception. There are lots of evil people of bad intent who like to think of themselves as people of good intent. But then, that's true among people who torture prisoners too. They believe that their "cause", or their own skin, is important enough to justify committing a monstrous crime. They are always wrong, and all such people are always evil people of bad intent. Always.

Vicomte13  posted on  2014-12-30   12:54:44 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#14. To: Vicomte13, A K A Stone (#13)

By no means is the decision of whether or not the innocent may be murdered a question to be determined by the political vagaries of the states.

One cannot "murder" a six-week old fetus, no matter how hard one tries. Murder is a crime defined by men and a government, not by anyone's God or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Until the fetus is defined as a person, by the government, the criminal offense of murder is inapplicable. If and when that happens, some forms of birth control which act to prevent implantation might be considered mass murder.

So, who are the "people of good intent" who could find that life doesn't begin at conception? Illiterate Jews, I suppose (literate ones see it written in the same Scriptures as the Christians). Secular atheists...but of course secular atheists are not people of good intent. Muslims...but then, Islam opposes abortion.

So who does that leave? It leaves nobody. Life begins at conception. Whoever says otherwise is a liar, and is an evil person, a manipulative person, not a person of good intent.

The majority of Christians support some abortions. Most notably, an overwheming majority support the choice of a woman who has been unwillingly and forcibly impregnated by rape to not be forced by the government to bear the child of the rapist.

Whatever else may be said of Jews, they must be among the most literate people in the world.

For Roman Catholics, birth control by other than the rythm method is prohibited. The vast majority of Catholics in the U.S. ignore that prohibition.

As for killing persons under the age of 1, we are not really talking about persons under the age of 1 but the unborn under the age of zero.

We are free not to be Christians. We can be atheists or Pastafarians if we choose. We are free to believe that the Bible is made up of mythological stories selected by a committee of men, or that it is the literal word of God.

The fact is that total prohibition and criminalization of abortion remains a decidedly minority opinion. In any case, such matters should be decided politically, not by creative interpretation of penumbras formed by emanations. But that is just my opinion and SCOTUS justices like penumbras formed by emanations.

Griswold, 381 US 479, 484,

The foregoing cases suggest that specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance. See Poe v. Ullman,367 U. S. 497, 367 U. S. 516-522 (dissenting opinion). Various guarantees create zones of privacy. The right of association contained in the penumbra of the First Amendment is one, as we have seen.

Roe stated,

This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.

The 9th Amendment states, "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

Some of the problems with Roe are addressed below.

http://liveactionnews.org/justice-scalias-refresher-on-constitutional-originalism/

Justice Scalia’s refresher on constitutional originalism

Calvin Freiburger
Live Action News
July 30, 2012

Over the weekend, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia appeared on Fox News Sunday to chat with Chris Wallace about his new book, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts. (Video here, transcript here.) The exchange is invaluable to understanding the judicial aspects of the abortion debate.

First, Scalia explains his general approach to constitutional interpretation:

Originalism is sort of subspecies of textualism. Textualism means you are governed by the text. That’s the only thing that is relevant to your decision, not whether the outcome is desirable, not whether legislative history says this or that. But the text of the statute. Originalism says that when you consult the text, you give it the meaning it had when it was adopted, not some later modern meaning.

The left’s preferred alternative is “Living Constitution” theory, which holds that our interpretation of the Constitution must change alongside society’s changing values and desires, because, as President Woodrow Wilson put it, government is “a living thing … modified by its environment, necessitated by its tasks, shaped to its functions by the sheer pressure of life. No living thing can have its organs offset against each other as checks, and live.”

Simply put, this is a sham that defeats the whole point of having a Constitution: placing firm limits on what government can do to the people and what people can do to each other. This function will never change because essential human nature is constant, as is the moral truth at America’s core – the equal right of every human being to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Yes, the Constitution is imperfect, and our preferences may change. But when they do, the only legitimate way to incorporate those changes into the Constitution is through the amendment process, which guarantees that changes happen only for matters of the utmost importance and preserves the integrity of the rest of the document – as opposed to simply reinterpreting it to suit our whims and agendas, which paves the way for rationalizing anything government might want to do to the people.

Later, the conversation turns to one of our history’s starkest examples of what happens when originalism is abandoned in favor of Living Constitutionalism:

WALLACE: There is one Supreme Court decision, reading a lot of your writings and speeches over the years, that seems to distress you more than any other. And that is Roe versus Wade, the 1973 decision that says that women have a constitutional right to abortion. You say that it is it a lie. And, in fact, while generally willing, you say, to accept long standing precedents, you say you will continue to press to overturn Roe. Why?

SCALIA: Well, I’m not sure if I could say this distresses me more than any other. It is in my mind the clearest example of being a non-textualist and non-originalist. No one ever thought that the American people ever voted to prohibit limitations on abortion. I mean, there is nothing in the Constitution that says that.

WALLACE: What about the right to privacy that the court found in known 1965?

SCALIA: There is no right to privacy. No generalized right to privacy.

WALLACE: Well, in the Griswold case, the court said there was.

SCALIA: Indeed it did, and that was — that was wrong. In the earlier case, the court had said the opposite. Look, the way the Fourth Amendment reads that people shall be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures.

To grasp just how badly the court stretched the Constitution’s privacy protections, consider that Griswold v. Connecticut’s author, Justice William Douglas, justified his decision by claiming that “specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance,” meaning he wasn’t looking to the actual text of the Constitution, but instead imagining what he wanted to find in the vague shadow of an emanation – pure gibberish.

Further, a pregnant woman’s right to privacy cannot possibly encompass abortion for the simple fact that it’s not private; it also affects someone other than that woman. The Roe court simply punted on the case’s most important factor, declaring, “We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins.”

Lastly, it’s worth remembering that Scalia’s not exactly out on a limb here – even many liberal and pro-choice legal scholars admit that Roe is an embarrassment. For instance:

Laurence Tribe — Harvard Law School. Lawyer for Al Gore in 2000.

“One of the most curious things about Roe is that, behind its own verbal smokescreen, the substantive judgment on which it rests is nowhere to be found.”

“The Supreme Court, 1972 Term—Foreword: Toward a Model of Roles in the Due Process of Life and Law,” 87 Harvard Law Review 1, 7 (1973).

Edward Lazarus — Former clerk to Harry Blackmun.

“What, exactly, is the problem with Roe? The problem, I believe, is that it has little connection to the Constitutional right it purportedly interpreted. A constitutional right to privacy broad enough to include abortion has no meaningful foundation in constitutional text, history, or precedent – at least, it does not if those sources are fairly described and reasonably faithfully followed.”

“The Lingering Problems with Roe v. Wade, and Why the Recent Senate Hearings on Michael McConnell’s Nomination Only Underlined Them,” FindLaw Legal Commentary, Oct. 3, 2002

John Hart Ely — Yale Law School, Harvard Law School, Stanford Law School

Roe “is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be.”

“The Wages of Crying Wolf: A Comment on Roe v. Wade,” 82 Yale Law Journal, 920, 935-937 (1973).

Kermit Roosevelt — University of Pennsylvania Law School

“You will be hard-pressed to find a constitutional law professor, even among those who support the idea of constitutional protection for the right to choose, who will embrace the opinion itself rather than the result. This is not surprising. As constitutional argument, Roe is barely coherent. The court pulled its fundamental right to choose more or less from the constitutional ether.”

“Shaky Basis for a Constitutional ‘Right’,” Washington Post, January 22, 2003.

Shamefully, few pro-abortion activists are willing to right this constitutional wrong and return abortion policy to the democratic process, because all they care about is preserving their preferred result. So let’s ask our pro-choice readers: are you willing to put the Constitution above your ideology? Do you recognize any higher goods to which the “right to choose” must yield?

nolu chan  posted on  2014-12-30   21:05:52 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#15. To: Vicomte13 (#12)

Crush an innocent child's testicles for any reason, including saving your troops, or yourself, from being killed, and when you die you will be thrown into the flames by God. So will everybody who assists you: whoever holds the child, whoever guards the door.

I do not believe for a minute that John Yoo ever believed what he rendered as his official legal opinion regarding torture. He had basically given the President a fig leaf to do anything. He put himself in a position where he later had to defend the crushing of a child's testicles in a vice. The alternative was to admit that he rendered a bogus legal opinion because that is what his bosses wanted. He preferred to be forever known as John "Testicle Crusher" Yoo.

nolu chan  posted on  2014-12-30   21:12:58 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#16. To: A K A Stone (#11)

Our laws reflect our morality.

Do they? Perhaps you meant "or lack thereof." State laws vary widely from state to state. Federal law seems a poor place to seek morality.

Abortion is murder and always will be.

Abortion is not murder and all states are prohibited from making any law that criminalizes abortion.

nolu chan  posted on  2014-12-30   21:23:26 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#17. To: nolu chan (#16)

and all states are prohibited from making any law that criminalizes abortion.

No they aren't.

A K A Stone  posted on  2014-12-30   23:17:43 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#18. To: nolu chan (#14)

One cannot "murder" a six-week old fetus, no matter how hard one tries. Murder is a crime defined by men and a government, not by anyone's God or the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Murder is defined by God. There is only one God and he defined it eons ago and never changed the definition. Everybody will be held to precisely that standard, and none other, at final judgment, which will in fact come to each man whether he believes in it or not. That's the general rule, and it applies to Americans in America under their cute little constitution they've made up for themselves. The US constitution is not the law before the final judgment seat. God's law, and none other is.

Now, as for you, there is no Flying Spaghetti Monster, but there is a God, one single God, and he will not be mocked. You would do well to remember that, because he is going to judge you too, and he's going to judge you by the standards he set, and not by the rules that you would like to impose. You will die, whether you like it or not. And you will be judged by a set of standards that are not of your liking, whether you like it or not.

You can know, now, what those standards are. Or you can blow them off and mock them. One of those standards, clearly revealed, is that God will not be mocked. It's all your move. But you had best think very carefully. And you had best do so very temperately. And with a great deal of humility.

The Flying Spaghetti Monster is funny. It is not funny to fall into the hands of the living God, and you will. That - and taxes - are the two things of which you can be absolutely certain. Have a care for your own skin and back off and back down.

Abortion is premeditated murder. That is the standard that God set. You cannot change it. You had best submit to it, because it's the truth. Whether you like it or not.

Vicomte13  posted on  2014-12-31   11:13:26 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#19. To: nolu chan (#15)

I do not believe for a minute that John Yoo ever believed what he rendered as his official legal opinion regarding torture.

Then you believe he was a liar.

Vicomte13  posted on  2014-12-31   11:14:07 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#20. To: Vicomte13 (#19)

I do not believe for a minute that John Yoo ever believed what he rendered as his official legal opinion regarding torture.

Then you believe he was a liar.

Well, of course I do. He, and any number of government lawyers will render any "legal opinion" desired by HQ. Commanders issue orders based on "the best legal advice" that was available to them. They are not responsible for the bad advice or the order that resulted from the bad advice. The lawyer did no more than render an opinion. He issued no order. He is not responsible for anything but giving his opinion. It is a wonderful responsibility-free system.

Of course, whether Yoo lied or just issued a poor opinion is, itself, a matter of opinion. I do not believe that any lawyer really believes that the Constitution permits crushing the testicles of innocent children. Your milage may vary.

nolu chan  posted on  2015-01-01   19:55:48 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#21. To: Vicomte13 (#18)

Abortion is premeditated murder.

Abortion is not a crime. At least, according to U.S. law, it is not a crime, and all states are forbidden from making it a crime by any state law.

As long as you support the Federal government having jurisdiction over it, that is the way it will be until the Constitution is amended or the Supreme Court overrules its prior opinion in Roe.

People are free to be Pastafarians and wear a spaghetti strainer on their head for their DMV picture for their drivers license, at least in some states. Personally, I do not go around making that particular fashion statement, and nowhere did I say that I do.

What I did say is that I disagree with the Court that the people delegated to the Federal government the authority to decide such an issue. Therefore, I am of the opinion that such power was one of those reserved to the States or to the people.

The United States runs on United States laws, not any particular one of over 300 million different opinions about God's laws. Some believe that the KJV is the inspired word of God. Others prohibit it because, inter alia, it lacks an imprimatur.

Note that the Roman Catholic Church "is the largest Christian church, with more than 1.2 billion members worldwide." It is Catholic doctrine that Catholicism is the one true religion. I'm not sure you would necessarily want the largest Christian church in the world to have its doctrine installed as official Federal or State law.

Then, there is Judaism where "in 2012, the world Jewish population was estimated at about 14 million." I don't think they necessarily swear by the New Testament.

Slightly larger is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons) claiming 15,082,028 in 2013. They identify as Christians but are not accepted as such by many other Christians. Others do not generally accept the Book of Mormon as the inspired word of God.

We have enough trouble trying to have a rational legal system without trying to decide legal issues based on who has the one true religion.

nolu chan  posted on  2015-01-01   19:56:42 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#22. To: All (#17)

#17. To: nolu chan (#16)

and all states are prohibited from making any law that criminalizes abortion. No they aren't.

You probably thought I was being flippant here. I wasn't. I was hoping you would question me about it. I was busy that day.

Anyway here is what I meant. The state can pass any law they want to. It could be challenged in court but that doesn't stop them from passing any law.

After the pass the law making murder illegal for everyone, even those people who kill babies. The State supreme could uphold it and say the 10th amendment prohibits the Feds from ruling on the issue.

That would take a governor with balls though. Like Ted Cruz not like Chris Christie or Jeb Bush.

A K A Stone  posted on  2015-01-05   14:07:20 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#23. To: A K A Stone (#22)

and all states are prohibited from making any law that criminalizes abortion.

No they aren't.

You probably thought I was being flippant here. I wasn't. I was hoping you would question me about it. I was busy that day.

Anyway here is what I meant. The state can pass any law they want to. It could be challenged in court but that doesn't stop them from passing any law.

After the pass the law making murder illegal for everyone, even those people who kill babies. The State supreme could uphold it and say the 10th amendment prohibits the Feds from ruling on the issue.

That would take a governor with balls though. Like Ted Cruz not like Chris Christie or Jeb Bush.

= = = = = = = = = =

No, I did not really believe you were being flippant. I recognize that you have a good faith belief that abortion in no more than infantcide or murder (I disagree as a matter of law).

You are correct that any state can pass any law of their choosing. However, when any such law conflicts with the U.S. Constitution, as interpreted by applicable U.S. Supreme Court precedent, the state law yields to the Constitution and is subject to be struck down on appeal to the federal courts where the lower courts are bound by the Supreme Court precedent and will almost certainly strike down the state law as null and void ab initio, from the beginning, as if it never existed. The Supreme Court does the same thing to federal laws passed by both houses and signed into law by the president. The effect is, in the eyes of the court, the law never existed.

Rightly or wrongly (I view wrongly), the Supreme Court most certainly did hold that abortion is a right, protected by the U.S. Constitution. The only currently recognized recourse is a new and different Supreme Court opinion, or a constitutional amendment.

State nullification has been out of favor for a long time but maybe it will make a comeback. See Thomas E. Woods, Jr., Nullification, How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century (2010).

Technically, the state can pass a law. We went through a spate of such laws passed by various states with the aim of abolishing abortion. As fast as they were passed they were challenged and struck down. It is a waste of government resources and an act of futility.

Of course, if Ohio could pass a law making all abortion unlawful and considered murder, Michigan, for example, could pass a law making all abortion lawful. Your 10th Amendment argument is why I feel the Supreme Court should not have claimed jurisdiction in Roe.

In something somewhat analgous, a few decades back Michigan set up sobriety checkpoints (aka DUI Roadblocks) in Saginaw. The trial court ruled that the Michigan program violated the Fourth Amendment and the Michigan Constitution. The Michigan Court of Appeals affirmed the holding that the program violated the Fourth Amendment and, for that reason, did not consider whether the program violated the Michigan Constitution whose relevant content extremely closely mirrors the wording of the Fourth Amendment. The Michigan Supreme Court denied an application for appeal and the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, Michigan Dept. of State Police v. Sitz, 496 U.S. 444 (1990). A divided Supreme Court held that the Michigan program did not violate the Fourth Amendment and remanded the case to the Michigan Court of Appeals to revise their ruling to comply with what the U.S. Supreme Court had said. The Michigan Court of Appeals in Sitz v. Department of State Police, 193 Mich. App, 1992), relying on the Michigan State Constitution, wrote:

At issue here is whether sobriety checkpoints, while permitted by the United States Constitution, nevertheless violate the Michigan Constitution. We hold that they do.

[...]

Although we fully recognize the enormity of the problem caused by drunk driving, we do not believe the proposed elimination of the rights of Michigan citizens to be free from suspicionless seizure a proper response to the problem. As succinctly stated by Justice Brandeis in his dissent in Olmstead v United States, 277 U.S. 438, 479; 48 S.Ct. 564; 72 L Ed 944 (1928):

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.

We find the indiscriminate suspicionless stopping of motor vehicles violative of art 1, § 11 of the Michigan Constitution.

Sobriety checkpoints remain unlawful in Michigan, having been held incompatible with the rights held by the people of Michigan in their constitution.

The significant majority of states have used the Supreme Court opinion in Sitz to establish sobriety checkpoints, holding their state offers no protection against such seizures.

nolu chan  posted on  2015-01-05   17:11:38 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


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