It’s good that President Bush finally decided to back Sen. John McCain’s legislation banning torture — though Bush didn’t really have much choice. Was he really going to make the first veto of his presidency on a bill outlawing cruel and inhuman treatment of prisoners? And even if he did, there were more than enough votes to override it. As McCain said Thursday at a White House press conference with Bush: “We’ve sent a message to the world that the United States is not like the terrorists. What we are is a nation that upholds values and standards of behavior and treatment of all people no matter how evil or bad they are.”
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
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39 Comments
McCain is an expert on torture and politics. He wants to be president. Any issue no matter how irrevalent to get his face on TV is his game.Torture has always been against the law, both civil and military. To make it such a large issue only says to the world that we don’t obey our laws so we will pass another one. What BS.
torture is against the law. Has been for years. This is just McCains way to get free face time on TV.
To make this “expert” and his actions (McCain) such a large issue says to the world that we Americans have stopped ceding the moral high ground to terrorists.
It’s only BS if you’re disinterested in winning hearts and minds and instead prefer 24/7 war as a de facto foreign policy.
It’s about time President Bush saw the light.
flike, meet codie, our resident naysayer.
Bush has seen the light it is call the PNAC. He is simply following their idea of the perfect America. We need to be at war, if we are not then start one.
Dog,Yeah, it’s wartime presidents that get the really big statues!
Any Statue of Bush will receive fate of Saddam’s Statue.
What “terrorists?”…..boo
Palestinians defending their homes, farms and families?
Iraqis defending their homes, farms and families?
Where are these so-called “terrorists” besides in the mind of a Warmongering, greed-filled Zionist?
Hello, it’s a sympathy getter { and a money-maker }.
Notice Bush always changes from “Insurgents” to the word “terrorists” whenever we ask him to leave Iraq? Bush says: The “terrorists” will have won, not the People of Iraq will have driven-off their attackers. Bush says that he killed 30,000 Iraqis. Those people were alive before Bush show-up. If the Iraqis succeed in driving-off their attackers, how in the hell can Bush claim they are suddenly “terrorists?”
This is the same Israeli garbage the Zionists have been selling to us for years and collecting money by the truckload to finance making more “terrorists.”
“Terrorism” is a phony. The “war on terrorism” is a phony war. Bush is a phony. “Terrorism” is their excuse to attack Arab land for the Israeli Zionists, all part of the PNAC plan, and that’s why the Zionists in the White House refuse to give it up. That’s why they keep trying to sell us this hogwash. I certainly wouldn’t put it passed them to stage an attack right here at home in order to frighten The American People to keep them in power.
America is under siege from Israel, the very monster we’ve created, financed, and sucked-up to.
codie, spying on American citizens is against the law, too, but that didn’t stop Great Leader, did it? They can pass all the laws they want. The Tyrant King will do as he pleases. We used to be a nation of laws. Now we’ll submit to rule by the decree of a madman. Our experiment in Democracy is over.
Ho-hum, you democrats are all adither about a nothing issue. Gentle people, let us not forget who we’re dealing with here. Terrorists will not hesitate to torture us if they had the oportunity. Why should we treat them any better? Instead of passing silly laws banning torture, we should be funding institutes to perfect the art.
Thanks for the insight into the right-wing mind, esod.
“Terrorists will not hesitate to torture us if they had the oportunity. Why should we treat them any better?” Two wrongs make a right . . . in Limbaugh land.
Also, notice how Christian zealotry and hatred for the “other” co-exist without a whiff of contradiction in the right-wing mind.
43 “You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’44 But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you.”
In esod’s religion, that means ramming a red-hot poker down somebody’s throat until they come to Jesus.
Galahad,
If you believe the blogger on the bogus headlines is a troll, this “esod” has the same email address…so it is either the same troll or the “real” esod. I believe it’s the latter..playing games with everyone…it’s “esod”!! No it’s not. Now it’s “esod” !! It’s all esod IMHO.
Interesting, Brian . . . you might be right.
Usually the trolls are on his side, heh . . .
Brian: Anyone can post using someone else’s email address too.
Outlander,
But esod is a habitual creator of bogus email addresses. Sems to me far more likely that a convicted email address forger would also enjoy stooping to crying crocodile tears about a troll “forging” his email address.
It’s getting so you can’t tell the players without a program. Still, there’s that “gentle people” thing…
I have always respected John McCain, if he runs for prez, I’ll probably vote for him. At least he’s genuine and has some ethical standards, certainly more than I can say about Clinton or Bush
Damoon, McCain is as big a hypocrite and PAC whore as all the others…I know from personal experience…feed him enough money from the right special interest group (i.e., Demon Cable), and he rolls over on command just as easily as some other senators we know.
Sorry, can’t agree with you. He has always been one of my heros.
Ditto…until I had to deal with him. Talk about a letdown.Washington is so much smoke and mirrors, if you’d told me 3 years ago what senators I would trust most today, I’d probably have slapped you silly.
Hey I’ll bite.
So who would you trust today, mrcontroversy?
Can you rank the top 10 (best real people who also happen to be US Senators)?
How about the bottom 10?
Where is McCain in such a ranking? Brownback? Roberts?
Spill, man, spill! :-)
The answers will surprise you (as they have me):The ones I trust:1. Pat Roberts (don’t always agree with him, but when a Kansan needs him, he’s there, regardless of the monetary consequences).2. Susan Collins3. Olympia Snowe–Maine is blessed to have two such noble people representing them in the Senate.4. David Pryor5. Trent Lott (okay, the man needs to watch his mouth, but he’s as straight a shooter as I’ve met in Washington)6. Harry Reid7. Judd Gregg8. Barbara Boxer (if you ever cast an all-female version of the Wizard of Oz, she would be my choice for the lion).9. Kay Bailey Hutchinson (the media has her all wrong)10. Jay Rockefeller
The ones I distrust:1. Rick Santorum (if anything happens to Tom DeLay, he will become the most dangerous man in American politics)2. Bill Frist3. John McCain4. Brownback’s Washington staff
The ones I can’t figure out: John Kerry, Daniel Inouye, Ted Stevens, Gordon Smith
Keep in mind that mine is a limited perspective, based largely on the issues I work on (which more people ought to care about, but don’t).
I used to like McCain too. But lately he just doesn’t pass the smell test.
mrcontroversy,
Tres interesting. I would have predicted Boxer, Lott, Reid, and the Senators from Maine, but the others were news to me. Particularly Roberts, after I got into a phone shouting match with one of his interns yesterday over Bush’s criminal power-grab.
And I agree with you, mrcontroversy, and you as well, XXX: McCain is a full-on whore. Watching him carry Bubble Boy’s attack to Murtha (”he’s gotten sentimental in his old age”) was one of the more appalling acts of political whoredom to have been seen in DC for some time. What some Senators from AZ who are desperate to be President won’t do to curry the Bush family’s favor.
The idea that RJ Dickens, “Mr Controversy,” is some Washington Insider and knows enough about these Senators to make any kind of judgment as to who is trustworthy and who isn’t is laughable.
If they were really interested in banning torture they would put the army guidelines back where they were a few months ago.
The idea that Joe Blow, sitting on the porch of his trailer, surrounded by junked cars and his inbred, meth-addled relatives, knows enough to make judgments about who’s qualified to comment on senators and who isn’t, is laughable.
Your insults don’t make you any more credible to people either, CF.
Thanks for sharing, mrc (especially given the amount of heat your sharing generated from one poster). I find your perspective interesting, and it certainly seems even-handed in its treatment of the “good” (which probably explains the heat ;) ).
I was surprised to find Sen. Hutchinson on your list (must be the media filter you noted).
I have heard good things about both Pryor and Gregg before, and I have always admired the two senators from Maine.
I wanted to ask if you’d be willing to elaborate a bit more on Sen. Boxer. You wrote that she’d make a great lion in any WoZ remake, but that lion was a cowardly lion afraid even to examine who or what might be chewing on his own tail. Did you mean that Sen. Boxer lion-like, or that she is cowardly?
I also found your comments about Sen. Santorum very interesting as well. IMO, Sen. Santorum is a prime example of how difficult it can be to mix aggressive Christianity (”on the sleeve” evangelicalism) with political expediency. For example, the result is often that the office-holder is regarded generally as both sanctimonious and hypocritical. That particular combination of attributes must weaken any officeholder, even a Senator. ;)
It’s also noteworthy that you place Sen. McCain in the same list with Santorum, Frist, and Brownback (staff only).
Thanks flike.Now that I’ve been “outed”, so to speak, I think the vast majority of people who know me understand that I can only speak from the limited perspective of the issues I work on.I had the opportunity to work with Senator Boxer and her staff two years ago on a bill that, if passed, would have meant 100-300 new jobs in Wichita alone.Sadly, under pressure from certain special interest groups, she never introduced the bill–I’m told in part because McCain, then chair of the Commerce Committee, made it exceedingly clear he’d never give our issues a fair hearing.
The problem with this law is not about whether torture is legal or illegal, but in fact is a question of whether the law does what it is meant to do without actually inflicting undue damage on the ability to interrogate or taking away the separation of the civilian judicial system and the military judicial system. Which are separate for a reason.
Keep this in mind that laws are meant to do two things and two things only:
1) Guarantee freedom2) Take freedom away
Now, it may seem that this law guarantees freedom from torture, but it can in fact be used, based on its broad language, to take away the freedom of others with undue cause or with malice or simply through the misuse of power or the judicial system.
Keep in mind that the UMCJ already exists and an approved manual plust appendix is approved by Congress with specific language which already guarantees how we treate prisoners who are categorized based on four concepts. Within the EPW or Enemy prisoner of war definition, there are four more constructs all of which are based on legal understanding of the Geneva conventions. One of which is for non-uniformed, non-regulated military (all things which expressed in the GC means that the person is outside of the guarantees provided to uniformed or regulated militia with direct command and control structure that follows the Law of Land Warfare).
In short, we have laws and treaties all over the place that govern these activities and it is congress that was already responsible for overseeing the creation, approval and implementation of these rules as is noted in article three of the constitution when congress is given the power to make laws regarding captures on land and sea.
Looking at that article, it would seem that McCain is doing what congress was supposed to do.
But, there is a catch.
first, by establishing a law with no precedent setting rulings before it (no, you can’t count UMCJ because that is military law and not civil law), language that makes broad statements about torture and degrading or humiliating treatment is now completely open for interpretation.
You and I as citizens might agree that torture is relative to pulling out fingernails and breaking bones (for instance), but the fact is, the law, without precedent, is open. The next thing that is going to happen is every person captured on the battlefield or in counter terror operations who are not citizens of this country are going to claim they have the right to be seen in a civil court and have evidence brought against them as if they were a common criminal and not a party to war and they are going to claim all sorts of abuse “torture, degredation or humiliation”.
How do we know this? Becaue they already do. If you ever read the FBI transcripts into investigations of abuse at Guantanamo (made available by the freedom of information act to the ACLU), you would have read that one out of every three prisoners claimed they were being tortured. Now, this would be alarming except that, when you read on further, you get the idea that this is just being claimed as subterfuge since the “torture” that is being claimed largely boils down to “kept in solitary confinement for 30 days” (often because they were violent, abusive to other prisoners or because they were in danger of committing suicide or being attacked by other prisoners for their behavior); “not allowed to wash regularly or have more than one set of clothes or bedding” (certain priveleges are taken away for infractions of rules including minor conflicts, disobeying orders, etc – all things that happen in a normal penitentiary), etc.
Now, we can assume that the court would be somewhat logical in making decisions about what cases to be heard, but the truth is, the court will be quickly overwhelmed with alleged cases and amicus briefs from thousands of prisoners as certain factions (ACLU for instance) attempt to take these prisoners out of the “prisoner of war” circulation.
The next thing that happens is that there is an injunction against interrogation of the prisoner until the courts decide on the case.
Which means that the prisoners will not be interrogated or interviewed or pressured in anyway to give up valuable intelligence. Based on how long the courts take now and the number of appeals that could be provided, a prisoner and his lawyer could in fact, keep the prisoner from giving up relevent and timely information until it is too late, an act was already committed or the information was no longer timely and we could not act against other war/terrorist operations or terrorists.
on top of that, as I noted earlier that laws meant to protect certain people or from certain actions often means that another is not free or protected, because such an accusation exists and because it is now in federal judicial hands to investigate, not in the military which is often more timely, an interrogator who may be extremely good at their job, will be suspended and possibly prosecuted on some potentially false and flimsy accusation. Even if they are not prosecuted, having them suspended until full investigations under this law are completed, means that a very useful asset in military or national security intelligence, is taken out of the ball game.
Something that will make our terrorist friends, in prison or otherwise, extremely happy.
This does not mean that torture is an approved method of interrogation or that someone supports “torture” if they don’t support this law. It means that, beyond our silly self-righteous and myopic table pounding about the rights and wrongs of torture, there are other things that need to be considered when discussing enacting such a law.
Returning to the question of whether this law meets the constituions article III congressional power of making laws regarding captures on land and sea, I believe that this is one way that congress can in fact wash its hands of its responsibilities by providing a broad language law, without specifics or precedent, that would in fact leave the definition of prisoners (ie, lawful prisoners of war under the GC or “security detainees” who, under GC are referred to as “sabatouers and terrorists”) and the laws regarding their treatment, not in the hands of Congress as they should be (and are whenever they approve UMCJ and field operation manuals) but in the hands of the court.
In short, grandstanding on the “morality” of their constituents while abandoning their responsibilities.
If congress felt that some other specific definitions of prohibited activity needed to be made, it did not have to go as a law passed by congress, but could have been done through four methods:
1) Review and update all military field manuals and appendices with specific language outlining the prohibition.
2) Update all UMCJ to reflect these changes and impress upon it certain punishment
3) Make a resolution (not a law) in congress that re-enforces the FM, UMCJ and the GC as THE guiding principles and law regarding treatment of EPWs (whether lawful military or other) under military operations
4) since congress approves all appointments of officers in the military and approves promotion to certain ranks, if any officer is thought or found to have been involved in such actions (in whatever small way from orders, to condoning to neglecting their duties as an officer to control their subordinates), they will not be promoted. This is above and beyond the already stiff penalties that exist under the UMCJ but is in fact a power that congress already has that can effect how the military acts beyond their already specific powers of defining or approving the FMs(field manuals) and UMCJ.
Let me summarize (I could go on), the objection here. This is bad law about to be perpetrated in order to make people feel all warm and cozy about “morality” and “high ground”. this is adding an unnecessary law as government and people are want to do when they do not want to confront or enforce the existing law because of some strange belief that crimes committed under an existing law means the law doesn’t work.
That is not the way to combat crimes. Enforce the existing law. that is all that is required.
Leave you with two quotes from old Ben:
To be proud of virtue, is to poison yourself with the Antidote.
All human situations have their inconveniences. We feel those of the present but neither see nor feel those of the future; and hence we often make troublesome changes without amendment, and frequently for the worse.
Sorry, did forget to add the reason that military justice is outside the perview of civilian justice (though largely guided by it in some respects) is because acts of war, such as shooting, stabbing or beating your enemy to death, would not be an acceptable behavior in civilian life.
Further, that certain actions may in fact be harmful to the operations of the military such as disclosing specific information on intelligence or operations, disobeying orders, etc, etc. These things actually undermine military order and effectiveness (just a few examples) and thus are treated differently than activities you may rightly enjoy outside of uniform (though, giving information to the enemy is treason during declared war and espionage during peace)
Once you start saying that civilian law trumps military law, you have in fact suborned or begun the subordination of effective military actions.
Hence, my complaint about this law.
Back and let me illustrate my position with a current “torture” story:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AFGHAN_SECRET_PRISON?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2005-12-18-23-20-26
The report said Benyam Mohammad, an Ethiopian-born Guantanamo detainee who grew up in Britain, claimed he was held at the facility in 2004.
“It was pitch black, no lights on in the rooms for most of the time,” he was quoted as telling his lawyer. “They hung me up. I was allowed a few hours of sleep on the second day, then hung up again, this time for two days.”
Mohammad went on to say that he was forced to listen to Eminem and Dr. Dre for 20 days before the music was replaced by “horrible ghost laughter and Halloween sounds.”
***
Okay, Dr. Dre and Eminem 24 hours a day COULD be construed as torture, but, somehow, I think it actually falls short of international convention prohibition.
the only question may be the “hung up” which is actually the stress position of being handcuffed to the bars of the cell or window for extremely long periods of time (like hours). I believe that the military determined (way back in 2002 before anybody actually thought about “torture”) that stress periods for more than 15 or 30 minutes (stress positions including ordering someone to stand at attention or kneel on the ground) might be cruel and thus created regulations in 2003, further refined in Oct (12) 2003 that indicated it was not a preferred exercise and any stress position for any period of time had to be pre-approved (and records show that no request was made to do so ipso facto; and this character who says he is going to sue was imprisoned during that early time period).
So, he was tortured by loud music and darkness? (PS..the minimal food and water were both a construct of supply and delivery which actuall effected all service members in the area, not just the prisoners and in fact, controlling times of food and water – not starvation – is a basic practice to establish the interrogator as the person in control of the prisoner so they begin to rely on the interrogator for their “care” (sort of like “stokholm syndrome for prisoners).
PS..this practice is also done in police interrogations where the detective will most likely first offer the interviewee something to drink and then not offer the bathroom or another drink or food for hours. Very little harm in it while establishing the basis for interrogation.
Yet, the whole point is, as I was saying, every tom, dick and mohammed is going to be claiming torture under this law and seeking redress and recess for and from interrogations in civil laws that have no jurisdiction and no clue for the reason I noted re: why military justice is not civilian justice.
But, hey, don’t let reality get in the way of grandstanding on your alleged morality
If anyone in my family can be saved by torturing a bad guy, I’ll be the first to poke his eyes out. Anyone who disagrees with this approach is either a liar or unworthy of being responsible for the well-being of his family.
Weak-kneed apologists for throat-slitting terrorists need to quit hiding behind the US military while they keep pulling the rug out from under them. They need to try their luck at being safe on their own. They won’t last a week.
Once again, defeatocrats are stuck on stupid.
It’s sad how liberals care more about the terrorists’ (who kill hundreds of people)well-being but don’t think twice about murdering an innocent and helpless baby.
Foprew–I totally agree. But first you have to figure out if they’re “bad guys” BEFORE you poke their eyes out.
What if you poke their eyes out, and they’re NOT bad guys? What if somebody thinks YOU’RE a bad guy and they poke your eyes out?
See, we’re not for protecting terrorists, we’re for protecting people until they’ve been determined to be a threat.
Then the government can do what it wants . . .
Sara–until somebody conclusively determines when human life begins, the abortion issue will never be resolved.
It’s only “baby killing” if you think a 64 cell blastocyte is a “baby.”
That’s the problem. And it’s a problem on which reasonable people disagree.
I don’t like abortion, but I like legal abortion better than illegal abortion (which is what we had before) . . . as if it had any relevance to terrorism, which it doesn’t.
Sorry Galahad, the medical community has known for a long time when human life starts. Anyone who says different is ignorant or in denial.You have a good point, Sara.