Torture undermining criminal cases

One of the reasons that former Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller complained about the United States torturing detainees was that it could taint future legal proceedings. That happened this week, as a military judge ruled that prosecutors in the trial of Osama bin Laden’s former driver could not use some statements obtained from him using “highly coercive” interrogation methods. In May, the Pentagon had to drop charges against another detainee who had been tortured at Guantanamo Bay.

8 Comments

  1. writerdog
    Posted July 23, 2008 at 7:50 am | Permalink

    Ashcraft also said that the intent is not to convict detainees it is to hold them till the war is over.
    He was speaking though about POW and the administration to forestall war crimes charges made it clear that the detainees from the war on terror are not POWs.

    So which is it? are these criminals or prisoners of war?

  2. Maggotpunk
    Posted July 23, 2008 at 8:07 am | Permalink

    Once again the Bush regime fails on the war on terra.

  3. Phantom
    Posted July 23, 2008 at 8:59 am | Permalink

    Like I said before when bush was still claiming ‘We don’t torture’ the U.S. had a notorious reputation for not convicting or allowing coerced confessions to be used.
    Having said that, I’m now reading ‘The innocent man’, and wonder if the value of any confession has merit.

  4. Phantom
    Posted July 23, 2008 at 9:01 am | Permalink

    Mukasey is now asking for laws to hold detainees ‘until the war on terror is won’. Supreme Court’s been known in the past to throw out laws that lacked sufficient specificity.

  5. ksfarmgrrl
    Posted July 23, 2008 at 9:15 am | Permalink

    I’m beginning to think bushco tortured these folks to make sure they would NOT talk, or at least that they would NOT give out valuable info.

    Impeach now. Then send them to the Hauge.

    And make the BFEE empty their pockets on the way out.

  6. YellowdogLiberal
    Posted July 23, 2008 at 10:28 am | Permalink

    We can’t (or won’t) find a 6-foot-7 Type 1 diabetic, but we sure can prosecute the hell out of his poor schmuck driver.

    I’m soooooo tired of this crap. I hope we can survive the next six months.

    Dennis

  7. Jed
    Posted July 23, 2008 at 2:05 pm | Permalink

    As bad as Ashcroft was, it’s truly frightening to realize that he was still the most honorable member of the Bush administration.

  8. Mayra Bailey
    Posted July 24, 2008 at 10:14 pm | Permalink

    It made me think of what the famous Ursula LeGuin said – “You can’t crush ideas by suppressing them. You can only crush them by ignoring them.”…