Can anyone tell me what
"retroactive war crimes protection" is about, other than saving your own sorry hide?
WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration drafted amendments to the War Crimes Act that would retroactively protect policy makers from possible criminal charges for authorizing any humiliating and degrading treatment of detainees, according to lawyers who have seen the proposal.
The move by the administration is the latest effort to deal with the treatment of those taken into custody in the war on terror.
At issue are interrogations carried out by the CIA and the degree to which harsh tactics such as water-boarding were authorized by administration officials. A separate law, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, applies to the military. When interrogators engage in waterboarding, prisoners are strapped to a plank and dunked in water until nearly drowning.
Torture doesn't count because we said so, see?
Another section would apply the legislation retroactively, according to two lawyers who have seen the contents of the section and who spoke on the condition of anonymity because their sources did not authorize them to release the information.
One of the two lawyers said that the draft is in the revision stage, but that the administration seems intent on pushing forward the draft's major points in Congress after Labor Day.
"I think what this bill can do is in effect immunize past crimes. That's why it's so dangerous," said a third lawyer, Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice.
(Emphasis added.)
Ah, I see. They're going to excuse themselves for things that they knew were shameful and illegal at the time they did them. Not only that, but they're going to try to make a campaign issue out of them, in the name of security. Does the administration-by-pathology never end?
The choices are very stark now. If you sign on to the Administration's security agenda, you might just as well strap on your blindfold, hand the fools a loaded gun and pray for the best. A vote for that vision of "security" is a vote to allow the president to do whatever the hell he wants, whenever the hell he wants to, without answering to anyone or anything. You might want to pour yourself a stiff one before that vote. It'll keep the gnawing sense of terror and dread at bay for at least a few minutes.
There is one, and only one, moral question in this election season, and that is: has the Bush administration conducted the War on Terror in a manner consistent with American values?
Is waterboarding an American value?
Is inflicting pain just shy of "organ failure" an American value?
Is threatening to kill a prisoner's family an American value?
Is neglecting one war in favor of a second, unnecessary one an American value?
Is prosecuting that second war incompetently an American value?
Is staying indefinitely with no goal, direction, or plan an American value?
Is wasting the lives of American men and women for a lie an American value?
Is causing the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians an American value?
Is belligerating for a third war an American value?
Is trying to grant yourself pardon for these mistakes, crimes, and sins an American value?
These are the questions that need to be asked of every single candidate on the federal level. For everyone else, and for ourselves, I have two others: How will we look ourselves in the mirror on November 8th? And, how will we stand before God without knowing the answer to these questions?
Let's start asking.