Comment on a Washington Post article:
Lawmakers Urge Special Counsel Probe of Harsh Interrogation Tactics, by Joby Warrick
The recent May 6th hearing of the House Committee on the Judiciary/Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, regarding "Detainee Interrogation Rules," laid the groundwork for this call for "an outside special prosecutor." Additionally, at the hearing, the Subcommittee members voted to issue a subpoena for David Addington, chief of staff to the vice president, to testify later this month (stay tuned). The Subcommittee heard sworn testimony from and questioned witnesses Phillipe Sands, Marjorie Cohn, David Luban, and David B. Rivkin.
Opening remarks from Marjorie Cohn's testimony:
"What does torture have in common with genocide, slavery, and wars of aggression? They are all jus cogens. Jus cogens is Latin for 'higher law' or 'compelling law.' This means that no country can ever pass a law that allows torture. There can be no immunity from criminal liability for violation of a jus cogens prohibition. [Also, no statute of limitations. ~m]
The United States has always prohibited the use of torture in our Constitution, laws, executive statements and judicial decisions. We have ratified three treaties that all outlaw torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. When the United States ratifies a treaty, it becomes part of the Supreme Law of the Land under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution.
The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, says, 'No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification for torture.'
Whether someone is a POW or not, he must always be treated humanely; there are no gaps in the Geneva Conventions. He must be protected against torture, mutilation, cruel treatment, and outrages upon personal dignity, particularly humiliating and degrading treatment under, Common Article 3. In Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the Supreme Court rejected the Bush administration's argument that Common Article 3 doesn't cover the prisoners at Guantánamo. Justice Kennedy wrote that violations of Common Article 3 are war crimes.
We have federal laws that criminalize torture.
The War Crimes Act punishes any grave breach of the Geneva Conventions, as well as any violation of Common Article 3. That includes torture, willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, and inhuman, humiliating or degrading treatment.
The Torture Statute provides for life in prison, or even the death penalty if the victim dies, for anyone who commits, attempts, or conspires to commit torture outside the United States."
Bear in mind, more than a few detainees held in US custody at Abu Ghraib, Bagram, Whitehorse, Helmond Province, and elsewhere, have been tortured to death -- official Department of Defense autopsy reports listing their "manner of death" as "homocide."
Overshadowing the obscene torture horror show authored by this Administration, the invasion of occupation of Iraq fits the very definition of "aggressive war." And, according to US Attorney General/Supreme Court Justice, Robert H. Jackson -- chief American prosecutor at Nuremberg:
"To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."
Despairing at this nation's, our nation's, mad holiday from the rule of law, and the monarchical and maniacal criminality of Bush & Company in the wake of 9/11, Larry Wilkerson, a former army officer and chief of staff to Colin Powell, told the UK Guardian:
"Haynes, Feith, Yoo, Bybee, Gonzalez and - at the apex - Addington [the principal WH, DOJ, and DOD "attorneys" who scripted US torture policy], should never travel outside the US, except perhaps to Saudi Arabia and Israel. They broke the law; they violated their professional ethical code. In future, some government may build the case necessary to prosecute them in a foreign court, or in an international court."
Maybe, "some government," somewhere?
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