The part which pulls the rug out from under

[pecunium]

So... those memos were supposed to provide legal cover for the people actually practising the tortures (the people Alberto Gonzales said we dare not prosecute for breaking the law, because that might keep other people from breaking the law in the future), they fail.

I missed an important piece, I was, I confess, a bit tired; at two in the morning, and a trifle numb, by the time I got through the first 40 pages. I was looking at the specifics of the procedures, and so missed a detail, which Glenn Greenwald didn't.

We recognise that as a matter of diplomacy, the United States may for various resons in various circumstances call another nation to account for practise that may in some respects resemble conduct in which the United States might in some circumstances engage, covertly or otherwise. Diplomatic relations with regard to foreign countries are not reliable evidence of United State exectutive practice and thus may only be of limited relevance here.

Got that.... we reserve the right to define it as torture when other people do it, and not when we do. This goes hand in glove with the apparent reasoning that a, "reasonable" person would know the United States wasn't really going to torture, or kill him, therefore, Q.E.D., those actions in which we pretend we are going to do that to prisoners cannot be seen as such by Blackwell's, "reasonable man."

Never mind that the intent is specifically to make the prisoner believe that this course of action will only continue, and get worse, if he refuses to cooperate.

Then we have this:

State Department Reports. Each year, in the State Department's Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, the United States condemns coercive interrogation techniques and other practices employed by other countries. Certain of the techniques the United States has condemned appear to bear some resemblance to some of the CIA interrogation techniques. In their discussion of Indonesia, for example, the reports list as "[p]sychological torture" conduct that involves "food and sleep deprivation," but give no specific information as what these techniques involve. In their discussion of Egypt the reports list as "methods of torture" "stripping and blindfolding victims; suspending victims from a ceiling or doorframe with feet just touching the floor; beating victims [with various objects]; ... and dousing victims with cold water" 'See also, e.g., Algeria (describing the "chiffon" method, which involves "placing a rag drenched in dirty water in someone's mouth"); Iran (counting sleep deprivation as either torture or severe prisoner abuse); Syria (discussing sleep deprivation and "having cold water thrown on" detainees as either torture or "ill-treatment") The State Department's inclusion of nudity, water dousing, sleep deprivation, and food deprivation among the conduct it condemns is significant and provides some indication of an executive foreign relations tradition condemning the use of these techniques.³⁰[sic]

Got that... the legal eagles admit we call it torture when others do it, and may continue to do so. The implication is we might elect to excercise the right to prosecute others for it... while making the claim we can't prosecute our guys for it.

Why? Because we told them it was legal, and they were just following orders.

The judgement of Nuremberg is reduced to sham; nothing more than victors' justice and show trials. We should better have listened to Stalin; just shot them out of hand.

Comments

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

Shooting's too good for them ... lock them up and assure them day and night, that we would never sink so low as to [insert full formal readings of the obscenities they put their names and hands to here].

[jpmassar.livejournal.com]

Actually, I think it was Churchill who wanted to summarily execute them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Trials#The_main_trial

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

I think there was a lineup.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Churchill may have been willing to shoot them out of hand, but he had no real problem with having trials; and making them fair (cf Dönitz, and Hess), Stalin wanted to shoot them, and didn't understand why anything other than a show trial; to make it look good, should be entertained, much less actually done.

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

I had sort of known but not quite realised consciously until just now that shooting actually WAS regarded as "too good for them".

In this case there is also that doubtless the guilty parties already have their goats lined up, and inevitably we're going to catch some of them in the mess. Fair trials will actually clear such goats as are innocent, and let the guilty ones off with the more minor sentences they have actually coming to them. Martyrs we don't need...

Besides, and I know you're not saying otherwise, I see no actual reason to give in to temptation in this case, as it seems to me that a fair trial is the thing they most wish to avoid in all this world ... and it can't just be because they don't know what the words mean.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

It's why they were hanged. There is a lot of symbolism to the means of execution of those in uniform.

I'm still not sure how I feel about the treatment Hess got. It's never been clear to me he knew much of anything about the things which happened. But life in, effective, solitary.... yoiks.

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

Reflecting upon the whole of the story, I am glad not to be responsible for the way in which Hess has been and is being treated. Whatever may be the moral guilt of a German who stood near to Hitler, Hess had, in my view, atoned for this by his completely devoted and frantic deed of lunatic benevolence. He came to us of his own free will, and, though without authority, had something of the quality of an envoy. He was a medical and not a criminal case, and should be so regarded. Winston Churchill, in The Grand Alliance (1950), p. 55.