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]

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.