“It is the first responsibility of every citizen to Question Authority.” – Benjamin Franklin
Ron Hutcheson and Margaret Talev report:
“The United States does not torture,” Bush said. “It’s against our laws, and it’s against our values. I have not authorized it — and I will not authorize it.”
…
Bush and other administration officials declined to discuss the CIA’s interrogation tactics, which two intelligence officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said has included “water-boarding,” a technique that makes its victim fear he’s drowning.
Question Authority: How is water-boarding not torture?
Read the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel’s definitive December 30, 2004 memo written to explicitly restate the bounds of legal conduct in interrogation and explicitly restate the definition of torture. That memo reads, regarding 18 USC 2340-2340A:
Section 2340 provides in full:
As used in this chapter–
(1) “torture” means an act committed by a person acting under color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control;
(2) “severe mental pain or suffering” means the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from–
(A) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering;
(B) the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality;
(C) the threat of imminent death; or
(D) the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering, or the administration or application of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality; and
(3) “United States” means the several States of the United States, the District of Columbia, and the commonwealths, territories, and possessions of the United States.
Question Authority: Given that “water-boarding” fits the legal definition of torture, how has the law not been violated?
The definitive Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel Memo continues:
Section 2340A provides in full:
(a) Offense.–Whoever outside the United States commits or attempts to commit torture shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both, and if death results to any person from conduct prohibited by this subsection, shall be punished by death or imprisoned for any term of years or for life.
(b) Jurisdiction.–There is jurisdiction over the activity prohibited in subsection (a) if–
(1) the alleged offender is a national of the United States; or
(2) the alleged offender is present in the United States, irrespective of the nationality of the victim or alleged offender.
Question Authority: Haven’t Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales and George W. Bush commited crimes by approving water-boarding?
Section 2340A continues:
(c) Conspiracy.–A person who conspires to commit an offense under this section shall be subject to the same penalties (other than the penalty of death) as the penalties prescribed for the offense, the commission of which was the object of the conspiracy.
Question Authority: If torture is a high crime, aren’t Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales and George W. Bush appropriate targets for impeachment?
Jclifford railed in the diaries last night about the importance of not just passively reading, but of actively speaking truth to power, whether by voice or by writing. Don’t just read these questions. Actively question authority yourself. Contact your Representative and your Senators today, and ask them these questions. Ask them what they are going to do about it. Write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper and ask these questions to your fellow citizens, since chances are your paper hasn’t asked the questions itself. Get these questions out there. Encourage others to add their voices to them, until the chorus is so loud that it can no longer be ignored.
Don’t let this issue whisper away. Question authority today.
I’m all for questioning authority, and all of that, but weren’t they supposed to publish new guidelines for treatment of prisoners and wasn’t the new stuff supposed to be released yesterday–I thought there were new army guidelines that were going to apply to everyone. Except the CIA? but maybe I didn’t get that straight. It was supposed to apply to Guantanamo at least. And I thought waterboarding was no longer okay, along with mock executions, hoods, dogs, and some other stuff. They were going to make that part secret, but they placed it in a public document instead.
The article I linked to above cites involved officials as saying that waterboarding is among the “alternative procedures.” As that article, and articles in the New York Times and Washington Post today, note, the new guidelines are for the treatment of prisoners by the military only. And even if there were new guidelines that applied to all American government agents, which there aren’t, that wouldn’t take away the past illegality of American government actions, going right up the chain of command to George W. Bush.
Heck, it doesn’t even go UP the chain of command to George W. Bush. This stuff appears to have started at the top, with George W. Bush one of the principle planners, personally involved in deciding to torture prisoners in secret.
So the whole “we’re not going to do this anymore, we’re not going to do that anymore” stuff in the article is largely meaningless. The real meaning behind the words about “new army guidelines” is that the torture function has been taken away from DoD, which after all has not been able to stay out of the public eye, and given back to the more discreet CIA where it will be business as usual.