Ronald Bailey calls out the attack dogs on President Bush's tortured reasoning for squeezing around the Geneva Conventions.
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FinFangFoom | September 18, 2006, 12:14pm | #
The Senate doesn't ratify treaties, the President does. The President signs the treaty, the Senate gives its "advice and consent," and then the President ratifies the treaty.jf | September 18, 2006, 12:22pm | #
FinFangFoom,The Consitution is pretty clear that with the approval of two-third of the Senate that the President cannot ratify a treaty. The Pres proposes; the Senate approves. Unless we've been living in the Kyoto regime and I forgot about it.
jf | September 18, 2006, 12:25pm | #
Ugh, obviously "with" should read "without".Me flunk English? That's unpossible!
FinFangFoom | September 18, 2006, 12:32pm | #
Art. II, Section 2."He shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur"
The Senate does not ratify treaties. The Senate gives its advice and consent which then grants the authority to the President to ratify the treaty. A treaty does not become US law until the President ratifies it.
Its fun to watch/read Ronald Bailey go from Max Boot to Robert Fisk on US foriegn policy in the course of five years...
Herrick and His Balls | September 18, 2006, 12:36pm | #
You'd be surprised what kind of things guys will say when you stick things into their anus.We don't need to clarify any terms. When the bad guys do it to us it is "Torture." When we do it to them it is "Alternative Interrogation."
AC | September 18, 2006, 1:16pm | #
The Senate does not ratify treaties. The Senate gives its advice and consent which then grants the authority to the President to ratify the treaty. A treaty does not become US law until the President ratifies it.Everybody drink!
TrickyVic | September 18, 2006, 1:55pm | #
FinFangFoom is correct as to what the constitution says. I found nothing in Article 1 as to Congress's powers with respect to treaties. Did I miss something?Precedents is a differnt story.
But the more important issue is that the Geneva Convention has already been ratified by a US President.
If Bush violates the treaty and is called on it by the international body. His claim that a US law allows him to reinterpet the treaty will be laughed at. Congress has no authority, nor does the president to change the content or meaning of an international treaty.
Either the US follows the treaty or we don't. If you look at how the government upheld the treaties with the native americans one thing becomes obvious. We will adhere to treaties only as far as the other signing parties can enforce it upon us. Of course the world body has far more weight than the native americans. Well, we will see.
If we turn evil to fight evil, the war would no longer be between good and evil, but between two evil powers. evil vs evil, not good vs. evil.
It does amaze me, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised, that our government is so willing to adapt the mechanisms used by tyrants over the centuries. The biggest is that we have a moral right to use evil tactics against our enemies. That has been and still is a cornerstone of every dictator's philosophy.
Johnny Islam | September 18, 2006, 2:00pm | #
Alright, leave FingFangFom alone. It was an honest mistake. Just because it was a really stupid thing to say, and showed an utter lack of constitutional understanding, and perhaps even showed an ignorance of the English language doesn't mean we should all pile on. Starting now.rob | September 18, 2006, 2:04pm | #
When we dunk someone (waterboarding) it's torture, but when they chop off our soldier's heads it's IAW with Geneva?Give me a break. Geneva specifically states that illegal combatants don't get the protections of Geneva. That means it's open season on them, but Pres. Bush actually extends illegal combatants most of the protections of Geneva. If that isn't more than fair, I don't know what is.
rob | September 18, 2006, 2:36pm | #
Here's a primer...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlawful_Combatants
kebko | September 18, 2006, 3:28pm | #
"Give me a break. Geneva specifically states that illegal combatants don't get the protections of Geneva. That means it's open season on them, but Pres. Bush actually extends illegal combatants most of the protections of Geneva. If that isn't more than fair, I don't know what is."So, if you're anywhere in the world, and you're not wearing a military uniform, and our government decides to ship you to a location specifically chosen to be a legal bottomless pit, then frankly, you deserve it for daring to be accused of a secret crime while dressed in civilian clothes. Open season, suckas.
Seamus | September 18, 2006, 3:30pm | #
Alright, leave FingFangFom alone. It was an honest mistake. Just because it was a really stupid thing to say, and showed an utter lack of constitutional understanding, and perhaps even showed an ignorance of the English language doesn't mean we should all pile on. Starting now.But FingFangFom didn't make a mistake at all. If you read the question that's put to the Senate with respect to a treaty, the Senate passes a resolution stating that it "advise[s] and consent[s] to the ratification of" the treaty in question. See http://www.senate.gov/reference/resources/pdf/98-384.pdf#search=%22%22advise%20and%20consent%20to%20the%20ratification%22%22
The ratification is then done by the President. I couldn't find a more recent example, but here's one from 1868, involving a treaty with the Nez Perce Indians (scroll down to the bottom of the page): http://www.lib.uidaho.edu/mcbeth/governmentdoc/1868www.htm
(The president is technically "ratifying" the action done on his behalf by the diplomats who negotiated the treaty. Which, BTW, brings to mind another factual error Mr. Bailey made. Unless something very unusual happened, the Geneva Conventions were not "signed by a predecessor" of Mr. Bush's. None of which is to take the slightest issue with Mr. Bailey's point, which is that we as a nation ought to repudiate Mr. Bush's attempts to repudiate common article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.)
TrickyVic | September 18, 2006, 3:36pm | #
The GC does in fact cover some people that Bush is claiming to be an unlawful combatant. When a country is being invaded, someone takes up arms to defend themselves, who is not part of part of the regular army, is cover by the GC6. Inhabitants of a non-occupied territory, who on the approach of the enemy spontaneously take up arms to resist the invading forces, without having had time to form themselves into regular armed units, provided they carry arms openly and respect the laws and customs of war.
Though this would not apply to AQ since their respect of laws and customs of war is non-existent, but would apply to many we picked up in Afghanistan.
With respects to OBLs driver, these two may apply.
4. Persons who accompany the armed forces without actually being members thereof, such as civilian members of military aircraft crews, war correspondents, supply contractors, members of labour units or of services responsible for the welfare of the armed forces, provided that they have received authorization from the armed forces which they accompany, who shall provide them for that purpose with an identity card similar to the annexed model.
5. Members of crews, including masters, pilots and apprentices, of the merchant marine and the crews of civil aircraft of the Parties to the conflict, who do not benefit by more favourable treatment under any other provisions of international law.
The real problem with Gitmo GC protections is that we don't really know what many in Gitmo did wrong. They were handed over to us by regional warlords that claimed they were AQ or Taliban. That's the only evidence we have of their involvement.
You can't expect the warlords to be present at the tribunal so you must allow for hearsay or the case is sunk. That is why the administration demands that the hearsay evidence stay. We can't prove their involvement.
Aresen's last sentence sums it up and I add that if we do decide to operate that way, let's not kid ourselves about what we are doing.
Bush is defending and condeming torture. He is playing the semantics game. He might be fooling some in this country but the world is not fooled.
Gen Powell is right, our credibility is at risk. Blowing your credibility is something which he is familiar.
MUTT | September 18, 2006, 4:06pm | #
Interesting quote. it reguards other terrorists who didnt wear uniforms."A graphic portrayal of Gestapo questioning was provided by the Communist sailor Richard Krebs, who remained in Germany after the Reichstag fire as a secret courier for the Comintern. Krebs was arrested in Hamburg in 1933 and subjected to weeks of merciless beatings and whippings, completely cut off from the outside world, allowed neither a lawyer nor any kind of communication with his family or his friends. In between interrogations, he was kept chained to a cot in a tiny cell, not allowed to wash, his thumb, broken in one of the sessions with the Gestapo, untreated save for having a bandage wrapped around it. A Gestapo officer fired detailed questions at hime, clearly based on information received, and on a bulky police file on him that had been compiled from the early 1920s onward. Kept in a local prison at Fuhlsbuttel for most of the time, Krebs continued to be driven at intervals to Hamburg's Gestapo headquarters to be questioned by police officers who looked on while SS men beat him up. After several weeks of this, Kreb's back was a bloody mess, his kidneys were seriously damaged through carefully targeted beating, and he had lost the hearing in one ear. Despite such treatment, he refused any details of the organization for which he worked.
"Transported to the central office of the Gestapo in Berlin, Krebs was impressed with the more refined and less brutal methods employed there. These depended more on tiring prisoners out by prolonged standing or kneeling in awkward positions than on direct brutality and physical abuse. But the atmosphere was the same as in Hamburg: 'Grimy corridors, offices furnished with Spartan simplicity, threats, kicks, troopers chasing chained men up and down the reaches of the building, shouting, rows of girls and women standing with their noses and toes against the walls, overflowing ashtrays, portraits of Hitler and his aides, the smell of coffee, smartly dressed girls working at high speed behind typewriters -- girls seemingly indifferent to all the squalor and agony about them, stacks of confiscated publications, printing machines, books, and pictures, and Gestapo agents aleep on tables.'"
--Richard Evans, *The Third Reich In Power,* pp 98-99.
Compare that with the many descriptions of American torture under the Bush regime. remember, also, there have been reports of people being beaten to death, getting "rung up", and burned.... iI can almost hear the buttons poppin off the shirts, as some chickenhawk breasts swell with pride...
Elmo | September 18, 2006, 4:22pm | #
Let's see now. A plausible hypotheticalYou're the interrogator and you have a tough nut before you who was one of several terrorists captured yesterday in a blood strewn torture chamber/bomb factory. Bloody instruments of torture and empty containers were still there which were obviously used to bring in bomb making materials, but most of those materials are now gone. He was in possession of a bloody machete and was wearing bloody clothes that was not a uniform. One mile away were the bodies of uniformed coalition forces servicemen, (some were Americans), who had been missing for a week. Their limbs are broken, hands tied behind them, genitalia mutilated, eyelids removed with scissors, (eyes gouged mercilessly in the process), toes chopped off, teeth broken off, ribs exposed, entrails protruding, and with other cuts and bruises making recognition impossible, and their heads were partially severed.
He now wears an orange jump suit and his arm and leg movements are restricted by soft plastic flex cuffs. He has been allowed a shower, fed a Muslim diet, provided with religious materials and permitted to pray. He has cursed, kicked and spat at everyone who has come in contact with him, and he spits at you when he comes into the room. The others captured with him point him out as being their leader. Your charge is to get information from him.
The Geneva Convention itself gives him no protection whatsoever, (Read it. It's true), but the U.S. Supreme Court has pre-empted the Geneva Convention and has given him that protection.
There is a compound just outside the window where the guards train their dogs. You fix it so that a couple of dogs are undergoing attack training while you talk to your detainee. You make sure he sees the dogs viciously go after their training "victims".
As a pre-planned part of your interrogation, and for your detainee's benefit while the dogs are doing their thing, (but out of his sight), the guards in the compound play a captured tape of the sounds being made by their own torture victims. Maybe even some occasional "blood" spatters on the window.
At the right moment you ask if he'd like to go out into the compound and "participate" in the training. He demurs and reminds you of the Supreme Court ruling against torture, so you have a couple of guards "assist" the terrorist to the door that opens onto the compound. The door is locked, but he doesn't know that, and starts blubbering all kinds of good stuff.
I'd like to get Mr. Ronald Bailey's opinion, if he would care to give it. It that kind of "aggressive interrogation" permitted under his guidelines?
rob | September 18, 2006, 4:45pm | #
"So, if you're anywhere in the world, and you're not wearing a military uniform, and our government decides to ship you to a location specifically chosen to be a legal bottomless pit, then frankly, you deserve it for daring to be accused of a secret crime while dressed in civilian clothes. Open season, suckas." - kebkoYou need to re-read my post, kebko. It points out that unlawful combatants don't qualify for GC protections. Frankly, the purpose of the GC is to provide protections for captured combatants and to make the entire process more "cricket" so to speak.
How effective has the GC been in encouraging better treatment of captured soldiers and civilians? We've seen plenty of torture and execution carried out by the comrades of those who you think should be treated with gentle TLC.
The GC also allows for reciprocity - so would you also like to see us videotaping the torture, beating and beheading of unlawful combatants?
That's well within the scope fo the GC, as is the current treatment of the detainees at Gitmo.
I don't think that is the way to go, but there's certainly provision for it in the GC.
Todd | September 18, 2006, 5:03pm | #
The issue of whether the GC's apply to unlawful combatants or how to define unlawful combatants is beside the point.Do Americans want to be torturers? It's that simple. Maybe some of you would throw in qualifiers: if it will save lives, if the victims are really bad guys, depends how far we go in torturing, etc.
My simple answer is No. I don't want us to perpetrate torture. Ends do not justify the means. Because everybody else is doing it is never a good reason.
rob | September 18, 2006, 5:18pm | #
"The issue of whether the GC's apply to unlawful combatants or how to define unlawful combatants is beside the point. Do Americans want to be torturers? It's that simple." - ToddHow do you define torture then? Does it include loud music? Sleep deprivation? Living areas that are too cold or too hot? Stress positions or forced physical exertion?
If you include those things, then I've been tortured repeatedly by two different branches of the U.S. military during training.
MainstreamMan | September 18, 2006, 8:17pm | #
"How do you define torture then? Does it include loud music? Sleep deprivation? Living areas that are too cold or too hot? Stress positions or forced physical exertion?"Rob, once you start having to parse, you are probably in torture territory. Torture is a pretty bright line, if you think it might be torture, it probably is.
Didn't you just give me a lecture about how western culture has a lower tolerance for violence than Muslim culture?
Yet we are willing to have discussions about which cruel treatment of humans is torture and which is not...
Gimme a break.
joe | September 18, 2006, 9:55pm | #
I really don't think that torture is justified under any circumstances. But at the least, before qualifying it under special conditions, or subject to certain constraints, (constraints which will no doubt be violations in a large number of individual cases, and which are anyway subject to the sensibilities and tolerance of individuals), it might be worthwhile to seriously reassess the threat, sans 5 years of media hullaballoo. Are we really in the middle of a war? Is there really a serious threat to our freedoms (coming from the outside)? Is this new long-term war paradigm worth all of our anxieties, and our status in the international community? Or is it just cheap filler for the sense of emptiness left by the dissolution of the USSR, and the relative dissipation of the threat of mutually assured destruction?I live abroad, in a highly developed, apitalist nation which is home to non-English-speaking culture, (no that is not irrelevant), where the war on terror lives between quotes, and most people look on with incredulity and no small amount of skepticism at the Bush regime's approach to hegemony. There are myriad other social malaises here, but I am rather glad that the illusion of the war on terror, and all its various trappings, is not one of them. We might do well to reassess this threat a bit at home, in light of the overwhelming differences in opinion in the international community about what the threat of islamic radicalism really represents and how it ought best to be dealt with.
There are not many poorer ways to deal with a threat than unilateralism and incessant bullying. Security does not necessarily have to entail a loss of freedoms for American citizens, though it MAY require some reining in of the government's cavalier attitude about its behaviour as a peer in the international community.
Kevin B. O'Reilly | September 18, 2006, 11:00pm | #
"Somebody showed me a picture and I just laughedDignity never been photographed"
True, perhaps. But I think we know what outrages against human dignity look like.
http://www.antiwar.com/news/?articleid=2444
rm2muv | September 19, 2006, 2:08am | #
Perhaps through expeiencing the use of some 'alternative interrogation procedures' the administration would be better able to describe 'outrages to human dignity.Worth a try.
rob | September 19, 2006, 10:07am | #
1. "once you start having to parse, you are probably in torture territory. Torture is a pretty bright line, if you think it might be torture, it probably is."Actually, once you start re-defining torture to include things that are not actually torture you find yourself having to re-define what torture actually is. In the past, there was nowhere near as much concern for the rights of captured unlawful combatants as there are now. In other words, when there is a movement to re-define torture parsing and disagreement over what is and isn't torture are bound to follow. That's not a sign that everything that one side claims is torture actually IS torture.
There used to be a hard, bright line between torture and non-torture that allowed for stringent interrogation and intimidation of unlawful combatants, but the urge by some to keep their white kid gloves unsullied has led to a movement to include everything including harsh glances under the term "torture."
2. "Didn't you just give me a lecture about how western culture has a lower tolerance for violence than Muslim culture?"
No, I gave you a lecture on why sharia is a bad thing, leads to repression of women, and condones violence for "religious offenses" that aren't actually crimes under secular law. Embracing it over secular rule of law is incompatible with Western culture, and it leads to sanctioned violence ("punishment") that is unacceptable in Western culture. And it SHOULD be unacceptable in any civilized nation.
Let me get this right, you think it's OK for women to be stoned to death under sharia but it's NOT OK for unlawful combatants to be waterboarded?
3. "Yet we are willing to have discussions about which cruel treatment of humans is torture and which is not... Gimme a break."
Give ME a break. The fact that we ARE discussing this, ad nauseum, is an example of just how much better things are in the U.S. and how seriously we take the Geneva Conventions.
When the argument is about whether waterboarding and even sleep deprivation and loud music qualify as torture, it definitely says a lot about how free the U.S. is. Just as an example, how often did the tortures and murders that occured at Abu Ghraib under Saddam Hussein and the Baathists come under media scrutiny? Compare that with the white-hot focus on the bone-headed, illegal actions of a couple of low-ranking sadists at Abu Ghraib under the U.S.
If the U.S. even THINKS something might have been done that is wrong we leap into action to make sure that what we're doing is either A) not wrong or; B) whoever did it gets punished and the wrongs don't continue.
When have you ever heard of an apologetics movement in the Muslim faith that repudiates radical, violent Islamic Wahaabi principles?
Better yet - When was the last time a Muslim gov't prosecuted a man for assaulting a woman because of what amounts to a religious dress code violation? I won't hold my breath waiting for a link.
rob | September 19, 2006, 10:26am | #
"Perhaps through expeiencing the use of some 'alternative interrogation procedures' the administration would be better able to describe 'outrages to human dignity. Worth a try." - rm2muvActually, here's an interesting bit for you to mull:
"Posing a detainee in an erect standing position for a period of several hours. No restraints or external devices are used. Variations of this technique include the extension of one's arms outward to the side. In an addendum to his memo approving this technique, Rumsfeld asked, 'I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to 4 hours?'"
From:
http://www.slate.com/features/whatistorture/StressPositions.htm
MainstreamMan | September 19, 2006, 1:07pm | #
Rob,"No, I gave you a lecture on why sharia is a bad thing,"
You did this, of course, with a fairly unsophisticated understanding of the issue. Among other things, you conflate traditional cultural practices like honor killings and sharia law, which strictly forbids such activities (even Iran has called the practice Un-Islamic).
"Let me get this right, you think it's OK for women to be stoned to death under sharia but it's NOT OK for unlawful combatants to be waterboarded?"
Let me get this right, you think it's OK to waterboard suspects without trial, legal representation, or access to their family, but it's NOT okay to ....
I am against the death penalty in the US, so, obviously, I would oppose it under a legal system based on Sharia that still includes it(there are several Sharia based systems with no death penalty). But once you are to the point of executing someone...methods are a side issue.
"When have you ever heard of an apologetics movement in the Muslim faith that repudiates radical, violent Islamic Wahaabi principles?"
You need to get out more...
Here is one example, a fatwah against terrorism with 9 pages of Islamic organizations supporting it. http://www.cair.com/FatwaJuly2005.pdf
For a more international perspective on Terrorism and the Qutbist movement of Bin Laden et al...
http://www.thewahhabimyth.com/wahhabis_terrorsim.htm
I don't want you to be confused here.
I prefer secular law to religious based law, but it is the actions of people that need to be condemned, not their beliefs. Those societies that repress their citizens, torture, hold suspects without trial or charge, and engage in military aggression without cause should be condemned for such actions...and sometimes those socities are western and secular. Oppression has nothing to do with religion, even in oppressors want you to think it does.