MOONBAT CENTRAL HAS MORE ON Amnesty International, who apparently did not get Kevin's letter. Executive Director William Schulz is now calling for the arrest of Bush and other U.S. officials for "directing" the "torture" of detainess at Gitmo.
''If the U.S. government continues to shirk its responsibility, Amnesty International calls on foreign governments to uphold their obligations under international law by investigating all senior U.S. officials involved in the torture scandal. If those investigations support prosecution, the governments should arrest any official who enters their territory and begin legal proceedings against them. The apparent high-level architects of torture should think twice before planning their next vacation to places like Acapulco or the French Riviera because they may find themselves under arrest as Augusto Pinochet famously did in London in 1998.''
Schulz is an ordained minister in the Unitarian Universalist Church. We really have to do something about the extreme religious left, which has become a haven for communists and apologists for horrid dictators the world over.
7 comments:
Has William Schultz made a mistake in singling out the United States when publicizing Amnesty's annual report which details human rights abuses in 141 countries? Yes. Does this take away from the urgency of the problems occuring at Guantanamo Bay? No. Gulags they are not, but they are being run outside the rules of the Geneva Convention, and our own Constitution. I have no doubt that most of the people that are detained there are indeed terrorists, but if that is so, why not charge them as such? It's not just Amnesty and far-left liberals that think so, the Supreme Court has ruled as much. Furthermore, if toture is being used by the U.S. military, then by all means, every person in the military heirarchy up to the Commander-in-Chief should be held accountable. For over 40 years, Amnesty has called for exactly that in every alleged torture case they investigated, in every country, from Cuba to Chile, from China to the Soviet Union and Putin's Russia. They have remained consistently against torture in all cases, whether it is done by an ally of the U.S., Isreal, China, or East Timor. Torture has never been shown to help in criminal investigations, in fact, it usually impedes it. Even Isreal, a nation surrounded on all of its borders with nations that either now or in the past have supported terrorism, has denounced the use of torture in terror investigations.
Also, I whole-heartedly reiterate my point that Amnesty has consistently fought for countless individuals who would have had their most basic human rights arbitrarily abused. I submit as examples their recent work to protect child soldiers in the Ivory Coast (http://web.amnesty.org/pages/civ-270405-action-eng), and those threatened with execution without due process (http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGASA210112005)
Kevin,
You really do need to brush up on your Geneva Convention. It does not include terrorists, nor should it.
The Geneva Convention is designed to PREVENT their very type of "warfare," not give it protection under a legal umbrella.
The folks at Gitmo also enjoy absolutely no protection under our copnstitution.
It's not that Amnesty International is against torture that bothers me. It is that they have had to stretch the boundaries of the definition of torture to even include non-physical means of extracting information, to play their little game with the US. If that costs them all credibility in the future, it is their own fault.
Even some of the most "heinous" things alleged against the military, flushing Korans and rubbing menstrual blood on faces is NOT TORTURE, even if they are true. Making somebody sit in an uncomfortable positions, or making them stand with their arms outstrecthed is NOT TORTURE.
When they describe what we do as "torture," thay insult every person who has had heinouos things done to them. The amazing thing is that they compare what we have done to China, Cuba and even the USSR.
They should be ashamed of themselves.
The Supreme Court has ruled in "Fawzi Khalid Abdullah Fahad Al Odah, et al. v. United States" that the prisoners at Gitmo are protected under our Constitutional right to due process. (http://supreme.lp.findlaw.com/supreme_court/docket/2003/April.html)
The Geneva Convention protects all of those detained in any armed conflict, regardless of the nature of the conflict, or the nature of the war.
From: In addRelative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, Geneva, 12 August 1949.
ition to the provisions which shall be implemented in peace time, the present Convention shall apply to all cases of declared war or of any other armed conflict which may arise between two or more of the High Contracting Parties, even if the state of war is not recognized by one of them."
www.genevaconventions.org
The text is clear, and makes no exceptions for different types of wars or armed conflicts.
The first definition of the noun "torture" given in my dictionary is: "1 a : anguish of body or mind : AGONY b : something that causes agony or pain "
Many of the details of reports of mistreatment at Gitmo and other prison camps do indeed fit this defintion.
The Geneva Convention does not protect terrorists. The Geneva Convention makes very clear what actions make one exempt from it's protections.
I don't believe the insurgency even fits the description of "High Contracting Parties."
Most of their actions, such as not wearing uniforms, attacking civilians, keeping and killing hostages, are done actively by the insurgency. This exempts them from protection.
"Civilians who commit an offense against an occupying power which does not include an attempt against the lives of members of the occupying force or administration, pose a grave collective danger, or seriously damage property or installations of the occupying power may only be punished by internment or imprisonment. (Convention IV, Art. 68)"
Also,"arbitrary killing,hostage tacking, attacks on cultural objects, and depriving people of the right to a fair trial," are forbidden by the Geneva Convention"
The Geneva Convention goes out of it's way to exempt this type of behavior. To do otherwise would simply encourage more people to embrace terrorism as a means to an end.
As convenient as it might be, I do not believe we are operating under your dictionary's explanation of torture. Just about anything would fit that definition.
We are going to have to do better than that if we are going to prevent future terrorist attacks and extract information that will prevent needless bloodshed.
In regards to the case you mentioned, the US is allowed to hold the insurgents indefinitely, but you are right, they may request a hearing. But, that is not what you stated in your original comment. You stated that we were running the camps "outside the constitution," which applies to American citizens, less the narrow exception granted by the court.
I'm not a big fan of playing word games Kevin. We are in a war with people who would slit your throat as soon as look at you. They make no exception for civilians, or any non-military targets.
If it makes you feel better to defend them by whining about the US and crying human rights violations at Gitmo, be my guest.
But all you and the rest have accomplished is to prolong war, give the enemy an endless sourse of PR, and gotten untold people killed.
That's pretty myopic.
You're making the world safer for terrorists to operate. Good for you.
Let me add to my last comment...
The Geneva Convention review hearings have never before required defense lawyers, even for POW's.
David Rivkin agrees with my assessment of the Geneva Convention here:
"Captured unlawful combatants are not entitled to POW status because such men are associated with groups that do not comply with even the most basic law of war requirements — such as the prohibition on targeting civilians. They do not enjoy special privileges under the Geneva Conventions..."
The U.N. defines torture as “severe pain or suffering.”
As long as measures don't exceed that measure, they are considered lawful. It would seem clear that none of the alleged abuses have crossed that line, or even come remotely close to it.
You said: "If it makes you feel better to defend them by whining about the US and crying human rights violations at Gitmo, be my guest.
But all you and the rest have accomplished is to prolong war, give the enemy an endless sourse of PR, and gotten untold people killed.
That's pretty myopic.
You're making the world safer for terrorists to operate. Good for you."
That is a completely unsupportable comment. If anything, the terrorists have won a small victory by enticing you and others to try to restrict Constitutional rights out of fear. Accusing the anti-war movement of bringing good pr to the enemy is just another form of name calling, like calling somebody opposing the current administration "anti-American". It is complete and utter nonsense.
Kevin,
We have restricted constitutional rights, albeit temporarily, almost every time we have fought a war. In the Civil War Lincoln suspended habeas corpus indefinitely, in WWII we interned the Japanese, and certainly a draft is not in the spirit of American civil rights.
To suggest that terrorists have won a "small" victory becuase we have the good sense to realize that protecting civil rights in the long run sometimes requires their compromise in the short run doesn't get it done.
Interesting though, that you refer to my accusations against the anti-war movement as "complete and utter nonsense," and than turn right around and accuse the administration of the same thing. Is it nonsense to make such charges or not?
Stating that the anti-war movement has brought good pr to the enemy is not "name calling," it is a fact. It's not a very nice fact, and one that generally pisses the anti-war movement off, but hey, if they want their cake they can eat it too.
Do you honestly believe that the loud anti-war movement in this country has not emboldened the terrorists in Iraq? Is it so difficult to believe that they watch the anti-war movement here and think, "one more car bomb, one more dead American soldier is all we need to turn the tide against support for the war?"
Don't be naive. The enemy in this war is very atuned to public opinion and already considers the west "weak" and especially susceptable to images of violence. I mean really, who did you think all those beheadings were for?
I am all for reasonable criticism of the war, or it's handling, but running around calling the Bush administration war criminals or decrying the American military war-mongerers and child killers has a negative effect on the effort.
It's called aid and comfort, it's treason and Ted Kennedy, for one, should be in jail as far as I'm concerned. He and his loud obnoxious cohorts in the Democratic Party were just fine with that type of activity for the sole purpose of winning an election.
Don't get me wrong, I sdon't think Kennedy or others should be in jail because they disagree with the administration. But he, and others have taken that disagreement and turned it into a propoganda war of their own, which has come at the expense of American soldiers in combat. That is flat out wrong.
At least, in the past, our politicians, and even our media, have had the good sense to realize that their primary duty is to make sure their actions don't get people killed unnessecarily.We live in much more "enlightened" times now, much to our shame.
Tha anti-war movement demands that it have the freedom to say whatever damn fool thing it wants in it's oppostion to the war. Judging by your ire it would seem that you include yourself in that effort.
I have no problem with freedom of speech, but will be generous in my own use of it, especially where I see the right being abused. For a group that hurls insults at people who disagree with them like there is no tomorrow, you sure are a sensitive bunch.
BTW...I don't recall ever saying that people who disagree with the administration are "anti-American." If I call someone that, it will be because they have demonstrated that they are indeed anti-American.
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