The appropriate response to this act is to demand -- not request, but demand -- that the UN establish a special international tribunal for war crimes in Iraq and crimes against humanity arising out of the so-called war on terror.
If in the last days of GOP dominance in Congress laws are going to be passed to get war criminals in the Bush regime immunity from prosecution, then we must appeal to to a body of law that is beyond the power of these war criminals and their congressional sycophants to manipulate.
Congress can grant these thugs immunity from prosecution in a federal court, but not from an international tribunal.
Neither Congress nor Mr. Bush nor someone who really is President of the United States (were there such a person today) is not competent to decide what is torture under the Geneva Conventions. The
Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment assigns that jurisdiction to the Committee against Torture, described in Part II of the Convention. I do not believe Congress is synonymous with the UN COmmittee against Torture, nor that Mr. Bush nor Mr. Cheney nor any other member of the US junta are member of that committee.
For my own view, waterboarding, electroshock, sleep or sensory deprivation, exposure to extreme hot and cold, setting on of vicious dogs, is torture. That is by no means a complete list. If it takes an act of Congress to say it isn't torture, then it's most likely torture. If it inflicts physical pain and is likely to work better at getting the subject to tell the interrogator what he wants to hear rather what he needs to know, it is torture.
Torture is a crime against humanity. Extraordinary rendition is a crime against humanity. Writing or approving a ridiculously reasoned legal memo stating that the President of the United States has the authority to decide what torture is or to order it is a crime against humanity.
It is also my view that any court that denies a defendant the right to review the evidence against him --
all of it -- or to cross examine witnesses or to put on a full and complete defense and the right to be represented by an attorney and to speak in confidence to that attorney, is no court of justice. To commission such a court to try prisoners of war or other combat detainees, protected by the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions, is itself a war crime.
It is also my view that if a person detained in a war zone is not a prisoner of war and thus protected by the Third Geneva Convention, then he is protected by the Fourth Geneva Convention. There is no such thing as an "illegal combatant". No person in the world is in legal limbo under the Geneva Conventions.
Finally, I do not believe an international tribunal should, except under very exceptional cases, indict and try private soldiers. It is a court hear accusation against policy makers and decision makers -- a decider, if you will. As long as there are guidelines handed down by someone in a chain of command, then I do not believe the private soldier at the end of the chain of command who must carry out the order is responsible.
When it comes to an international tribunal, shit rolls
uphill.
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