Yes, It Was Torture, and Illegal...nytimes

[spanone]

Bush administration officials came up with all kinds of ridiculously offensive rationalizations for torturing prisoners. It’s not torture if you don’t mean it to be. It’s not torture if you don’t nearly kill the victim. It’s not torture if the president says it’s not torture.

It was deeply distressing to watch the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit sink to that standard in April when it dismissed a civil case brought by four former Guantánamo detainees never charged with any offense. The court said former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the senior military officers charged in the complaint could not be held responsible for violating the plaintiffs’ rights because at the time of their detention, between 2002 and 2004, it was not “clearly established” that torture was illegal.

The Supreme Court could have corrected that outlandish reading of the Constitution, legal precedent, and domestic and international statutes and treaties. Instead, last month, the justices abdicated their legal and moral duty and declined to review the case.

A denial of certiorari is not a ruling on the merits. But the justices surely understood that their failure to accept the case would further undermine the rule of law.

In effect, the Supreme Court has granted the government immunity for subjecting people in its custody to terrible mistreatment. It has deprived victims of a remedy and Americans of government accountability, while further damaging the country’s standing in the world.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/opinion/04mon1.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

[derby378]

1. SURELY there's a way to talk Scalia into retiring

Maybe if we keep flooding his e-mail with pictures of Puerto Rico, Key West, the Bahamas - anything to get him out of DC.

[spanone]

2. the court is not very supreme.

[malaise]

3. It is the RW Supreme Court

that allowed Bushco to remove freedoms and Congress did very little to stop them.

[peacetalksforall]

6. I refer to is as the not so supreme Supreme Court. I think this problem we have

at the highest judicial level should be number one on the list of dis-ease and downfall in this country. We've been had. We are to be pitied for our loss of balance. Perhaps the wobbling U. S. of American is wobbling the planet, physiological as well as monetary as well as morally.

[Land Shark]

4. NYT quote re the party that urged the Sup Ct that laws against torture NOT "clearly established"

so a reasonable public servant WOULDN'T know that torturing was illegal?

Answer: The Obama administration's Department of Justice. See http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/opinion/04mon1.html (at end of editorial)

[spanone]

5. depressing ain't it.....

[2 Much Tribulation]

11. active-ating (for me at least...) n/t

[ThomCat]

13. "The party that urged the Supreme Court not to grant

The party that urged the Supreme Court not to grant the victims’ appeal because the illegality of torture was not “clearly established” was the Obama Justice Department."

The more things change...

So our Democratic administration says that people working for our own government could not be sure that torture is illegal? Despite the laws on our books for decades now that clearly make torture Illegal?

:wtf:

How the Hell could our party participate in the neo-con fetish for ignoring established law to argue this bullshit? How could Obama allow this, and how the hell would he ever justify or defend this publicly?

:grr:

As if the media will ever hold him accountable. :(

[Luminous Animal]

7. So NOW the Times will call it torture.

After years of calling it anything but.

[gratuitous]

10. Yep, eight years of stenography

Can't be undone with one editorial years after the fact. But now the Supreme Court of the United States has decided not to decide, so that Constitution thingy? Just a quaint document, a relic of the past, of interest only to historians and busybodies. The law of the land is now whatever the Executive says it is. The Judiciary has voluntarily ceded its role of interpreting the law.

[Gregorian]

8. No shit.

I wonder what Pinochet called it.

[Luminous Animal]

9. Kick.

[Solly Mack]

12. NSS

[scentopine]

14. This should be kicked - a dark time for us all - nt