"And Now For My Next Magic Trick, Watch Me Pull A Rabbit ..

[emanymton]

.
out of my hat." - Bullwinkle Moose

"That trick never works." - Rocky J Squirrel


So what do you do now?

It is clear. The Vice President of US has admitted that he authorized the use of torture on prisoners held by the US.

Mr Glenn Greenwald has a good essay
(http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/12/17/douthat/index.html) out lining the basic the justification for 'why.'

___________________

Committing war crimes for the "right reasons"
Glenn Greenwald

"... Yet here we have American leaders who now, more openly than ever, are literally admitting to what has long been known -- that they violated the laws of war and international treaties which, in the past, we've led the way in advocating and enforcing. And what do we hear even from the most well-intentioned commentators such as Douthat? Yes, it was wrong. True, they shouldn't have done it. But they did it for good reasons: they believed they had to do it to protect us, to guard against truly bad people, to discharge their heavy responsibility to protect the country, because we were at war.

All of the same can be said for virtually every tyrant we righteously condemn and every war criminal we've pursued and prosecuted. The laws of war aren't applicable only in times of peace, to be waived away in times of war or crisis. To the contrary, they exist precisely because the factors Douthat cites to explain and mitigate what our leaders did always exist, especially when countries perceive themselves at war. To cite those factors to explain away war crimes -- or to render them morally ambiguous -- is to deny the very validity of the concept itself.

The pressures and allegedly selfless motivations being cited on behalf of Bush officials who ordered torture and other crimes -- even if accurate -- aren't unique to American leaders. They are extremely common. They don't mitigate war crimes. They are what typically motivate war crimes, and they're the reason such crimes are banned by international agreement in the first place -- to deter leaders, through the force of law, from succumbing to those exact temptations. What determines whether a political leader is good or evil isn't their nationality. It's their conduct. And leaders who violate the laws of war and commit war crimes, by definition, aren't good, even if they are American."

____________________

We The People are now forced to face the issue of what to do. It is obvious to do nothing against lawless behavior is to condone criminality at the highest levels of government.

January 2009, Mr Obama will be sworn in to uphold the Constitution of the United States Of America. Nothing will be of more importance than to get the country back to the rule of law.

A complete and open legal investigation of the actions of the government over the past eight years must be authorized and conducted. Let the chips fall where they may. Let the trials begin at the very top. When the process has been completed in USA, then send the accused to the Court of International Justice at the Hague, Netherlands.

Throwing shoes may be great theatre but it will not get US right with the law.

.

[OwnedByFerrets]

1. Good Post

[Solly Mack]

2. K&R

[gratuitous]

3. There's always a GREAT reason for torture

And it's always bogus. And even if somehow it is justifiable, it means that every situation then gets fitted with the "torture is okay in this scenario" template. But how do you KNOW that this situation doesn't fit the template? There are always unknown unknowns, as Donald Rumsfeld famously told us: Stuff you don't know that you don't know. Can you really afford to take the chance? We MUST protect the children! (Won't someone please think of the children?) So, even though this guy is just some loser we took into custody on the say-so of that loser in the other cell or on the other side of the mountain, we can't possibly take the chance that he might be some terrorist mastermind - children might die! Get out the thumbscrews, waterboard, truncheons and rack. Just in case.

[pleah]

4. K&R