[IP] Lawyers Decided Bans on Torture Didn't Bind Bush [NYT]
Begin forwarded message:
From: "Trei, Peter" <ptrei@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: June 8, 2004 3:54:47 PM EDT
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Lawyers Decided Bans on Torture Didn't Bind Bush [NYT]
For IP, if you wish. It sort of reminds me of the
Nixon line 'When the President does it, its not
against the law.'
Peter
-----------------
From the NYT, June 8 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/08/politics/08ABUS.html
(free registration required)
Lawyers Decided Bans on Torture Didn't Bind Bush
By NEIL A. LEWIS and ERIC SCHMITT
WASHINGTON, June 7 - A team of administration lawyers
concluded in a March 2003 legal memorandum that President
Bush was not bound by either an international treaty
prohibiting torture or by a federal antitorture law
because he had the authority as commander in chief to
approve any technique needed to protect the nation's
security.
The memo, prepared for Defense Secretary Donald H.
Rumsfeld, also said that any executive branch officials,
including those in the military, could be immune from
domestic and international prohibitions against torture
for a variety of reasons.
One reason, the lawyers said, would be if military
personnel believed that they were acting on orders
from superiors "except where the conduct goes so
far as to be patently unlawful."
"In order to respect the president's inherent
constitutional authority to manage a military
campaign," the lawyers wrote in the 56-page
confidential memorandum, the prohibition against
torture "must be construed as inapplicable to
interrogation undertaken pursuant to his
commander-in-chief authority."
[...]
Scott Horton, the former head of the human rights committee
of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, said
Monday that he believed that the March memorandum on avoiding
responsibility for torture was what caused a delegation of
military lawyers to visit him and complain privately about
the administration's confidential legal arguments. That visit,
he said, resulted in the association undertaking a study
and issuing of a report criticizing the administration. He
added that the lawyers who drafted the torture memo in March
could face professional sanctions.
Jamie Fellner, the director of United States programs for
Human Rights Watch, said Monday, "We believe that this memo
shows that at the highest levels of the Pentagon there was
an interest in using torture as well as a desire to evade
the criminal consequences of doing so."
The March memorandum also contains a curious section in
which the lawyers argued that any torture committed at
Guantánamo would not be a violation of the anti-torture
statute because the base was under American legal jurisdiction
and the statute concerns only torture committed overseas.
That view is in direct conflict with the position the
administration has taken in the Supreme Court, where it has
argued that prisoners at Guantánamo Bay are not entitled to
constitutional protections because the base is outside
American jurisdiction.
-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as roessler@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To manage your subscription, go to
http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip
Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/