[IP] William Pfaff: When laws get in the way of torture
Begin forwarded message:
From: John R Levine <johnl@xxxxxxxx>
Date: June 12, 2004 1:10:04 AM EDT
To: Dave Farber <dave@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: For IP? William Pfaff: When laws get in the way of torture
Pfaff has been writing a syndicated column and many books on
international
politics for over 25 years. He is quite conservative, in an
old-fashioned
sense of the word, rather cynical, and often disconcertingly perceptive.
His recent book "Fear, Anger and Failure: A Chronicle Of The Bush
Administration's War Against Terroe From The Attacks Of September 11,
2001
To Defeat In Baghdad" collects columns from 2001 to 2003, in which he
predicted better than anyone else I know what the reaction to 9/11 would
be and how it would play out.
His column in today's IHT says what a lot of people are thinking but the
domestic media aren't ready to print.
William Pfaff: When laws get in the way of torture
The paper trail
PARIS People like to quote Karl Marx's comment on the two successive
Napoleonic empires, that of Bonaparte himself, and, after 1848, the
second
empire of his nephew, Napoleon III. Marx said that it was a tragedy
repeated as a farce.
The United States has reversed the sequence, so that a few years ago the
nation, or at least Congress and the media, was obsessed by President
Bill
Clinton's disputed definition of what does or does not amount to sexual
congress with a White House intern.
The tragedy that has followed the farce is torture as an instrument of
American national policy in the cause of spreading democracy.
Documents recently obtained by the press reveal White House anxiety
about
how to protect President George W. Bush and members of his cabinet from
going to prison for ordering, authorizing or deliberately permitting
systematic torture of persons in their control, but technically outside
formal American legal jurisdiction. The question put to lawyers was how
the president and the others could commit war crimes and get away with
it.
...
http://www.iht.com/articles/524502.html
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@xxxxxxxx, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for
Dummies",
Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Mayor
"I dropped the toothpaste", said Tom, crestfallenly.
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