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Amnesty International Wants Bush Prosecuted for Admitted Waterboarding

Conservative said:
The truth of the matter remains, Bush was told by attorneys that Waterboarding wasn't illegal and Bush acted on that advice. He will not be prosecuted by anyone for his actions regardless of the vitriol from the left and Amnesia International. Bush briefed Congress on what he was doing and there was no outrage there either. I am still waiting for you to tell us all what you would like to see happen to Bush for Waterboarding 3 al Qaeda leaders? You keep running as usual.
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He was given the answer he wanted. It was not likely an honest effort. You say give me cover, and they seek to do so. The fact is, as the court ruled, it was already law.
 
Prior to three known instances of waterboarding, a Justice Department lawyer signed a secret legal opinion claiming terror detainees were not protected by the Geneva Convention's ban on torture.

3 AQ operatives were waterboarded in 2002-03, with the direct approval of President Bush.

In 2004, that secret legal opinion was rescinded. Subsequent to that rescind, the DOJ signed other legal opinions declaring that extreme interrogation methods could be authorized by the President.

In 2006, the Supreme Court ruled that Gitmo detainees were subject to the protections of the Geneva Convention.

In 2006, the CIA banned waterboarding from its bag of tricks.

In 2008, the House Judiciary Committee asked the AG if he was going to prosecute interrogators who waterboarded. He replied that the Justice Department could not investigate or prosecute people for actions that it had authorized earlier. All above paraphrased from here: Cheney Defends U.S. Use Of Waterboarding - CBS News

In 2006, passage of the Military Commissions Act provided retroactive legal protection to those who carried out waterboarding and other coercive interrogation techniques. Excerpted from: Waterboarding Historically Controversial - washingtonpost.com

Here’s a citation for the Military Commissions Act: Military Commissions Act of 2006 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In January 2009, Obama specifically made waterboarding illegal. (I find it interesting that our President can write laws….) Waterboarding - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In 2009, Obama assures the CIA that no one will be prosecuted for extreme interrogation methods that were deemed legal at the time. FoxNews.com - Obama Administration Says No Charges Against CIA Officials for Waterboarding

Actually one can't look at this timeline and not believe that laws were broken. Or, at the very least, that there was a massive CYA going on "just in case."

So, me personally? I'm back to this, my original post on this thread:

MaggieD said:
If this gets legs, then we'll have an opportunity to more closely define torture in light of the treaties and laws that exist on the subject. Is waterboarding torture? There's sure to be a debate.
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Boo Radley said:
He was given the answer he wanted. It was not likely an honest effort. You say give me cover, and they seek to do so. The fact is, as the court ruled, it was already law.
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Continue on, maybe Obamacare will offer help for BDS.
 
SheWolf said:
I think everything is about him vs liberals.. It doesn't matter if you aren't a liberal, if you disagree with him, you suddenly are a liberal
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When all you've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. :shrug:
 
MaggieD said:
Prior to three known instances of waterboarding, a Justice Department lawyer signed a secret legal opinion claiming terror detainees were not protected by the Geneva Convention's ban on torture.

3 AQ operatives were waterboarded in 2002-03, with the direct approval of President Bush.

In 2004, that secret legal opinion was rescinded. Subsequent to that rescind, the DOJ signed other legal opinions declaring that extreme interrogation methods could be authorized by the President.

In 2006, the Supreme Court ruled that Gitmo detainees were subject to the protections of the Geneva Convention.

In 2006, the CIA banned waterboarding from its bag of tricks.

In 2008, the House Judiciary Committee asked the AG if he was going to prosecute interrogators who waterboarded. He replied that the Justice Department could not investigate or prosecute people for actions that it had authorized earlier. All above paraphrased from here: Cheney Defends U.S. Use Of Waterboarding - CBS News

In 2006, passage of the Military Commissions Act provided retroactive legal protection to those who carried out waterboarding and other coercive interrogation techniques. Excerpted from: Waterboarding Historically Controversial - washingtonpost.com

Here’s a citation for the Military Commissions Act: Military Commissions Act of 2006 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In January 2009, Obama specifically made waterboarding illegal. (I find it interesting that our President can write laws….) Waterboarding - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In 2009, Obama assures the CIA that no one will be prosecuted for extreme interrogation methods that were deemed legal at the time. FoxNews.com - Obama Administration Says No Charges Against CIA Officials for Waterboarding

Actually one can't look at this timeline and not believe that laws were broken. Or, at the very least, that there was a massive CYA going on "just in case."

So, me personally? I'm back to this, my original post on this thread:
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And I'm back to stating clearly, good people don't excuse torture.
 
Conservative said:
The truth of the matter remains, Bush was told by attorneys that Waterboarding wasn't illegal and Bush acted on that advice.
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Don't you mean a attorney, a attorney in the name of John Yoo?
 
Boo Radley said:
He was given the answer he wanted. It was not likely an honest effort. You say give me cover, and they seek to do so. The fact is, as the court ruled, it was already law.
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If it was already illegal, then why didn't Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi, object to it when they were given an extensive briefing in September, 2002 on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, which apparently included waterboarding:

"CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah, describing 'the enhanced techniques that had been employed,'" Mr. Panetta wrote in a memo to agency employees. He was referring to an alleged senior al Qaeda detainee in CIA custody in September 2002, when Ms. Pelosi attended a briefing in her capacity as the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

"Let me be clear: It is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress," he wrote. "That is against our laws and our values."

Other intelligence officials also contradicted Ms. Pelosi's account of the briefing, saying her assertion that she wasn't told waterboarding was in use at the time is wrong. "That's 180 degrees different from what the CIA's records show," an intelligence official said.

During the month before Ms. Pelosi's briefing in September 2002, Mr. Zubaydah was subjected to 83 instances of waterboarding. The procedure, which critics say is torture, entails dousing a captive's face to simulate drowning.

CIA Chief Rebuts Pelosi on Briefings - WSJ.com
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If Bush should be prosecuted as a war criminal, then why not prosecute Pelosi, too? :confused:
 
Ahlevah said:
Is Nancy Pelosi a good person? :confused:
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Don't know her well enough to know. But good people, no matter what party they belong to, don't excuse torture.
 
Ahlevah said:
If it was already illegal, then why didn't Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi, object to it when they were given an extensive briefing in September, 2002 on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, which apparently included waterboarding:



If Bush should be prosecuted as a war criminal, then why not prosecute Pelosi, too? :confused:
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Prosecute all who let it go on for all I care, but be sure you have the facts accurate. However, whether she knew and excused it or not changes nothing concerning the law. The SCOTUS ruled on law, which means this was already illegal.
 
Boo Radley said:
Don't know her well enough to know. But good people, no matter what party they belong to, don't excuse torture.
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I think good people, including presidents, sometimes have to make tough choices, like when Harry Truman chose to drop two atomic weapons and in an instant obliterated two cities and hundreds of thousands of lives. The problem I see today is people want to take something that is at its core profane and try to sanitize it. When it comes to warfare, there is one law that trumps all others: don't lose.
 
Boo Radley said:
Prosecute all who let it go on for all I care, but be sure you have the facts accurate. However, whether she knew and excused it or not changes nothing concerning the law. The SCOTUS ruled on law, which means this was already illegal.
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Unlike the POTUS, the SCOTUS has the luxury of not being directly responsible for securing the lives of American citizens.
 
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Ahlevah said:
I think good people, including presidents, sometimes have to make tough choices, like when Harry Truman chose to drop two atomic weapons and in an instant obliterated two cities and hundreds of thousands of lives. The problem I see today is people want to take something that is at its core profane and try to sanitize it. When it comes to warfare, there is one law that trumps all others: don't lose.
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Let me ask you, could we have lost? Could al Qaeda actually beat us? Iraq? Afghanistan? All of them together? I suspect you know as well as I do that they could not. So, there wasn't that kind of threat.

There may be a place where law doesn't matter, and we have to with a heavy heart break our own moral code. But we shouldn't pretend this was that place. A country who prides itself as being made of laws, has to obey those laws. A people who claim to be moral must act moral and not just talk the talk. The president did a bad thing, an immoral thing, an illegal thing. And did so not openly, but dishonestly. I see no reason to respect that.
 
Ahlevah said:
Unlike the POTUS, the SCOTUS has the luxury of not being directly responsible for securing the lives of American citizens.
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Really? I thought that's what laws did. Bush didn't secure anyone's lives with torture. None of Bush's claims have held up that I know of. And before you can clima lives were saved, you have to both show we got something that saved lives, and that we could not have gotten it any other way.
 
Boo Radley said:
Don't know her well enough to know. But good people, no matter what party they belong to, don't excuse torture.
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So you are a good person, huh?

How wonderful that must be for you, and all those in your presence.
 
Boo Radley said:
Don't know her well enough to know. But good people, no matter what party they belong to, don't excuse torture.
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You don't have to know her. You know enough about her, according to your own theory, that she is not a good person.
 
Grant said:
So you are a good person, huh?

How wonderful that must be for you, and all those in your presence.
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If there was only one critieria for a good person, you might be right. ;) But I've made no claim about myself either way.
 
Grant said:
You don't have to know her. You know enough about her, according to your own theory, that she is not a good person.
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Actually, I don't. I didn't see her making an convoluted argument concerning torture. I have a dispute about what she was told. So I really don't. But it doesn't matter, as I have said, if she made excuses for it, she can't be a good person. Good people simply don't excuse torture. I mean, exactly who would Jesus torture?
 
Boo Radley said:
Let me ask you, could we have lost? Could al Qaeda actually beat us? Iraq? Afghanistan? All of them together? I suspect you know as well as I do that they could not. So, there wasn't that kind of threat.
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Well, I didn't mean to imply that I expected Osama bin Laden to triumphantly enter Washington, D.C. followed by a cadre of muftis and imams to help him lower the American flag flying over the U.S. Capital. What I meant was when terrorists do something like fly airplanes into major infrastructure and kill thousands of our citizens, our government has failed in carrying out its most fundamental duty: securing the lives of its citizens.

Boo Radley said:
There may be a place where law doesn't matter, and we have to with a heavy heart break our own moral code. But we shouldn't pretend this was that place. A country who prides itself as being made of laws, has to obey those laws. A people who claim to be moral must act moral and not just talk the talk. The president did a bad thing, an immoral thing, an illegal thing. And did so not openly, but dishonestly. I see no reason to respect that.
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Let me ask you: When a president has sworn an oath to defend the lives of Americans, how many is he supposed to sacrifice so he can act moral? :confused:
 
Ahlevah said:
Well, I didn't mean to imply that I expected Osama bin Laden to triumphantly enter Washington, D.C. followed by a cadre of muftis and imams to help him lower the American flag flying over the U.S. Capital. What I meant was when terrorists do something like fly airplanes into major infrastructure and kill thousands of our citizens, our government has failed in carrying out its most fundamental duty: securing the lives of its citizens.
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Yes, they do. And we knew about without torture. All that we lacked was the CIA and the FBI talking to each other.


Let me ask you: When a president has sworn an oath to defend the lives of Americans, how many is he supposed to sacrifice so he can act moral? :confused:
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Before he abandons rule of law, there has to be rather large threshold. Someone might ask, if I rape a child to save lives, is that OK? First, you'd have to know it would actually save a life. And second, you have to know there is no other way. But sometimes, you have to say the risk is so minor, so unlikely that I won't do it anyway. Bush was never faced with such a decision. He merely took advantage of our fear, and we allowed him to do this without asking near enough questions.
 
Boo Radley said:
if I rape a child to save lives, is that OK?
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you're comparing the employment of eit's against al qaeda operatives who might know something to the rape of some little girl?

LOL!

how do you come up with so many deep and weighty thoughts in so many 60 second intervals?
 
The Prof said:
you're comparing the employment of eit's against al qaeda operatives who might know something to the rape of some little girl?

LOL!

how do you come up with so many deep and weighty thoughts in so many 60 second intervals?
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Don't be stupid. I arguing that once we excuse behavior for the sake of safety, we can excuse any action.
 
Boo Radley said:
Don't be stupid. I arguing that once we excuse behavior for the sake of safety, we can excuse any action.
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How about you not be stupid yourself? Aside from it being a whopper of slippery slope argument, there are plenty of allowances of otherwise disallowed behavior in cases of exigency. You might want to look up the term.
 
Harshaw said:
How about you not be stupid yourself? Aside from it being a whopper of slippery slope argument, there are plenty of allowances of otherwise disallowed behavior in cases of exigency. You might want to look up the term.
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There was no emergency. Remember, we're talking about justification outside of any need for them. Once you start doing that, you can literally use anything. The slope really is slippery.
 
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