UN May Prosecute Bush, Regardless of US Action

Originally posted by Maxmars
First off, whether the international community likes it or not, the final standing of the United States is simple; we can NOT allow American citizens who serve as the duly-elected Commander in Chief to be tried in international court for NUMEROUS REASONS.

Actually, I can see why, if Bush actually is tried, it must be in the USA!

He, as our ex-president, knows our countries "Top Secrets", surely our government would NEVER let Bush be tried and jailed anywhere but within our borders.

Originally posted by Total Reality
Yes I think that torture is a crime against humanity and torturing someone does not yield useful information.

Torturing someone does not yield useful information?
I guess it depends on who you're torturing, right?
It's not like they just tortured random people for no reason...
Personally, I wouldn't even call "water-boarding" torture.

Torture - the act of inflicting excruciating pain, as punishment or revenge, as a means of getting a confession or information, or for sheer cruelty.

Water-boarding is not even close to "excruciating pain". It's more like the feeling you get when you stick your head out of the window of a fast car and feel like you can't breath...

And no matter what you call it, the truth is that the individual being "tortured" can end it in an instant by spilling the beans - it's completely up to them.
But wouldn't it be worth it, just to save one life? Just think about it.
An uncomfortable few minutes for a criminal could translate to saving the life of a civilian.

Originally posted by Total Reality
Some of the prisoners weren't even connected to any sort of terrorist organization. You should really look for the actual photos of American marines torturing these prisoners, not just the ones that were shown on the news. They're heartbreaking.

Ok, so you're wanting the marines who did this to be dealt with then? Or were you saying that said marines were given orders by the President to torture the prisoners (if so, proof?)? Or are you saying that the President is responsible for the actions of every single marine?
I believe I know the event you're talking about, and it had nothing to do with Bush. Just a few jackasses who felt justified in treating the prisoners like crap.

Originally posted by Total Reality
I don't think they should be comfortable but I also have morals and think that every country should uphold the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, especially my country.

What if you believed that someone had important information which could save the lives of innocent civilians? Perhaps a specific plan or maybe where a "base" of some kind is located, or where an American civilian is being held who may have his head cut off the next day, etc...
Would you try the "water-boarding" technique or would you politely ask them for the information only the be met with "you silly American, I spit in your face!"?
You see, it's easy for you to criticize something when you've never had to make the call.
What would you do?
Note that no matter what you do, people will call you a villain either way.

Want to know what I would do?
A hell of a lot more than "water-boarding"...
And I'm not even close to being the violent type...

reply to post by TruthParadox

Water-boarding is not even close to "excruciating pain". It's more like the feeling you get when you stick your head out of the window of a fast car and feel like you can't breath...

I can't help but wonder, how it is that you know this to be for sure the case? Have you had personal experience both with sticking your head out of the window of a fast moving car, and with water-boarding too?

And when was this?

reply to post by WestPoint23


Ford said the same on Nixon; forget it and move on. Since then, the Presidents have gotten worse. Pardon Bush and the next one may just openly kill people for fun and be pardoned.

reply to post by TruthParadox

Originally posted by TruthParadox
Torturing someone does not yield useful information?

Okay, let's tackle this one first, let's just see what EXPERTS say, people who do interrogations for a living!

I don't know what your expertise is in interrogations, but, ...

Ex-Interrogator: Torture Doesn't Work

Writing under the pseudonym of Matthew Alexander, a former special intelligence operations officer, who in 1996 led an interrogations team in Iraq, has written a compelling book where he details his direct experience with torture practices. He conducted more than 300 interrogations and supervised more than a thousand and was awarded a Bronze Star for his achievements in Iraq.
******SKIP******
"It's extremely ineffective, and it's counterproductive to what we're trying to accomplish," he told reporters. "When we torture somebody, it hardens their resolve," Alexander explained. "The information that you get is unreliable ... And even if you do get reliable information, you're able to stop a terrorist attack, Al-Qaeda's then going to use the fact that we torture people to recruit new members." Alexander says torture techniques used in Iraq consistently failed to produce actionable intelligence and that methods outlined in the US Army Field Manual, which rest on confidence building, consistently worked and gave the interrogators access to critical information.

That was from the MILITARY.COM website!

Here are some other articles where expert interrogators admit that torturing somebody for information is not reliable, and more importantly, counterproductive!

Bad Choices for the CIA
Ex-CIA Man Slates 'Torture'
Ex-CIA Official: Torture Ban A "Great Leap Forward"
Ex-FBI Agent: Torture Doesn’t Work

I guess it depends on who you're torturing, right?

NO, torturing the enemy is COUNTERPRODUCTIVE, when it is found out that an enemy is torturing people who's beliefs that you believe in, it hardens their resolve against the people doing the torturing and even helps the enemy recruit more people to their cause!

Personally, I wouldn't even call "water-boarding" torture.

Have you ever been waterboarded, I haven't, and hope I never will be!

BUT, our soldiers in WWII were waterboarded by the Japanese back then, and guess what?

The USA tried them for war crimes (torture)!

Waterboarding: A Tortured History

In 1947, the U.S. charged a Japanese officer, Yukio Asano, with war crimes for waterboarding a U.S. civilian. Asano was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor.

"All of these trials elicited compelling descriptions of water torture from its victims, and resulted in severe punishment for its perpetrators," writes Evan Wallach in the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law.

On Jan. 21, 1968, The Washington Post ran a front-page photo of a U.S. soldier supervising the waterboarding of a captured North Vietnamese soldier. The caption said the technique induced "a flooding sense of suffocation and drowning, meant to make him talk." The picture led to an Army investigation and, two months later, the court martial of the soldier.

Funny how we used to call waterboarding torture, but don't anymore.

To everybody else waterboarding is a form of torture! (except maybe the Bush administration!)

Waterboarding - Wikipedia

Waterboarding is a form of torture[1][2] consisting of immobilizing the victim on his or her back with the head inclined downwards, and then pouring water over the face and into the breathing passages. By forced suffocation and inhalation of water the subject experiences drowning and is caused to believe they are about to die.[3] It is considered a form of torture by legal experts,[4][5] politicians, war veterans,[6][7] intelligence officials,[8] military judges,[9] and human rights organizations.

Waterboarding - Reference.com encyclopedia

Waterboarding is a form of torture that consists of immobilizing a person on their back with the head inclined downward and pouring water over the face and into the breathing passages. Through forced suffocation and inhalation of water, the subject experiences the process of drowning and is made to believe that death is imminent.

I think making somebody believe that they are going to die, and making them go through that sensation over and over and over again surely falls into the definition of torture!

Specialty Definition: Torture - Websters Online Dictionary

Torture is the infliction of severe physical or psychological pain as a means of cruelty, intimidation, punishment, for the extraction of a confession or information.

I'm sorry, but waterboarding is TORTURE!

[edit on 1/25/2009 by Keyhole]

Not to mention with 1000 that guy supervised and 300 others he did personally, and the numerous black sites and Gitmo, how many were really terrorists? Look at the Tipton Three. The Northern Alliance handed people over and were paid for each one.

The Prosecution of an Ex-President's Cabinet:

The Teapot Dome Trials: 1926-30

Defendants: Sherman Burns: trial 3; William J. Burns: trial 3; Henry Mason Day: trial 3; Edward L. Doheny: trials 1 and 8; Albert B. Fall: trials 1,3, and 7; Harry F. Sinclair: trials 2,3, and 4; And Robert W. Stewart: trial 6
Crimes Charged: Conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government: trials 1 and 4; Contempt of the U.S. Senate: trials 2 and 5; Contempt of court for jury shadowing: trial 3; Perjury: trial 6; Accepting a bribe: trial 7; Giving a bribe: trial 8
Chief Defense Lawyers: Frank J. Hogan, George P. Hoover, Wilton J. Lambert, William E. Leahy, Martin W. Littleton, R.W. Ragland, G.T. Stanford and Mark B. Thompson
Chief Prosecutors: Neil Burkinshaw, Peyton C. Gordon, Atlee W. Pomerene, Owen J. Roberts, and Leo A. Rover
Judges: Jennings Bailey, William Hitz, Adolph A. Hoehling, and Frederick L. Siddons
Place: Washington, D.C.
Dates of Trials: November 22-December 16, 1926; March 3, 1927; December 5, 1927-February 21, 1928; April 16-21, 1928; May 31-June 14, 1928; November 12-20, 1928; October 7-25, 1929; March 12-22, 1930
Verdicts: 1. Not guilty; 2: Guilty; 3: Guilty; 4: Not guilty; 5: Not guilty; 6: Not guilty; 7: Guilty; 8: Not guilty
Sentences: Three months imprisonment and $500 fine: trial 2: Sinclair, six months, Day, four months, Sherman Burns, $1,000, William Burns, 15 days: trial 3; One year and $100,000: trial 7

SIGNIFICANCE
Teapot Dome in the "roaring twenties" was the largest scandal in the US government since the administration of President Ulysses S. Grant. It became a permanent symbol of corruption in government. It marked the first time in U.S. history that an officer in a president's cabinet was convicted of a felony and served a prison sentence.

*Page 332 of "Great American Trials from Salem Witchcraft to Rodney King"

I would think people would do SOME research before they make claims that it is somehow "unamerican" to prosecute an administration after the fact. Stop buying into what Rush tells you about a "Banana Republic". By the way, none of those convicted were pardoned. Furthermore, if one is to read up on the conspiracy behind the corruption, you can draw a striking parallel to the crimes commited on behalf of Dick Cheney with his no-bid contracts to Haliburton and the conflict of interest therein... It is amazing to me, you see THE ABOVE is how America USED to be. Now we have people masquerading behind the buzz-word of "patriot" actually defending the fact that America has become so incredibly corrupt that we allow crimes to go unpunished only as long as they are commited by the very people that put the screws to American Citizens every chance they get. It disgusts me!
You're damned right these criminals need to be prosecuted. And please, please, for the love of rational thought, don't cite me a law passed by Bush to save his own ass as your reference as to why he can't be prosecuted. That doesn't make any sense. (see page 1's poster with the Poe avatar citing the American Servicemember Protection Act) Complete hogwash. Constitutional law superceeds any order that criminal wrote. Also, he is bound by the international law that this country is signatory to. Which he has broken.
Also, waterboarding IS torture. Quick question, what is the most popular form of torture. Answer Chinese Water Torture.

The reality is if you are a working age American citizen who paid Federal Income Tax during any of the tax years following September 11, 2001 you are as guilty of war crimes as George W. Bush or any member of the administration or government that directly participated in them.

A government of the people for the people elected by the people means that the people in fact are responsible for the government’s actions and are culpable at the very least morally for any systematic and known criminal behavior of the government they might have aided and abetted through participating in providing the funds to carry out the criminality by way of taxes paid to the government.

That’s ridiculous most of you will say. We all know the government is out of control and no longer adheres to constitutional guidelines.

Who let the government get out of control and not adhere to the constitution? Why the people who are responsible for making sure they don’t, the U.S. citizen.

Why the average American no longer believes it’s their individual responsibility to ensure good government through continued vocal active participation through the representative process is beyond me. Very much like why the average American believes our economy should be healthier while they buy cars from Japan and Germany, and household goods and electronics from China and food from South and Central America while they deride the few citizens like members of the United Auto Workers for having the common sense to demand a true living wage as being unreasonable is pretty much beyond me too.

Pretty much the only thing I can come up with to make sense of it is they are too busy to hold their government accountable and make purchases that benefit our nation instead of someone else’s because they are too engrossed in playing the blame game where everyone and anyone else but the individual is responsible for the collective effect of the very same abdications of the typical American.

There are maybe 2 or 3 members of the Congress that don’t belong in jail. There are maybe a handful of Federal Government Department and Agency heads that don’t belong in jail.

What is the United Nations going to really do about George Bush? Most likely give him a medal for this or that someday and in the meantime they are going to make sure just like the rest of the House and Senate that Americans have plenty to be angry and argue about. So much so they never have the time, inclination or unity required to clean up and reign in a system insanely corrupt and no longer under their control.

What has Obama done so far? Closed Guantanamo Bay? No all he has done is stop the trials that despite being the biggest criminal act resulting in loss of American life on American soil, and spending trillions of dollars has yet to see a credible charge leveled against a defendant in a fair and open trial where the American people can see uncensored evidence and testimony after nearly 8 long years of deliberately being denied this privileged obligation. All President Obama has done is ensure that doesn’t happen anytime soon while buying a year to transfer the detainees to facilities the U.S. Marshalls or Military Police could have had sitting in a Super Maximum Security Prison in the United States within 24 hours of being given the order to move them. He’s asked for another 825 billion to give to the banks that manufacture no goods that can be sold for a real tangible and sustainable profit but instead are adept at producing nothing and sucking every dollar they touch forever out of the economy into some mysterious Bermuda Triangle Black Hole where it’s never seen again. To somehow spend our way out of debt by borrowing more money to do it, while giving a relatively small percentage of that to temporary government jobs building bridges we don’t need that will generate no wealth either. How has he changed foreign policy? Israel deciding to vacate Gaza intentionally before he is sworn in so not having to deal with that problem allows for the illusion that foreign policy might have changed? Or was it the convenient stopping of the 9-11 trials at Guantanamo Bay promising to vacate a facility within a year that truly could be transported out of there overnight?

You know the 9-11 trials that would have brought into a public venue real evidence of torture and human rights violations.

Who is guilty of war crimes? Any American who paid taxes to support it is, I guess we should all be grateful President Obama has the good sense to stop the trials huh?

Originally posted by Keyhole
Here are some other articles where expert interrogators admit that torturing somebody for information is not reliable, and more importantly, counterproductive!


NO, torturing the enemy is COUNTERPRODUCTIVE, when it is found out that an enemy is torturing people who's beliefs that you believe in, it hardens their resolve against the people doing the torturing and even helps the enemy recruit more people to their cause!

That's true. It's not reliable. I always thought that I might have a hard time bringing that little factoid up to the guy jumping up and down on my kidneys, tho.

And it doesn't seem to stop our enemies from torturing our guys that are captured, either.

Originally posted by Keyhole
Have you ever been waterboarded, I haven't, and hope I never will be!

Yes, I have. If that was the only thing I had to worry about after I was captured, I'd sleep well.

reply to post by jerico65


The amazing thing is that Rumsfeld actually pleaded to have this put to an end, claiming it would ruin the credibility of any intellegence gained. Bush overrode it.

reply to post by Total Reality


To suggest that torture does not get you any useful information is quite . . .uhm . . . incorrect.

I've heard the arguments that a tortured person will tell and say anything just to stop the torture, and therefore, any information you get is useless.

Not true.

Not if you do it right.

The trick is to use extreme psychological torture, and less physical torture.

You let a skilled interrogator go, and inside thirty minutes, the biggest badass of them all will be spilling his guts. Tell you his associates names, all cache locations, safe houses, drop off points, on and on and on. If fact, do it right, it gets real hard to shut them up.

No waterboarding, no electricity, no beatings, no rubber hoses.

Just good old-fashioned extreme psychological torture, with absolute terror as the engine for extraction.

And not a mark on them.

And some of you think waterboarding is bad? Jeez.

reply to post by dooper


I tend to agree with you on this one.
However, the picture you paint is more of just your run-of-the-mill interrogation, not really torture. At least not torture as it is forbidden through international law.
At the end of the day, I don't see how you could argue this point. Physical torture, IS illegal.
And I personally think if you have an interrogator that is good enough to "torture" someone with psyops tactics, then it is okay by me.

I've actually heard of some pretty interesting techniques. Not sure if they're accurate accounts or not. I'm sure you would know.

But one that I heard about was sitting people in a dark room for quite some time without lights and blaring the 'barney' theme-song very loudly at them for a very long time continuously. I think that would tend to drive someone insane.


[edit on 25-1-2009 by Jay-in-AR]

Originally posted by Jay-in-AR
reply to post by dooper

 

I tend to agree with you on this one.
However, the picture you paint is more of just your run-of-the-mill interrogation, not really torture. At least not torture as it is forbidden through international law.
At the end of the day, I don't see how you could argue this point. Physical torture, IS illegal.
And I personally think if you have an interrogator that is good enough to "torture" someone with psyops tactics, then it is okay by me.

I've actually heard of some pretty interesting techniques. Not sure if they're accurate accounts or not. I'm sure you would know.

But one that I heard about was sitting people in a dark room for quite some time without lights and blaring the 'barney' theme-song very loudly at them for a very long time continuously. I think that would tend to drive someone insane.


[edit on 25-1-2009 by Jay-in-AR]

Well m not sure of barney tunes i will tell you if you put someonr in a dark room with just the sound of breathing for 24 hrs theyll come out and beg you not to go back in the room.

reply to post by Keyhole


I understand the flaws of such techniques. I never said that it would work in all cases or even most. I'm just saying that in some cases it can and has worked. It does have the potential to save countless lives. Information can be extremely important and sometimes drastic measures should be taken to extract such information.

And I get what you're saying about water-boarding being a form of torture. I merely said that I (personally) wouldn't classify it as torture. I say this because when most of us think of torture, we think of extreme pain - whipping, cutting off body parts, and sometimes much worse...
Now think about water-boarding. I'm sure even you would admit that it falls on the lower spectrum and really should not be grouped with other 'techniques' which come to mind which are far worse.

Originally posted by wayno
I can't help but wonder, how it is that you know this to be for sure the case? Have you had personal experience both with sticking your head out of the window of a fast moving car, and with water-boarding too?

And when was this?

Umm...
It's called "not being able to breath and feeling as though you are suffocating".
It's like when a kid puts a plastic bag over their head and then tries to breath, then part of the bag gets sucked into the nostrals.
I have never been water-boarded, but it's the same concept - I know what it feels like (to an extent) and I'm sure most people do.

Originally posted by ProtoplasmicTraveler
That’s ridiculous most of you will say. We all know the government is out of control and no longer adheres to constitutional guidelines.

Well, I'm hoping that's about to change!

Here's another thread I started that, surprisingly, didn't get much attention!

Bush's Legal Foes Now Obama's Legal Team

Of course, it still remains to be seen if Obama and his administration will actually put our government back on track with the Constitution.

But, being Obama WAS a Constitutional law professor, I would think one of his priorities would be to get our government back on track with the guidelines that our constitution laid out for it.

Amen, brother!
I hadn't even heard the news you linked to in your other thread. This is a good sign.

reply to post by Total Reality


I guess that video points out an error in the title of this thread. The UN won't be prosecuting anyone in the last admin. since the US did not sign off on the idea of a world court.
You still have a treaty obligation to take care of the business yourself though since there is enough evidence to proceed.
Good video.