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When Stanford University students recently asked former National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice about waterboarding and torture, her response was uncannily close to Richard Nixon’s infamous claim, “When the president does it, that means it is not illegal.”
Students toting a video camera approached Rice and asked her about a new Senate Intelligence Committee report which states that she gave the CIA its go-ahead for the use of waterboarding in July 2002.
Rice responded
Rice responded by saying, “The president instructed us that nothing we would do would be outside of our obligations, legal obligations under the Convention Against Torture.”
“I didn’t authorize anything,” Rice insisted. “I conveyed the authorization of the administration to the agency.”
“By definition,” she repeated, “if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Convention Against Torture.”
When the president approves it, it is not illegal
Originally posted by Frankidealist35
Can we just prosecute these war criminals already along with all the other people guilty of doing this in previous and the current Presidential administration?
Originally posted by grover
reply to post by MysterE
That is really splitting hairs there you know that don't you?
The difference between the two assertions is so minute as to be nil.
Hayden said current law and court decisions, including the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, cast doubt on whether waterboarding would be legal now. Hayden prohibited its use in CIA interrogations in 2006; it has not been used since 2003, he said
Hayden said that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed - the purported mastermind of the 9/11 attacks - and Abu Zubayda and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri were subject to the harsh interrogations in 2002 and 2003.
Originally posted by jjkenobi
This smells like a witch hunt to me - as in Democrats only interested in going after Republicans.
Originally posted by grover
reply to post by MysterE
No it was not. We never had a law passed or a supreme court ruling making it legal nor did we ever withdraw from the Geneva convention which declares it torture... therefore since we were signatures of that treaty then it was the law of the land and still is.
All we had were some hot shot legal stuffed shirts saying that it was OK but that does not change the law which was the Geneva convention treaty.
Once a treaty is ratified by congress and signed by the president it is defacto the law of the land regardless of what some lawyer says.
[edit on 30-4-2009 by grover]
Originally posted by Highground
Originally posted by grover
reply to post by MysterE
No it was not. We never had a law passed or a supreme court ruling making it legal nor did we ever withdraw from the Geneva convention which declares it torture... therefore since we were signatures of that treaty then it was the law of the land and still is.
All we had were some hot shot legal stuffed shirts saying that it was OK but that does not change the law which was the Geneva convention treaty.
Once a treaty is ratified by congress and signed by the president it is defacto the law of the land regardless of what some lawyer says.
[edit on 30-4-2009 by grover]
WELL. That depends on what the treaty says. The treaty protects lawful combatants. Who we captured were not lawful combatants, by definition. This is most likely what they lawyers were going on when they said it was legal.
I'm kinda sick of the McCarthyist policies the left is taking up now. Aren't THEY supposed to be "above" that?
Originally posted by ModernAcademia
When the president approves it, it is not illegal
What she is describing here is a dictator
plain and simple