The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment has had the force of international law since mid-1987. The U.S. joined the club by signing it in 1988. The treaty received ratification in 1994. This treaty is, under Article VI paragraph 2 of the U.S. Constitution, the “supreme Law of the Land.”
Convention (Article 1) prohibits torture, defined as:
…any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.
The treaty grants NO exceptions to the prohibition on Torture…not even under the “Ticking Time Bomb” scenario (from Article II):
(2) No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.
One of my disappointments with the Obama administration has been a lack of prosecution for those who justified, authorized, and undertook torture. The lack of action wasn’t unexpected…just disappointing.
So we have alleged criminals living free: the “deciders” George W. Bush (who has, remarkably, confessed to authorizing waterboarding in his autobiography) and Dick Cheney, the “justifiers” like Professor John Yoo and Judge Jay Bybee, and those who actually administered torture.
There may never be domestic prosecutions of these alleged criminals, but at least for the highest profile of the alleged criminals, there is now more to fear while traveling outside the U.S. than being hit in the face with a shoe (via Reuters):
Former President George W. Bush has canceled a visit to Switzerland, where he was to address a Jewish charity gala, due to the risk of legal action against him for alleged torture, rights groups said on Saturday.
Bush was to be the keynote speaker at Keren Hayesod’s annual dinner on February 12 in Geneva. But pressure has been building on the Swiss government to arrest him and open a criminal investigation if he enters the Alpine country.
Criminal complaints against Bush alleging torture have been lodged in Geneva, court officials say.
The fact is Switzerland has no choice but to consider prosecution. As a signatory to the Convention, Switzerland is bound by Article 5:
Each State Party shall likewise take such measures as may be necessary to establish its jurisdiction over such offences in cases where the alleged offender is present in any territory under its jurisdiction and it does not extradite him pursuant to article 8 to any of the States mentioned in Paragraph 1 of this article.
So George Bush cannot travel much outside of the U.S., except, apparently, to Canada…seems like a pretty trivial punishment for committing crimes against humanity.
The punishment could be much worse. As John McCain pointed out in 2007:
…some Japanese were tried and hanged for torturing American prisoners during World War II with techniques that included waterboarding.
“There should be little doubt from American history that we consider [waterboarding] as torture otherwise we wouldn’t have tried and convicted Japanese for doing that same thing to Americans….”
There’s still the family compound down in Paraguay. I hear it includes water sources for the rest of the country, so they can always charge for that if the global economy entirely collapses and they have to hole up there while the megadeaths settle.
George Bush believes in freedom and liberty!
@2
LIAR!
Yawn.
@2 and 3 You are both damned liars!
The Japs did much more than waterboarding. They used prisoners, including American POWs, as medical subjects and dissected them alive without anesthesia. Written accounts of these grisly tortures describe the hapless prisoners, strapped to gurneys, screaming in indescribable agony until they lost consciousness from shcok or loss of blood. Meanwhile, Jap doctors and medical interns in the operating amphitheater observed the procedures without passion or any evident distress over the suffering of the subjects, who were called “logs” in the Jap reports.
And what did the United States government do to these monstrous war criminals? Nothing. They got a free pass. Many of them didn’t even lose their medical licenses and continued to be practicing doctors in postwar Japan until the end of their lives.
The truth is, the United States government isn’t the benign entity our grade-school civics propaganda taught us it is, and often doesn’t represent or practice the values that most Americans hold dear. And it certainly doesn’t exemplify Christian values! The U.S. government is — just another government run by appartchiks who will sacrifice innocent lives and the last remnant of human decency for expediency without batting an eyelash.
Major political leaders often get a free pass. Even in the U.S., which supposedly is under the rule of law, our political figures can break laws with impunity. The theory is that they care enough about their “legacy” that the “judgment of history” will keep them in check. Float that by Karl Rove (or any other political operative with Rove’s morals) and listen to him laugh. Then he’ll patiently explain to you that the judgment of history is owned by those who hijack the history books.
The standard procedure for getting rid of an odious and corrupt dictator like Mubarak is to give him safe passage out of the country to a friendly haven, immunity from prosecution, and let him keep the billions he stole from his starving people and stashed in Swiss bank accounts, so that he may live out his days swaddled in luxury and attended to by servants and dancing girls in a seaside villa.
This procedure seems rather long on moral hazard and short on disincentive. No wonder the world has so many odious and corrupt dictators.
8
I sure wish I could get a gig as a dethroned despot who gets to live out my days swaddled in luxury and attended to by servants and dancing girls in a seaside villa. That would really rock.
The fact is Switzerland has no choice but to consider prosecution.
Then of course they are also party to the Geneva Conventions, but those only deal with war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Darryl Sucks.
“So George Bush cannot travel much outside of the U.S., except, apparently, to Canada…seems like a pretty trivial punishment for committing crimes against humanity.”
If Darryl travels outside of Seattle he may be arrested for terminal stupidity. On the other hand, if Darryl agrees to help us prosecute Atty. Gen Holder, who, under Obama’s orders, let slide dictators like Castro and Chavez and abets race-based prosecutions of non-black perpetrators, I’d take a second look at Darryl’s writings.
re 12: Ignore list?? I say YES to that. It’s worked really well so far in silencing these wingnut idiots when they realize there is not going to be a response to their stoopidity.
RR @ 6: “The truth is, the United States government isn’t the benign entity our grade-school civics propaganda taught us it is, and often doesn’t represent or practice the values that most Americans hold dear.”
When I was in college, I met a number of Iranian exchange students who were studying here before the revolution.
One of them asked me: “The American people are very nice. How come their government is so different?”
At the time, I really didn’t know how to respond to that one. Of course, he was presumably talking about U.S. support for the Shah or Iran and it’s secret police.
U still have your ‘Lick Bush’ sticker from ’04 don’t you Goldy?
Did Roger the liberal Rabbit really call them ‘Japs’?