Torture Chambers; Plausible Deniability

It has now become quite apparent that the United States had planned on being in some hot water over the treatment of prisoners. They compiled and composed a very clever loophole to avoiding being guilty of POW violations. Previously, the US had gone to the United Nations and threatened to abandon any current or future UN peacekeeping mission unless a different bill, completely absolving any future crimes commited by a US citizen from being brought up on tribunal, was passed.

Some legal scholars contacted by Newsweek were appalled by what they called the unsoundness of such arguments. “There is little jurisprudential basis for this,” said Scott Horton, a well-known human-rights lawyer based in New York. “It is arguing the president’s unilateral right to interpret the law, unrestricted by the views of Congress." Philip Heymann of Harvard Law School added: “The country has a right to expect far better from the [government] lawyers who are responsible for keeping the president’s actions legal.” Attorney General John Ashcroft, grilled at a congressional hearing on Tuesday over this and other memos, said, "This administration rejects torture."

Planning out the willful ignorance of Geneva Conventions is setting the worst possible precedent for warfare since what we did in Vietnam with Agent Orange and Napalm and Japan with, well, nukes. The problem is that we are bypassing all rules of warfare and setting the obvious path for the willful torture of prisoners of war.

But, what these loophole artists don't realize is, similar to what Joseph Biden was saying, this sets the precendent for every country, militia, or 'insurgent' we're at war with to treat us worse. Even still, these conventions wouldn't apply to them in the first place because we never declared war against these people!!!

And another thing... Ashcroft said that Bush never ordered or directed the torture, which doesn't techinically exclude the fact that he condoned or signed off on it. These people were either English majors or rotten to the core.