Daphne Eviatar makes an interesting point. The Bush Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) issued legal advice that justified torture making it extremely hard for torturers to be prosecuted in the United States. But those legal memos have no effect on international law, nor do they obviate our treaty-obligation to prosecute torturers.
In the United States, meanwhile, prosecutors and former Bush officials have consistently maintained that the same memos that Spain is now investigating as possible violations of international law actually shield former U.S. officials from prosecution here…
Even as Obama and Holder say they want to look forward rather than backward when it comes to the treatment of detainees and anti-terror policy, the growing number of foreign prosecutions and domestic reports producing evidence of criminal conduct may eventually force their hand.
Nothing makes Republican heads explode more than the idea that we would put international law above our own, but it’s actually part of the Constitution that we abide by treaties.
…all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.
The United States signed the UN Convention Against Torture treaty in 1988 and ratified it in 1994. Therefore, the treaty’s provisions are not international law anymore, but the supreme Law of the Land. Nothing that Dick Cheney dreamed up can change that, and the OLC’s memos notwithstanding we are obligated by our own laws to prosecute those that engaged in and ordered torture. It’s a damn shame that those people include a former president and vice-president, but that’s the reality. Spain is going to indict six underlings soon, but it’s our responsibility.
Kinda sad…..
There was an old saying: “You shoot your own dogs”…but we don’t any more–we let them continue running loose and biting others.
with all due respect, and I’m good with what Spain is doing, but this all takes too long.
the one Pol Pot genocide dude just went to trial recently.. 40 some years after the crime?
weak.
What, you want Superman to fly down and punish the evildoers or something?
Yeah it takes time. It takes effort. It takes a lot. Because when there are people with power who do horrible things and the only people who care are the people who have no power — or even less power — you have to wear them down. It’s going to be a long time before anyone in the Bush administration really has to deal with the consequences of what they did – if they ever do. Sometimes evil shits get away with it no matter how much time and effort good people put in to stopping them or making them pay afterward if they can’t stop them. I actually fully expect W to completely get away with everything he did over his 8 years in office and die a happy man in bed of an overdose of vodka and cocaine at an advanced age. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to be doing whatever I can to help people who are trying to make him stand trial and face the world for what he did and hold him accountable.
That’s just life. I wish it worked more like a comic book[], but it doesn’t.
([
]Actually, I don’t wish it worked more like a comic book, tell the truth. Because if Superman existed and went around “punishing evildoers” just because he could I’d be fucking scared to death of him and be hoping that there was someone who could stop him too.)
we were going to extradite a Nazi to Germany today but a judge put a stay on it.
the dud’e 89 fergoodness’ sake.
Rather than deport him, jail him. Sorta wastes the ‘justice’ if/when he dies on the plane back to wherever it was he came from (Slovakia? ‘Demjanjuk’ rings no ethnic bells currently)….
Frankly, I’d also like to find out which bozo approved his Visa to the US waybackwhen….there’s a person in need of a slapping-around….
right! why did they wait until this guy was almost
90 and dead?
the problem is there is ZERO incentive for the potential evil-doers to not do whatever they want.
there’s little to no threat of punishment.
care to guess why the U.S. wants nothing to do with the recently formed International Criminal Court?
Actually I was taught it was Constitution > Treaties > Statutes
So I am going to assume a Cheney defense would be something like they were discharging Article I duties or whatnot, and the Constitution cannot be trumped by treaties (though of course anything allowable under the constitution in a treaty MUST be enforced above all else).
Of course I am gonna leave this all up to eh legal profession; however, I want these crazy critters prosecuted and I want it to be asap before we enter into yet another area of which we can be prosecuted…as in Afghanistan. We must get this straight from the get go and get it done right. bush/cheney and their evil doers must be brought to trial….PERIOD!!!!
that man yoo is the worst of the worst caring out this whole thing. I want him in jail, period.