This is a question for those in favor of waterboarding and/or torture for accused terrorists/enemy combatants/whatever. Specifically BluePitBull, The Red Head, Rivka, and others who have posted here and elsewhere in favor of this. How can you support this? Honestly, I want to know. Especially in light of the evidence below:
1. In 1947 we convicted a Japanese Officer for waterboarding, convicting him of torture in a war crimes tribunal.
2. Congress said its illegal. See the Congressional Ban on Torture.
3. We are a signator of the United Nations Convention Against Torture, which means we agreed to be subject to the explicit prohibition on torture under any condition. This was affirmed by Saadi v. Italy in which the European Court of Human Rights, on February 28, 2008, upheld the absolute nature of the torture ban by ruling that international law permits no exceptions to it.The treaty states "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture".
4. The European Court of Human Rights ruled in February 2008 that local considerations do not negate the absolute torture prohibition under international law.
5. John McCain said waterboarding is torture.
6. Waterboarding did not lead to any new information, nor any plots thwarted. It only confirmed one that had already been thwarted. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and the Library Tower plot was thwarted in 2002. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was captured in Rawalpindi, Pakistan on March 1, 2003. He was waterboarded 183 times and then confessed to the plot that had already been thwarted.
Basically, since 1947 the US and the World agreed that waterboarding was torture and also a war crime. In 2001 through 2008 George W. Bush decided that international law and domestic precedent did not apply to him and had two laywers draw up secret legal loopholes to try and make it legal. And now conservatives are defending him.
In light of all the above, how can we legally, and morally, justify this?
New Car Day
6 years ago
