Stupid. Stupid. STUPID. Not to mention villainous and contemptible.

[fpb]

Nearly every right-wing American commentator in the last two days has gone doolally about the guilty sentence against a terrorist involved in the infamous bombing of the US embassy in Tanzania. With all the grace and intellectual gravitas of a lynch mob, they all howl at the judge, yell at the jury (traditional legal rights such as being tried by a jury of your peers are only OK until they deliver the result you want, evidently, to these "conservatives"), and rage at the President and the Attorney General. Some demand Eric Holder's resignation. And none of them even mention the yelling, trumpeting elephant in the room: namely, evidence obtained by torture. Unless, of course, it is to describe the ACLU's call to prosecute George W.Bush, who has admitted in writing that he is responsible for authorizing torture, as some kind of perverse anti-Republican plot - rather than the least that any person who believes in the rule of law should do.

There are plenty of reasons to dislike the ACLU and Eric Holder - especially his reverse racism and his moral cowardice - but in this matter they are as innocent as newborn babes. The person who insured that most of the evidence against this murderous scum could not be heard in any court of law worth the name was the person who ordered that it should be taken from him by torture. That person was George W. Bush. He says so, and I believe him. And because he says so, he belongs in front of a court of law himself. If there is any legal reason why waterboarding, sleep deprivation and other such charming innovations in police work should not be classified as torture, let him prove it in a court of law; instead of just having it maintained by the conjoined squawking of all his partisan supporters.

The jury hearing the case were in a terrible dilemma, and came out of it honourably if not in a legally snow-white manner. They had a man in front of them who obviuously belonged behind bars for life. They knew that the evidence against him had been obtrained in ways that none of them would countenance for a minute, and that hundreds of pages of it had been struck down by the judge in open court for being tainted by torture. What they did was to find him guilty on a single charge - which still can deliver him to the delightful confines of an American jail for life, and at the very least for twenty long, ugly years - and reject all the others, thus sending a message that the man was a villain but that they were not disposed to uphold, just because of that, the villainy of their own government. That jury behaved far better than the politicians of both sides, and infinitely better than the "conservative" commentariat.

Comments

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

Ahmed Ghailani was captured on a foreign battlefield as an active Al Qaeda fighter. He was never supposed to have been tried in a civilian court for "murder," but rather before a military tribunal for his war crimes, which included participating in a deliberate lethal attack agianst a diplomatic embassy. Obama, by shifting this trial to a civilian court, ensured that standards of evidence and procedure would be applied which Ghailani's original captors never expected to be applied.

What the court has now decided is that dozens of African lives taken in an attack on an embassy in a neutral country are worth about as much to them as, say, one or two American security guards shot in a bank heist. Congratulations.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Torture. Is. Not. Admissible. Under. Any. System. Of. Law.

Congratulations on trying to remove the USA from the number of civilized countries.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

Francs-tireurs. Have. No. Rights. In. War.

Congratulations on trying to erase the distinction between legitimate and unlawful combatants in war, giving combatants absolutely no sane reason to bother with obeying the Laws of War.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Your friend was not a worse criminal than the Nazi leadership. Who were condemned and executed within the law. And if you refuse to understand that, understand this: this is the same mentality that gave us Abu Ghraib - the worst publicity disaster suffered by the USA in thirty years. And of course everyone knows that the enemy does ten worse things every hour of the day. So bloody what? Are you trying to be judged by the standards of Al Qaeda? Of course we demand better behaviour from Western troops. Americans are not supposed to be brutes. You are not allowed to take pride in Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson Jr.'s heroism ( http://fpb.livejournal.com/149173.html ) if you then make excuses for military brutality. It is not whether the prisoners have any rights, but whether we have any duties. It is not whether the accused deserves due process, but whether due process is to be applied at all. And speaking purely as a historian, I say that people who take shortcuts, who allow themselvs to believe that there is something to be said for brutality, always lose. Brutality is not practical. There is nothing to be said for it. Avoid it. Condemn it. If nothing else, for the sake of your own military power, which will certainly be diminished and corrupted by brutality.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

P.S.: I have served as a soldier, as you know, and been under military law. Military law does not admit torture in interrogation. In fact, it positively forbids it. The accused at the International Military Court in Nuremberg were scrupulously treated (read Richard Overy's INTERROGATIONS) and among the charges of which they were nonetheless found guilty there was the use of torture in military investigations. Torture is forbidden. End of story.

[matt henley (from livejournal.com)]

which is fine as long as the terms are clearly defined. reqicnizing it when ya see it a'lla pornography is not enough. The men (whether solder or civilian) that have been given the task of gaining intelligence form these assets (for that’s what a captured combatant lawful or other wis is…in fact it’s the only practical reason to chapcher them in the first place) are always’s going to find them selves in a baaad spot. If thay fail then people die and every body screams to know why “thay let it HAPPEN” but at the same time if the goal post’s aren’t firmly and clearly set on how thay do it…..well.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I was not speaking of the men on the ground. If you look at the original entry, it is about the (former) President of the United States of America issuing illegal orders.

Incidentally, I would be surprised if the US armed forces did not observe, as the Italian ones certainly do, the principle that "illegal orders must not be obeyed".

[ani-bester.livejournal.com]

I know there is a lot of back and forth under whether or not he should have been tried in a civilian court, but I'd sure as freaking heck like to think that civilian or military would have made no difference to the fact that the tainted their own evidence with the heinous manner they gathered it (I doubt it, I'm not naive, but I can hope).

I'm annoyed that the deaths are such that "racism" can be called into the issue, because I don't think it's a case of those deaths no mattering to western people. I think they did, but I think our country is more mortified by what we openly* allowed under President Bush than most people give us credit for, and this was a move in the right direction.

We went insane after 9/11 and I'm hoping we continue to recall that there are some lines that you don't cross no matter what, unless you want to be what you say you hate.

As for the news pundits.... I can't type wht I think of them while at work.

*I say openly because I know, historically this isnt the first time, but we've never been so ... uncaring, we've never (as far as I know and I could be wrong) tried to argue it like it was the moral high ground or something, or a legitimate informaiton gathering device or all that other BS.

[matt henley (from livejournal.com)]

The thing is that the rule’s are different between civilian and military court’s much like the deference between civil court’s and criminal court’s. deferent standards of evidence deferent burden of proof deferent standards for just how sure you have to be (agine it’s easer to get a conviction in civil court’s than criminal). Cause frankly or at least notionally there set up to deal with deferent things.

“ or a legitimate informaiton gathering device or all that other”

Frankly there are no fundamentally “nice” way’s to get somebody to tell you something thay don’t want to (the vary definition of personal intelligence gathering). It dosen’t get any nicer than physiological trickery…..the thing that must be worked out is what tactics ARE permissible. The guy’s that are given the thankless task of finding this stuff out need to be given concret guide lines.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Being kept awake seven days at a time or being given the physical sense of being about to die of drowning is not permissible. End of story.