Originally Posted by spence
(1) In 2002 Bush's legal council wrote a letter stating why they believed EIT's under a certain definition wouldn't be considered torture. This was the justification I believe for all further orders.
This doesn't make the actions legal.
Well, it does, or it doesn't. It depends on which higher authority, if there is one, or higher law the actions are in accord or disagreement with. For instance, when Obama creates executive orders which are not in accord with or in opposition to the higher constitutional law, they would not be legal. But if the Constitution is not considered a higher authority or law than that which Obama and the progressive movement he belongs to consider to be an overriding concept (or law) of "social justice," then his executive orders, and all the past 100 years of progressively overriding constitutional law in order to achieve their notion of social justice, are considered, by them, to be legal.
It simply gives a reasoning for the decision to not follow the Geneva Convention and a line of defense if the actions were prosecuted under US or International law.
That begs the question of why it would be necessary to adhere to the Geneva Convention, or International law, or any other law, if the supreme law of the land, the Constitution, is not necessarily followed. If administrations can make ad hoc decisions which violate the highest law in your own country, why would it be necessary for administrations to follow any other supposed higher laws, including U.N. laws (especially when those laws can supersede your own laws and deprive you of sovereignty over yourself)?
(2) That doesn't make a lot of sense. I don't think there's any real evidence that torture does work and most experts seem to believe there are better methods. If it's not likely to work and likely illegal why would you do it?
It's cute how you apply the test of "real evidence" to determine if torture works, but your test for favoring that it doesn't is the "seem to believe" of "most experts."
And from there you go to the proposition that "it's not likely to work." Well, even granting your allowances which don't require real evidence, just "expert" opinion, and even though other, if not "most" experts "seem to believe" that it does work (was there actually a tally of experts on both sides to determine who was the most, and by how much?)--"not likely to work" does not mean that it won't. And in desperate circumstances, why wouldn't you do it?
As for that "illegal" bit, again, the hypocrisy, and worse, of getting what you want politically by trashing your own laws, then demanding that even in desperate times your opposition must not only follow some law based on foreign notions and cooperation, those very laws which not only deprive you of sovereignty, but evolved from some original feasible and sensible notion to the present height of silliness, is all not only astounding but is self-destructive. There have been several U.N. conventions since the original laws on torture of "legally" combatant prisoners were agreed to. The original notion that all parties WHO SIGNED ON TO THE AGREEMENT would be deterred from torturing each other's prisoners, otherwise, quid pro quo, if you torture mine I'll torture yours. That evolved over time and conventions (due to what were perceived to be "socially Just" humanitarian values) to the prohibition of "torture" by a signatory party, even if the other party did not sign on or even if it did torture.
The "terrorists" that we "tortured" were not "legal" uniformed combatants of a sovereign nation which had signed on to the U.N. agreement on torture. And they have, and continue so, tortured and brutally execute, not only uniformed military, but non-combatant civilians. Yet whom, by U. N. convention, we were not allowed to "torture." Which, I think, would "seem to be believed" by "most" Americans to be stupid.
(3) I've never heard people say we're no better but it certainly does undermine our high-ground and our identity.
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