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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 12/11/09

Can Nobel Prize Winner Obama At LEAST Stop the Torture?

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On Thursday, President Obama said:
We lose ourselves when we compromise the very ideals that we fight to defend.

Presumably, complying with American and international law are some of the ideals that we fight to defend.

Torture is a violation of both international and American law. Specifically, the Geneva Convention makes it illegal to inflict mental or physical torture or inhuman treatment.

As I pointed out in 2005:

The War Crimes Act of 1996, a federal statute set forth at 18 U.S.C. 2441, makes it a federal crime for any U.S. national, whether military or civilian, to violate the Geneva Convention by engaging in murder, torture, or inhuman treatment.

The statute applies not only to those who carry out the acts, but also to those who ORDER IT, know about it, or fail to take steps to stop it. The statute applies to everyone, no matter how high and mighty.

***

Indeed, even the lawyers and other people who aided in the effort may be war criminals; see also this article , this one, and this press release.
Have Things Changed Under the Obama Administration?

You may assume that things have changed after President Obama was sworn in.

However, the Obama Department of Justice is trying to protect torture memo writer John Yoo. As constitutional law expert Jonathan Turley notes:

The president literally has gotten onto a plane this evening to go to Norway to accept the Nobel Prize, while his Justice Department is effectively gutting a major part of Nuremberg.

The Obama administration is arguing not only that they shouldn't be prosecuted, but it's now saying that you shouldn't even be able to sue them civilly .... It's an international disgrace.

Well, it may be a disgrace, but at least torture isn't continuing under the Obama administration, right?

In fact, many reporters have said that the Bagram prison facility in Afghanistan is worse than Guantanamo ever was. Moreover, abuse is apparently still occurring there.

As Spiegel wrote on September 21, 2009, in an article entitled "Prisoner Abuse Continues at Bagram Prison in Afghanistan":

US President Barack Obama has spoken out against CIA prisoner abuse and wants to close Guantanamo. But he tolerates the existence of Bagram military prison in Afghanistan, where more than 600 people are being held without charge. The facility makes Guantanamo look like a "nice hotel," in the words of one military prosecutor...

Bagram is "the forgotten second Guantanamo," says American military law expert Eugene Fidell, a professor at Yale Law School. "But apparently there is a continuing need for this sort of place even under the Obama administration.

"From the beginning, "Bagram was worse than Guantanamo," says New York-based attorney Tina Foster, who has argued several cases on behalf of detainee rights in US courts. "Bagram has always been a torture chamber."

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George Washington


As a political activist for decades, I have rejoiced in victories for the people and mourned in defeats. I chose the pen name "George Washington" because - as Washington's biographies show - he wasn't a (more...)
 
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