Elections have consequences.
Come January 20, Democrats will control all three branches of our government yet with liberals already controlling majorities on the Supreme Court and in Congress, the ill effects of past Election Days are already being felt. While their June 2008 Boumediene v Bush decision was limited in scope to the “judicial review of the military’s determination of the status” of currently held enemy combatants, yesterday the Supremes cited that ruling when it ordered an Appeals Court to reconsider a civil suit brought by former detainees. (Mark Levin and Andrew McCarthy discussed this last night.)
Not to be outdone by five Supreme Court Justices conjuring justification from unwritten precedent, Members of Congress have come up with a torture narrative at odds with the facts and not within the Geneva Conventions they cite:
According to the [Senator Carl] Levin report, the Bush administration reacted to 9/11 by “redefining†the law to permit aggressive interrogation tactics. Thus, the fable goes, in early 2002 the president determined that neither al-Qaeda nor Taliban fighters were entitled to prisoner-of-war treatment, in effect blocking application of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions and the “well established military doctrine†of “legal compliance with the Geneva Conventions.†The administration then covertly set about having its Justice Department alter the legal definition of torture, the story goes, while its interrogators were schooled in illegal tactics by experts at the Defense Department. These techniques were employed by the CIA on important captives and became elements of a new warfare culture that spread to military interrogators at Gitmo and led, eventually, to the Abu Ghraib scandal.
That narrative is flawed in its fundamental assumptions and fictional in its sweeping conclusions. The Bush administration did not “redefine†detainee treatment law; it undertook to determine what the law says and whom it covers. The intent of the Geneva Conventions, the principal law on the subject, is to civilize warfare by affording benefits, including an absolute bar against abusive treatment, to eligible prisoners of war  i.e., to captured soldiers who adhere to the laws of armed conflict, meaning, among other things, that they forgo intentionally endangering civilians. By definition, al-Qaeda is not qualified for Geneva protections because it is a terrorist organization: It is not one of the sovereign nations that signed the 1949 pacts, and it specifically targets civilians. Though the Taliban was the de facto government of Afghanistan, its fighters also target civilians and hide among them, and consequently they do not qualify for Geneva protections. … MORE.
Once Barack Obama is sworn in as President, it will be interesting to hear what his presumptive nominee for Attorney General has to say on the subject, considering this:
One of the things we clearly want to do with these prisoners is to have an ability to interrogate them and find out what their future plans might be, where other cells are located; under the Geneva Convention that you are really limited in the amount of information that you can elicit from people.
It seems to me that given the way in which they have conducted themselves, however, that they are not, in fact, people entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention. They are not prisoners of war. If, for instance, Mohammed Atta had survived the attack on the World Trade Center, would we now be calling him a prisoner of war? I think not. Should Zacarias Moussaoui be called a prisoner of war? Again, I think not. — Eric Holder, to CNN’s Paula Zahn in 2002
Hannity looks nicer in person
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We fail to recognize a Constitutional restriction on the Executive’s power and authority during wartime to use whatever techniques are necessary to win and protect American lives because such a restriction doesn’t exist. Certainly the Geneva Convention protects prisoners from torture and we abide by that Convention in regards to captured uniformed prisoners from nations that signed on because we also signed on to pertinent parts as well. Non-uniformed terrorists representing a jihad cult religion are not part of that treaty and they have no basis for inclusion under the Geneva Convention or under our Constitution any more than a foreign born national has a Constitutional right to become an American President.
We do not torture and the fact remains that if someone thinks that some technique is torture it does not make it so because some will always deem anything as torture just as others will deem almost anything as pleasure. But beyond those who deem what is, or is not torture, who would really restrict the use of any techniques when the information gained will save an incalculable number of innocent lives? It is not too difficult to understand the significant implications involved in obtaining knowledge from a prisoner who is certain (such as by his own admission) to possess the key to disarming a nuclear device set to detonate within a large city when time is of the essence. The recent, well-justified, Israeli incursions into Gaza would be significantly aided if they knew the exact location of every missile launch pad, every missile location, every tunnel and the location of all members of Hamas because any ancillary loss of life would be greatly minimized. Should the Israelis capture someone that is certain to know much of that info there can be no justification for not using all methods available to prevent unnecessary loss of life on both sides. Try to explain such mercy, for the wicked, to the families of those whose lives could have been spared. Try to explain such mercy to the innocent dismembered, crippled and forever disabled victims of a protracted war. Why else did we use two nuclear weapons on Japan? To what extent should we have gone to prevent Pearl Harbor or 911? The very reason that we had the first WTC bombing relates, relates, not only to the failure to use harsh interrogation techniques, but even more bizarre, by the failure to use even basic intelligence techniques. To me 911 never was a mystery: what was a mystery was why we allowed it to happen after such an exemplary forewarning in 1993 which, amazingly, was also an event we were forewarned about. Incredibly, even after that fiasco we continued to use the same failed methods that led us to that fateful September day.
When we used two nuclear weapons on Japan we deliberately killed over 100,000 Japanese to save far less American lives. We also bombed Dresden, which was not a military target. We needed to win and to minimize the loss of American lives in the process and so we did what we needed to do. From every perspective available, including Iraqi intelligence, Iraq was a potential threat; Monday morning quarterbacks critique with 20/20 cross-eyes but were as blind as a bat before we went in. Would those who criticize us for invading Iraq (who are the same as those that critique harsh interrogation tactics) have felt better if harsh interrogation techniques debunked the concept that we faced an immediate WMD threat and thereby prevented the invasion? What side of that Catch 22 would they fall on? After 911 all bets are forever off because no President can afford to see American children burnt to a crisp, shredded beyond recognition with nails and ball bearings in their skulls. Saddam was a wannabe with malignant diabolical aspirations and his absence is equivalent to a good missile defense shield because his brand of malevolence is too risky to ever ignore.
Trouble is waiting ahead of us that will never be solved by looking backwards at the Gitmo prison. After 911 it would be fatal for any Administration to experience another first strike before instigating a counter reaction. Today we live in a World where huge oceans and small arms are insignificant because modern physics, chemistry and biology could change international sociology in 30 minutes. Today’s presidency can suffer from poor and good decisions and sometimes from just good or bad luck, based upon who does the reporting and who is in office but I maintain that no President, from either Party, can afford the luxury of a decision, or the lack of one, that bequeaths a Christmas absent thousands who never lived to enjoy it because of what he or she did or failed to do. We do what we do because, sometimes, however controversial our methods may appear, the alternative is unthinkable since the subsequent results are unimaginable. Never, in our history, has the acquisition of information been so important because we are in a war where no one is safe and where the rules of war and Geneva Convention precepts are the only conditions that you can guarantee that the enemy will never abide by. Ultimately if the Obama Administration fails to grasp this concept the succeeding Administration will be voted in on the basis of a scenario that I have no desire to contemplate.