[Peace-discuss] U.S. a nation of laws? G. Greenwald

[LAURIE SOLOMON]

Yes.  It is one nation under laws; just not this nation.  It is one nation
under laws; but just not the laws of rationality and consistency.  By gum,
it is politics in the real world where might does make right and you can
fool some of the people some of the time and all the people all of the time.

 

From: peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net
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Morton K.
Sent: Friday, April 17, 2009 12:30 PM
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Subject: [Peace-discuss] U.S. a nation of laws? G. Greenwald

 

 

Friday April 17, 2009 05:44 EDT

 

Eric Holder v. America's legal obligations

 

Can anyone reconcile these?:

 

Barack Obama, yesterday:

 

    In releasing these memos, it is our intention to assure those who
carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the
Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution.

 

Eric Holder, yesterday:

 

    It would be unfair to prosecute dedicated men and women working to
protect America for conduct that was sanctioned in advance by the Justice
Department.

 

Convention Against Torture -- signed by Reagan in 1988, ratified in 1994 by
Senate:

 

    Each State Party shall ensure that all acts of torture are offenses
under its criminal law (Article 4) . . . . The State Party in territory
under whose jurisdiction a person alleged to have committed any offense
referred to in article 4 is found, shall in the cases contemplated in
article 5, if it does not extradite him, submit the case to its competent
authorities for the purpose of prosecution.

 

    No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a
threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency,
may be invoked as a justification of torture. . . . An order from a superior
officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of
torture.

 

Geneva Conventions, Article 146:

 

    Each High Contracting Party shall be under the obligation to search for
persons alleged to have committed, or to have ordered to be committed, such
grave breaches, and shall bring such persons, regardless of their
nationality, before its own courts.

 

Charter of the International Tribunal at Nuremberg, Article 8:

 

    The fact that the Defendant acted pursuant to order of his Government or
of a superior shall not free him from responsibility, but may be considered
in mitigation of punishment if the Tribunal determines that justice so
requires.

 

U.S. Constitution, Article VI:

 

    [A]ll Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the
United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land.

 

I agree entirely that it is the DOJ lawyers who purported to legalize
torture and the high-level Bush officials ordering it who are the prime
culprits and criminals, as compared to, say, CIA agents who were
proverbially just following orders and were told by the DOJ that what they
were doing was legal.  But leave aside the question of whether prosecutions
would produce good or bad outcomes.  After all, the notion that the law can
and should be ignored whenever we think doing so would produce good results
or would constitute good policy was the engine that drove Bush lawlessness.
If, as Barack Obama proclaimed yesterday, "the United States is a nation of
laws" and his "Administration will always act in accordance with those
laws," isn't it the obligation of those opposing prosecution to justify that
position in light of these legal mandates and long-standing principles of
Western justice?  How can they be reconciled?

 

-- Glenn Greenwald

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