Millman: Why did we torture?

[WinkyDink]

14. "A long time since Nuremburg"? Oh, my, my, my. When such is said about living memory, what happens

to us? Do we remain collectively, as a nation, trapped in puerility? Or in senescence?

"GOLLY, DAD, THE CONSTITUTION WAS WRITTEN SUCH A LONG TIME AGO! IT'S JUST A PIECE OF PAPER NOW!"

"I KNOW, GEORGIE, I KNOW. DON'T FORGET DADDY WAS CIA CHIEF! WINK, WINK!"

As for "position," see above document. See the Geneva Conventions.

SEE THE FEDERAL WAR CRIMES ACT OF 1996. IS THAT RECENT ENOUGH FOR YOU?

An Act To amend title 18, United States Code, to carry out the international obligations of the United States under the Geneva Conventions to provide criminal penalties for certain war crimes

The War Crimes Act of 1996 was passed with overwhelming majorities by the United States Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton.

The law defines a war crime to include a "grave breach of the Geneva Conventions", specifically noting that "grave breach" should have the meaning defined in any convention (related to the laws of war) to which the U.S. is a party. The definition of "grave breach" in some of the Geneva Conventions have text that extend additional protections, but all the Conventions share the following text in common: "... committed against persons or property protected by the Convention: willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments, willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Crimes_Act_of_1996
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Of course, if you think the treasonous and perverted---indeed, tortured---language of the psychopathic John Yoo and Alberto Gonzalez hold weight, then that is that.

Here are their legalisms, words used to evil effect, without basis in US jurisprudence, just words written to "support" war crimes, words worthy of the Chief Inquisitor himself. Evil dancing on the head of a pin.

So one man asks another man to write some words, and both laugh with hilarity that now, NOW, they are above all laws and can tear and poke and invade and beat and heat and freeze and starve and sleep-deprive and rape and sodomize and threaten and humiliate and hang and stand up and cripple and hog-tie and urinate on and KILL---AND KILL---other men.

BECAUSE THEY---BUSH, CHENEY, WOLFOWITZ, GONZALEZ, AND YOO, ETC.---WANTED TO.

THEY WANTED TO KNOW THAT OTHER MEN COULD BE RAPED AND SLAIN ON THEIR SIMPLE SAY-SO.

I hold no illusions that what Bushco wanted was information. What they sought was an outlet for inner perversions.

Let us not forget that Cheney, while Vice-President of the United States, got away with shooting a man in the face. Had the victim died, Cheney would have gotten away with homicide.

Yoo:
JANUARY 2002
A series of memorandums from the Justice Department, many of them written by John C. Yoo, a University of California law professor who was serving in the department, provided arguments to keep United States officials from being charged with war crimes for the way prisoners were detained and interrogated. The memorandums, principally one written on Jan. 9, provided legal arguments to support administration officials' assertions that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to detainees from the war in Afghanistan.
http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB127/02.01.09.pdf

Gonzalez:
JAN. 25 Alberto R. Gonzales, the White House counsel, in a memorandum to President Bush, said that the Justice Department's advice in the Jan. 9 memorandum was sound and that Mr. Bush should declare the Taliban and Al Qaeda outside the coverage of the Geneva Conventions. That would keep American officials from being exposed to the federal War Crimes Act, a 1996 law that carries the death penalty.
http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB127/02.01.25.pdf