Secret documents: US interrogators are above the law

[emad]

A torturer's charter


Richard Norton-Taylor
Saturday June 12, 2004
The Guardian

Snip:

On the stage of a London theatre on Thursday night, a lawyer held up an official US document, classified by Donald Rumsfeld as "secret" and "not for foreign eyes". Considering its contents, the document has attracted remarkably little attention here since it was leaked this week to the US media. Its significance was raised by Clive Stafford-Smith, director of the US-based group Justice in Exile, at the end of a performance of Guantánamo, the Tricycle Theatre's moving indictment of how the US rounded up detainees - or "unlawful combatants", as it calls them - and sent them to the US base in Cuba.
Stafford-Smith is acting for some of the Guantánamo prisoners, challenging the conditions in which they are being held. The US supreme court is expected to give its ruling before the end of this month. Rumsfeld's classified document, drawn up by US government lawyers, bears directly on the case. It argues that American interrogators can ignore US domestic law banning torture, because it would restrict the president's powers in his "war on terror".

The document, drawn up last year, says that "criminal statutes are not read as infringing on the president's ultimate authority" over "the conduct of war". It adds: "In order to respect the president's inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign, must be construed as inapplicable to interrogators undertaken pursuant to his commander-in-chief authority".

Constitutionally, America's founding fathers entrusted the president with the primary responsibility, and therefore the power, to ensure the security of the US in situations of "grave and unforeseen emergencies". It goes on: "Numerous presidents have ordered the capture, detention, and questioning of enemy combatants during virtually every major conflict in the nation's history, including recent conflicts in Korea, Vietnam and the Persian Gulf". And it continues: "Congress can no more interfere with the president's conduct of the interrogation of enemy combatants than it can dictate strategy or tactical decisions on the battlefield."

The lengths to which Rumsfeld's lawyers are prepared to go to protect the freedom of the president's agents and place them above the law are reflected in other passages.

More:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,13743,1237241,00.html

[laura888]

1. Guantánamo = the new Gulag

At what point will outspoken progressive activists start to be rounded up?

[liveoaktx]

2. Chilling- "Domestic law does not apply to actions inside the US*

Torture can be committed within the US.

Bushco LIED to the Supremes when the attorneys told them Gitmo Bay is not US sovereign territory, so detainees can't get a fair trial. But the docs show that Gitmo Bay IS considered US sovereign territory but that torture is not banned within the US.