A Letter to Secretary Rice on Standards for Permissible Interrogations

[babylonsister]

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/06/rice_letter.html

A Letter to Secretary Rice on Standards for Permissible Interrogations

June 11, 2007

Dear Secretary Rice:

We are writing to urge you to support strong standards on permissible interrogations – standards that are consistent with U.S. values, statements and law, with the Geneva Conventions, and with other international legal standards.

Section 6 of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 provides that acts amounting to “torture” and “cruel or inhuman treatment” constitute felonies under the War Crimes Act. It also directs the president “to promulgate higher standards and administrative regulations” governing violations of the Geneva Conventions. Section 6 also prohibits “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” as prohibited by the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution and directs the president to “take action to ensure compliance with this subsection, including through the establishment of administrative rules and procedures.”

We understand from press reports that the administration is considering an executive order on compliance with Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions as well as new guidelines on CIA interrogation procedures. We urge the administration to adopt rules that would clearly prohibit the interrogation techniques that have been widely reported to be part of the “enhanced” interrogation regime used by the CIA – all of which violate Common Article 3.

snip//

Conclusion

The United States is not the first democratic country that responded to a serious attack and an ongoing terrorist threat by stepping over legal boundaries that it helped create and had previously defended. But it is long past time for the United States to restate unequivocally its commitment to what President Bush once called “the non-negotiable demands of human dignity” by adopting clear interrogation guidelines that prohibit waterboarding and the other “enhanced” interrogation techniques.

Sincerely,

Open Society Policy Center
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights First
Physicians for Human Rights
Center for National Security Studies
National Institute of Military Justice
Center for American Progress

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. damn french-loving, terra-ist, socialist, stalinist, nazi, commie, pinko

homo-luvin, atheistical, heretical, traitorous, unpatriotic, unAmerican, foreign-speaking, anti-religious, evil, morans. Human rights? Bah, who needs that. Our country needs to torture abroad so they don't torture us at home. That's what a demoncracy is all about.

[Toots]

2. Wonder how long it took for that letter to reach the trash can?

I give it 15 seconds top...I mean don't they know we are fighting the greatest war mankind has ever engaged in...We should all just hide under our beds until they say it is safe to come out..

[JohnyCanuck]

3. Don't these liberals realize "everything changed on 9/11"?

"Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes. And armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended. Its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war . . . and in the degeneracy of manners and morals, engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."

James Madison, April 20, 1795

[Solly Mack]

4. The guilty must be held accountable

It isn't enough that America now comply with the law...the guilty must be held accountable.

Complying now erases nothing - changes nothing.

They are still war criminals and must be held accountable for their crimes.

Of course I applaud the letter.

[babylonsister]

5. Sez you, sez me, but do you really think anyone will be held responsible?

I don't.

[Solly Mack]

7. Nope, sure don't think it will happen

and once Bush does walk free - I will laugh derisively at any politician that says Bush was/is a criminal President in any way - in an attempt to gain my support...because if Bush was/is criminal(and he is), then that politician had/has a duty to stop him.

[ThomWV]

6. Shouldn't This Letter Be Addressed To Gates Instead of Rice?

[babylonsister]

8. Gates wasn't around when Abu Ghraib was happening-maybe that's

why Rice got it, because she was/is privy to what was going on?