While Congress argues about Bush's changes to the detainee treatment rules - are people still being tortured?

Answer 1

dstr did a good job summarizing it. One thing I might add is that the US did not consider the detainees within the rules of the Geneva Convention because they were not military detainees. They were civilians, therefore they did not fall under the rules/regulation of the GC for POW's. And besides..the US does not torture! I suspect that is why Bush needs the legislative branch to redefine what torture is, specifically in relation to Article 3 of the GC. This is pretty ridiculous, if you think about it. The GC has been around for 57 yrs. It has seen us through 2 WW's and many conflicts along the way, including Viet Nam.

How can Congress redefine Art 3, when they did not write it? And will it really matter to the international community, that we have rewritten part of Art 3 to make it fit into American law? And how will it (retroactively) help Bush, his cabinet and the CIA who is commiting the torture, get out of international hot water?

Bush (and America), may be in more trouble than we can even imagine. Is it possible Bush & company can be tried by the international community for war crimes? I think so.

Now we have a situation where 14 "new detainees" are headed to Cuba (Gitmo), where they will be interviewed by international Red Cross members, to see if they have been tortured. What do you think they will say? Now Bush wants to open more secret prisons where the prisoners will not have access to the international Red Cross. When is this insanity going to stop? Bush is in BIG TROUBLE, wait & see.

Answer 2

yes....Soon after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, as planning began for the invasion of Afghanistan, the Pentagon asked Justice Department lawyers to assess whether detainees held in Afghanistan or in the new American-run prison at Guantánamo Bay could claim they had been mistreated under the Geneva Conventions and federal and international laws.

The lawyers concluded that the Geneva Conventions did not apply, because Guantánamo was outside the territorial United States, and because Al Qaeda and the Taliban were not legitimate states, so were not parties to the agreements. One memorandum argued that the president could authorize even "cruel, inhuman, and degrading" treatment to protect national security, as long as it did not cause "great suffering or serious bodily injury" to detainees, like "killing or torturing them."

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and State Department lawyers fired back objections, but apparently lost. An August 2002 memo on interrogation standards from the Justice Department to the White House counsel further whittled down the definition of torture. To qualify, the document said, mistreatment had to inflict pain "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death."

Military officials have described those legal arguments as theoretical and removed from the decision making about rules for interrogation and treatment of prisoners.

Answer 3

I don't know about people but I'm starting a rumor that Bush is torturing frogs in crawford!

Answer 4

Who cares they are terrorists! They are a group who have never signed the Geneva Conventions, so they cannot be protected by them! They behead civilians! What rights are they supposed to have?

Answer 5

"They knew the value of violence and death and used it over and over in a wild scheme to smash everything flat but their own kind.

"But there was one thing they didn't know. They didn't know how to handle it when it came back to them and exploded in their own faces... Death? I'd get them, every one, no matter how big or little, or wherever they were. I'd cut them down like so many grapes in ways that would scare the living crap out of them and those next in line for my kill would never know a second's peace until their heads went flying every which way..."

Jeez...I better stop. I'm starting to sound like a Muslim.

Answer 6

I think the real question is, why did it take Congress so long to find a viable issue that was worth review, instead of baseball steriods

Answer 7

Only liberals and the Media (but I repeat myself) call it "torture". Americans and other civilized nations do not torture, terrorists torture. Terrorist prisoners are treated better in American prison than they are treated by their own leaders. But you go ahead and believe what you want, you will anyway.

Answer 8

obviously not enough! Those who live by the sword die by the sword-anyway they get to go to their special heaven if they die as a martyr. "Make a wish foundation" should get involved-they could make a dream come true, send a terrorist-muslim to heaven!

Answer 9

Who knows, it is a secret, just like the prisons that we were not suppose to know about.

Answer 10

of course like always...