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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: stockman_scott who wrote (137592)	6/23/2004 2:08:01 PM
From: GST	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

<A group of more than 450 professors of law, international relations, and public policy--led by Harvard Law School faculty members--today sent a letter calling on Congress to hold accountable, through impeachment and removal if appropriate, civilian officials from the top of the Executive Branch on down for policies developed at high levels that have facilitated the recent abuses at Abu Ghraib. The letter also calls on Congress to take primary responsibility for any policy on coercive interrogation employed by the United States. In asking Congress to assess Executive Branch accountability, the letter says: "a growing body of evidence indicates that the abuses practiced on detainees under American control are the consequence of policies developed at the highest levels in the months and years immediately preceding the scandal." It argues that prosecution of lower level personnel "while necessary, is clearly insufficient."> Steps like the ones stipulated above will test the resolve of Americans to live up to the democratic values we espouse -- that nobody is above the law. When Nixon broke the law he was forced to leave office. No less should be expected in the torture scandal that has so shamefully unfolded in Iraq.

To: stockman_scott who wrote (137592)	6/24/2004 5:24:50 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi stockman_scott; I may as well collect some of my own comments on the Geneva Convention from before the war, and on our treatment of the detainees from before that was publicly acknowledged: Bilow (to Tekboy), October 16, 2002 I agree with you that conquering Iraq should not be a problem, and that the military will unconditionally surrender fairly quickly. But the problem is the civilians, not the military. Wars in which one side wins with "maneuver", followed by an occupation, tend to be the ones associated with high amounts of guerilla warfare. Examples of this would be the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, and the German conquering of France in 1940. It takes about six months of occupation before guerilla warfare is organized. Both the above wars had this sort of delay, and we've seen it again with Israel's occupations. ... Violations of the Geneva Convention toward civilians supporting guerilla activity is not some bizarre and rare accident of warfare, but is extremely common in these situations. The undeniable fact that we're already having trouble with this in Kuwait, our very close ally, surely indicates that in Iraq itself, with 10 years of sanctions and hostilities between us and them, it would be a monumental problem. #reply-18123176 Bilow, October 22, 2002 Technically, that's a minor violation of the Geneva Convention: [i.e. Israeli soldiers posing for photos over dead bodies of their enemy] ... It's punished in the US military, when caught, but it is a very common thing in wartime. I'd be surprised if police departments don't do the same thing now and again. ... #reply-18158704 Bilow, July 20, 2003 It's a fact that stuff against the Geneva Convention is fairly common in war. But it's not a fact that the US military routinely violates that convention as a matter of policy. (Okay, the "detainees" may be an exception, but that was a policy determined not by the US military, but instead by the civilian overseers.) #reply-19127959 -- Carl