Alberto Gonzales Is a Bad Man (Why Oh Why Are We Ruled by These Liars? Department)

In comments, JR writes:

Gonzales'references to athletic uniforms and scientific equipment was a classic rhetorical tactic - find some minor thing in the Convention to ridicule and thereby invite your reader to conclude with a sneer that the whole thing needs to be junked.... Gonzales' references... are lies. There is no requirement that POWs be "afforded" athletic uniforms and scientific instruments. There IS a requirement that prisoners be allowed to receive mail, including packages, which may include such things as "foodstuffs, clothing, medical supplies and articles of a religious, educational or recreational character which may meet their needs, including books, devotional articles, scientific equipment, examination papers, musical instruments, [and] sports outfits..." (Geneva Convention III, Art. 72).

So in order to ridicule the Geneva Convention, Gonzales had to lie about it.

And why are we not surprised to find Okrent repeating Gonzales' lies in his parting column?

Comments

[Elaine Supkis]

Okrent is a jerk. He became one because he had to defend the indefensible so he became very defensive.

He shouldn't have left home. Poor baby.

[wkwillis]

Well, it's not like we ever adhered to the Geneva convention before. We tortured prisoners in Korea and Vietnam, too. Not always while outsourcing the hand labor.
We did treat Nazi prisoners decently until they didn't have any American prisoners any more. Then their treatment degenerated considerably.

[kharris]

For those who question the value of UN rules providing that prisoners of war be allowed to receive educational or recreational stuff, go here --

http://www.hohnerusa.com/artisttreilly.shtml

and have a listen. If you don't like chromatic harmonica, well, you're a Philistine.

Any other names out there of artists or thinkers who have similarly benefited humanity through there endeavors as POWs? Let's send Gonzales a list. Hell, let's put him in prison for contempt of Congress once the Dems take over, and see how he feels about prisoner treatment issues.

[Moe Levine]

Yet another text book case proving that we are safer when Congress is not in session.

It is beyond me why, out of the clear blue, in 1996 we made "War Crimes" a federal crime. The Congressional Record says there was bi-partian support for the bill. I suppose the Republicans were then thinking that Clinton could be charged for using NATO in the Balkans.

Regardless, the law plainly requires every soldier to have his or her own lawyer, which is a hell of a way to fight any war (especially when we don't use the lawyers to sue the enemy).

Gonzales cannot be faulted for having to deal with a bad law, to begin with, and one that never contemplated that the United States would be attacked as it was on 9/11.

While no expert on international law, I can say that, generally such deals only with the relations between nations. Therefore, Gonzales has sound footings to the extent that his position starts with the premise that we are not talking about state actors. Logically, we are talking about private persons, not prisoners of war.

[RIPope]

Gonzales, and anybody that goes along with his tortured reasoning, is a fascist.

Anyone who tries to back up his claims is a fascist.

Fascism, as I blog from time to time, exists when the common person tries to justify the torture of others.

[pgl]

Kevin Drum is frustrated with how Newsweek is failing to stand up to the Bush White House over the Quran story et al. Meanwhile, ABC This Week had George Will objecting to a reasonable claim about how the White House has no use for a free press with his claim that we have too much of a free press. Will shows his hand as not caring about old fashion conservative principles but given the NYTimes caving into the rightwing, the demise of CNN, and now Newsweek - what is left? A former ESPN announcer working for MSNBC?

[Ari]

November 11, 2004

Alberto Gonzales: The Torture Guy
By Maureen Dowd - New York Times

The president is putting his own counsel, Alberto Gonzales, who wrote the famous memo defending torture, in charge of America's civil liberties. Torture Guy, who blithely threw off 75 years of international law and set the stage for the grotesque abuses at Abu Ghraib and dubious detentions at Guantánamo, seems to have a good grasp of what's just. No doubt we'll soon learn what other protections, besides the Geneva Conventions and the Constitution, Gonzales finds "quaint" and "obsolete."

[JR]

Moe, the War Crimes Act was popular among both Republicans and Democrats because it permits prosecution of those who commit war crimes against Americans, as well as Americans who commit war crimes against others, in US courts.

You say that the Geneva Convention did not contemplate 9/11. But the US and other countries knew all about sneak attacks - Pearl Harbor, for one - and they didn't condition the application of the Convention to declared wars.

More importantly, the Guantanamo detainees are not there because they participated in 9/11. They are there because they fought against a US army that invaded Afghanistan and overthrew its government. I believe that the US was entitled to do that in international law and that it was the right thing to do. I also believe that the fighters opposing the US were legally entitled to oppose the invasion of their country. We should all be grateful that they were defeated; still, they have rights under the Geneva Convention. They were on the wrong side, but that doesn't make them terrorists. (Some of them no doubt are terrorists; most are not; that is why the Supreme COurt held that they are entitled to legal proceedings to determine their individual culpability.)

The issues are complicated and there's much to be said about them. Human Rights Watch wrote a letter arguing in favor of application of the Convention that is worth reading, here: http://prisonerswithouttrials.net/analyses/Document.2004-04-19.5200516464

[gerry pierce]

Okrent takes down Krugman even worse and Krugman unlike many op/ed writers usually id's his source. The slander of Krugmnan by okrent is even unsourced, not even one example.

[Kosh]

Any chance Okrent can take Judith "Queen of all Iraq" Miller with him?

[Ari]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/23/opinion/23mon1.html

Patterns of Abuse

President Bush said the other day that the world should see his administration's handling of the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison as a model of transparency and accountability. He said those responsible were being systematically punished, regardless of rank. It made for a nice Oval Office photo-op on a Friday morning. Unfortunately, none of it is true.

The administration has provided nothing remotely like a full and honest accounting of the extent of the abuses at American prison camps in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. It has withheld internal reports and stonewalled external inquiries, while clinging to the fiction that the abuse was confined to isolated acts, like the sadistic behavior of one night crew in one cellblock at Abu Ghraib. The administration has prevented any serious investigation of policy makers at the White House, the Justice Department and the Pentagon by orchestrating official probes so that none could come even close to the central question of how the prison policies were formulated and how they led to the abuses.

But a two-part series in The Times by Tim Golden provides a horrifying new confirmation that what happened at Abu Ghraib was no aberration, but part of a widespread pattern. It showed the tragic impact of the initial decision by Mr. Bush and his top advisers that they were not going to follow the Geneva Conventions, or indeed American law, for prisoners taken in antiterrorist operations.

The series details the killing of two Afghan prisoners at the Bagram prison camp, one of them an innocent taxi driver who was tormented to death by American soldiers. The investigative file on Bagram, obtained by The Times, showed that the mistreatment of prisoners was routine: shackling them to the ceilings of their cells, depriving them of sleep, kicking and hitting them, sexually humiliating them and threatening them with guard dogs - the very same behavior later repeated in Iraq.

This pattern should not surprise anyone by now....

[Ari]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/20/international/asia/20abuse.html?pagewanted=all

In U.S. Report, Brutal Details of 2 Afghan Inmates' Deaths
By TIM GOLDEN

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/22/international/asia/22abuse.html?pagewanted=all

Army Faltered in Investigating Detainee Abuse
By TIM GOLDEN

[old ari]

The road to Hell is easy and smooth.

[Moe Levine]

It strikes me that there is some wrong, very wrong with anyone who is worried or give thought to the question whether someone who is fighting against the United States has a legal justification for doing such.

That is a question totally irrelevant to anything and really is a red herring. The purpose of law, the sole purpose, is to use historical fact to decide what is best for the future. That is why for example, that he Nuremburg Trials worked, even though they were basically ex post facto. The facts (the crimes) were so great that they called out for justice.

The artifical construct of provisions in Title 18 are not strong enough to carry that load. Anyone who has ever, for example, talked to soldiers who served in WWII will tell you of open murders of German and Japanese POWS, at times. It was openly shown in Saving Private Ryan, where surrendering Germans were shot. Imus just had on several stories of killings of SS members, are discovery of the concentration camps.

I haven't even scratched the surface of civilian deaths.

Anyone who thinks seriously about these issues, sans an agenda, would have to concede that the Federal War Crime statute is a flawed idea, especially because it was completely unnecessary. The Armed Forces of the United States have always been more successful than any other military at controling matters through the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

The fact is that the bad law has given those who oppose the war on any terms a red herring. I am totally opposed to how Bush has executed the matter, but that doesn't mean that Gonzales, for example, is a fascist. He most certainly is not, not by any honest evaluation. In wars people make decisions that other people will suffer and die. Lincoln, for example, permitted confederate soldiers to be drawn by lot and executed, in retaliation for the killing of Union POWs.

Is anyone suggesting that we should take down his monument?

[epist]

"The purpose of law, the sole purpose, is to use historical fact to decide what is best for the future."

By 'best', you mean here, what, exactly, 'expedient'? 'Gainful'? Certainly not 'just', 'fair', 'moral' 'decent' or 'right', given that you think summary execution good enough to qualify.

Or perhaps you have a similar revisionist meaning of these terms, as well?

[trevelyan]

"Is anyone suggesting that we should take down his monument?"

Moe,

If public memorials to Lincoln were associated with such behavior in the public mind, I imagine they would already have been dismantled.

Your argument reminds me of Professor Delong's answer to the ticking-nuclear-bomb question. In any situation where the ends truly justified the means there would be little question of the appropriateness of dodging legal barriers or changing them.

These laws are important because they act as barriers against the casual embrace of violence as a cheap policy tool. They set up a standard which must be changed or ignored publicly -- neither of which can be done lightly in a democracy without broad consensus.

[JR]

"Lincoln, for example, permitted confederate soldiers to be drawn by lot and executed, in retaliation for the killing of Union POWs."

Moe, I know a fair amount about the Civil War and I've never read this, and I don't believe it's true.

It's possible that you've become confused with a famous threat of reprisal from the Confederate side. In 1861, 14 crewmen from two Confederate privateers were sentenced to death for piracy. Jefferson Davis had 14 Union POWs chosen by lot and threatened to execute them if the privateersmen were not spared, and the sentences were commuted.

If you have a source that Lincoln was involved in reprisal killings, please post it. Otherwise, have the goodness to retract your statement.

[Moe Levine]

Trevelyan argues that the ticking-nuclear-bomb would permit dodging legal barriers or changing them.

My point is that one should never erect them for starters, especially when you have no need for such and instead the legislation, as reported by others, is but another example of Republican over-pandering.

For Epist who doesn't understand the purpose of law, there is no help. Human experience teaches us that there are many factors that do into deciding what is best for the future. When one bases decisions about the future based on historical fact, one must first have a mechanism for determing what were the historical facts (i.e, trials). After determining the facts, a legal system can determine what to do based on most any principle one wants to select. If one is worried about damage to the victim, the judgment can be for restitution. If one is worried about conduct of others, one might want a long sentence. If one is worried about the judgment of history, they might hang members of the German High Command, based on ex post facto legal princples. If one is worried about more planes being hi-jacked or car bombs in Bagdad, one may just let people sit in the cooler for years and years in Cuba. Rehabilitation likely remains out of the picture

[JR]

"If one is worried about more planes being hi-jacked or car bombs in Bagdad, one may just let people sit in the cooler for years and years in Cuba."

Moe, the people who are sitting in coolers in Cuba are Afghan and Pakistani schmucks who never saw the inside of an airplane until they were tied up and flown to Guantanamo. Before they got there there they were 1500 miles from Baghdad. The guy who planned 9/11 is living large in Pakistan, and the car-bomb guys in Iraq are -- suprise!! -- Iraqis.

[sofla]

As the following citation shows, the GC in this article 38 does charge the power holding the pows to provide space and facilities for outdoor games and sports (probably soccer fields were imagined or something like that).

That may indeed be quaint and outmoded, and if that was what now-AG AG meant, Okrent is right to call out those who use it as a smear against AG AG's positions.

We critics of this administration's horrid human rights abuses with regard to both declared POWs and supposed non-POWs, ought not to engage in the kind of loose and wrong rhetoric this would represent. There is ample to point to as absolute disgraces to this country, our military's reputation, etc., without stretching a comment beyond the limits of reasonable interpretation.

For, if people hearing our side lambast AG AG with this hear of the provisions in the GC he was referring to, it makes the rest of our case weaker. (If they'd misrepresent and distort this, how much should we believe the rest of their outlandish, horrible IF true, charges?)

-----

Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War (Article 38)

While respecting the individual preferences of every prisoner, the Detaining Power shall encourage the practice of intellectual, educational, and recreational pursuits, sports and games amongst prisoners, and shall take the measures necessary to ensure the exercise thereof by providing them with adequate premises and necessary equipment.

Prisoners shall have opportunities for taking physical exercise, including sports and games, and for being out of doors. Sufficient open spaces shall be provided for this purpose in all camps.

[JR]

Sofla-
Gonzales didn't mention the requirement that POWs be allowed fresh air and exercise. He said that the Convention demands that POWs be "afforded" athletic uniforms, which is a lie.

And explain to me why allowing POWs to play basketball or chess is "quaint and outmoded." Have young men changed so much that they can stay healthy and sane while penned up in wire cages? Or is it quaint and outmoded to be concerned with the well-being of other human beings?

Under the Geneva Convention, any POW who is actually guilty of an of an atrocity - like terrorism - can be punished, but men captured on the field of battle are supposed to be treated like soldiers.

The Guantanamo detainees are young men who bore arms against an invading army-- ours. That entitles us to hold them as POWs. It doesn't entitle us to brutalize them.

[Jennifer]

JR

The post and comments are highly instructive. Thank you so much.

[anne]

JR

Nicely done :)

[sofla]

To restate what I think should have been clear from my prior post, I do not support what we're doing in Gitmo, or Afghanistan, or Iraq, with regard to POWs, supposed non-POWs, or in general. I think these amount to war crimes, and contravention of the rules of war we've signed onto.

However, I've never seen what now AG AG described as 'quaint and obsolete' about the GC provisions defined as 'afford[ing} athletic garments,' which appears to be yet another misleading paraphrase of the bare sentence then-WH Counsel AG used, since, to my knowledge and what I've seen of the quote, he didn't specify those provisions (or non-provisions, as the case may be).

[Gonzales: this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions requiring that captured enemy be afforded such things as commissary privileges, scrip (i.e., advances of monthly pay), athletic uniforms, and scientific instruments.]

[JR]

Sofla-
Here's a link to Gonzales' memo: http://www.ash.org.uk/html/regulation/pdfs/hr_accorrt.pdf

And here's a link to the Convention: http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/91.htm

The only place that athletic uniforms and scientific equipment are mentioned is at Article 72, which deals with receipt of packages. Gonzales must have meant this as there is nothing else he could have intended.

[Thanks...]

Gonzales says that the "war against terrorism" is a "new kind of war," not the traditional clash between nations observing the laws of war that formed the background for GWP." This "new kind of war" that "renders obsolete" the Geneva Convention's limitations on questioning of captives and "renders quaint" some of the Conventions other provisions "requiring that captured enemy be afforded such things as commissary privileges, scrip... athletic uniforms, and scientific instruments." What is it about this new kind of war that renders these portions of the Convention "quaint" and "obsolete"? The only thing that he identifies is the need to "quickly obtain information from captured terrorists and their sponsors." Nothing else.

There are many things wrong with this analysis. First, the Geneva Convention itself explicitly does not limit itself to "the traditional clash between nations," but is applicable to civil wars (Art. 3), occupations and undeclared wars (Art. 2), and informal wars involving militias (see Art 4 and its multiple subparts). The parties to the Convention were familiar with all these sorts of conflicts- civil wars, colonial wars, undeclared wars of all sorts -- and they included them in the Convention.

Second, the "war against terrorism" is a phrase that hides more than it reveals. We are engaged in two separate wars: the occupation of Afghanistan, and the occupation of Iraq -- two very different countries that were not allied and do not even share a border. Like us, both these countries are signatories to the Convention (they are "High Contracting Parties"). In both, military forces resisted our occupation and were defeated. By its terms, the Geneva Convention applies to both conflicts.

Third, it is now clear that the detainees at Guantanamo are not captured "terrorists." The terrorists escaped. Those captured were fighting against US troops and our local allies, the Northern Alliance.

But let us grant Gonzales' argument that the "need to quickly obtain information" from terrorists had some application to the detainees at Guantanamo - I don't believe it, but let's accept it for the sake of argument. They have been there for over two years now. Afghanistan has been occupied for over two years. It is 3 1/2 years since 9/11 -- longer than the US involvement in WWII. Can this rationale be acceptable any longer?

As to facilities for games - what is impractical about a concrete court and a ball, or a couple of goal posts in a walled yard? We can build isolation cells for hundreds of men, but we can't find room for a basketball hoop? And as for an anachronism of a more courtly age, the Convention went into effect in 1950, and is a revised version of the original 1929 Convention -- do you really want to argue that today we are more barbaric toward our enemies than the participants in World Wars I and II?

[piotr]

It seems that WE ARE MORE BARBARIC than we were during WWI and WWII.

The only real difference is that we stopped being afraid that our troops will face a similar fate. Which is perhaps correct. It was always the case that, say, torturing captured officers could reveal enemy plans and thus save thousands of our lives, except that our people would be likewise tortured.

Thus the true idea seems to be that once we do not have a state opponent that can retaliate in the same coin, the concept of international law is quaint. The only problem is that this is immoral relativism (a.k.a. nihilism).

Last thing: was Dowd precise? Gonzales was mocking Geneva conventions, and Dowd was mocking Gonzales mocking of Geneva conventions. She was entitled to a paraphrase unless she falsified Gonzales's intentions.

By the way, Bush promised to treat captives as if they were POW, and lied. Politically and practically, giving Guantanamo captives freedom of movement (as in regular prisons), decent recreation possibilities, allowing them to receive parcels etc. would be much superior to what was done.

Suppose that alarmist position is true: the captives include hard-core terrorists and we have no good way of telling for sure which are and which are not. By being beastly toward them we increase international pressure to release them, thus making it more difficult to "keep them in the cooler". Indeed, some relased prisoners are reported to re-join Taliban, and stories of maltreatment of other released prisoners lead to bloody riots etc. One can be immoral and stupid, while one can also be moral and wise.

[Steve]

JR,

Uhh, yoru link is to a pdf dealing with the mortality of smokers. Is this a joke or did you grab the wrong url by mistake?

[JR]

No, I did it to see if anyone was paying attention ;-)
Here's the correct link:
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4999148/site/newsweek/

Sorry about that-

[Steve]

Okay, JR thanks. Now, I can't seem to find the section that uses the word quaint. Can you point it out to me?

[JR]

Steve-
It's a difficult document to get around in. You need to advance to page 2 and look under the first bullet point ("preserves flexibility").
Moe-
I've responded to you about the Civil War retaliatory killings on the other thread- take a look. But "turban heads" is an offensive phrase. You're talking about people who cover their heads in observance of a religious commandment. I know people who do that, Moe. Don't you?