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July 16, 2005
Deep Blade Journal Analyzes U.S. 'Domination By Detention'
Eric Olson at the informative Deep Blade Journal has a penetrating analysis of the Bush Administration's assumption of the role of "arbiter of humanity." His analysis is based on the July 14, 2005 appearance of some current leaders of the US military's Judge Advocate General (JAG) services "before the Senate Armed Services Personnel Subcommittee."
Mr. Olson noted that, "The Washington Post on Friday [July 15, 2005] had a Page A01 story on this hearing headlined ``Military Lawyers Fought Policy on Interrogations''. Mr. Olson wrote:
Okay, they fought some things -- often on the clearly valid basis that it is not a good idea to allow tortures be committed against enemies that we would not want used on our own troops. Note however, that the memos containing these discussions remain secret, including from members of Congress. But I watched a good chunk of this thing on C-SPAN 2. I was very troubled by what I heard. For the most part, the JAGs have accepted the notion that the President of the United States has the ``Commander-in-Chief'' authority to declare a whole new classification of persons detained in territory under US invasion called ``enemy combatant'', to declare on this personal authority that international law does not apply to this class, to then deport these persons to a facility half-way around the world (this act itself a grave breach of the intent of international law), and to declare by unsubstantiated fiat -- indeed what a reasonable person easily could find to be precisely the opposite -- what constitutes ``humane'' treatment of such detainees.Mr. Olson said, "Terror War or not, it should be easy to see how a reasonable person could interpret such declarations as dictatorial, despotic policies."
For more, see "Domination by detention US declares itself arbiter of humanity." I highly recommend it.
Posted by Munir Umrani at July 16, 2005 01:02 PM
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