The Truth About Torture

"The Tokyo trial opened on May 3, 1946, and held its final session on November 12, 1948. The conclusions reached by the 11-nation tribunal were generally parallel to those embodied in the judgment given in Nürnberg. Of the 28 defendants named in the indictment, seven were condemned to death by hanging, and all but two of the others were sentenced to life imprisonment. The trial of Japanese general Yamashita Tomoyuki was important in establishing the principle of ???command responsibility??????the duty of a military or civilian commander to prevent military personnel from committing war crimes and crimes against humanity."
This quote is copied from Microsoft's EnCarta to highligt a failure of this article and all of ohter one written on this subject. The failure is the arthors fail to appliy the primary lesson from the Nuremberg and Japan war trials. The responsibility for preventing war crime rest primary on the COMMADER-IN-CHIEF. In our goverment that person is the PRESIDENT. What is the value of a pardon issued by a person that is responsible for crime? Does this pardon shield the criminal from punishment? It is questionable whether this pardon would prevent other nations or the International court from putting these persons on trials.

*AHHHH AHHHHH* Heavenly voices sing..."Maybe we should just vote Obama...He looks so angelic and will save all our bacons"...*record screeches* Yeah right!

So your position is:
1) They will tell the truth if they are pardoned, but they will lie put on trial in the court of law. (That is a huge assumption given that congress can't even get Rove to show up.)
2) You can get away with any crime if you can get a lawyer to tell you it's legal, despite the fact that the court says it isn't. (Doesn't that pretty much take the power away from legislators, and put it in the hands of the OLC?) Is the OLC really supposed to be legislating here?

Why not let all the murderers and rapists out of prison while we're at it? Utter nonsense. Murder is murder, torture is torture, and I, for one, expect those responsible to be held accountable. As a human being living in this day and age, you know what's right and wrong.

I get it war crimes aren't crimes they are lessons to be learned, so the Nuremberg Trials should have been been the Nuremberg learning hour...

So when a nation commits war crimes shouldn't be war crimes any more they should be learning tools, so Nuremburg should have been a class session and not a trial?

F@#$ that. torture should not be tolerated in any form. Any man should be held responsible for their actions, regardless of status or position. Bush and Cheney should pay for their crimes, just as saddam did

F*** that. Any man is responsible for his actions regardless of their position. Bush and Cheney should pay for their wrongs, just as saddam did. Torture can not be tolerated, not matter what the justification. Those who condone or otherwise permit systematic torture should pay, WITH THEIR LIVES

If we let these people get away with all this criminal behaviour we are just telling the world that we are the fascist country so many already think we are. If we let them get by, we are just telling our people that laws apply only to the powerless. If we let them get by with it, we are not the greatest nation in the world.

We have ourselves become a nation of terrorists and criminals, a transition we were not allowed to oversee lest we stop it and demand a return to the morality of who were are supposed to be. The crimes took place out of sight, covered by lies upon lies. The offenses will remain on our conscience until we insist that they be made known and the malefactors removed from power. I suggest something like the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa where people were allowed to air what they had don with the assurance that they would not be punished unless they lied. We can do that here and the interrogations, the violations of international law, the renditions, can be uncovered. We can never be allowed to do this again.

To get a full accounting of how US interrogation methods were used, those accused of 'war crimes' should get full trials, including the right to see the evidence against them and the right to face their accusers.

That's how we get to the truth in America - by respecting the writ of habeas corpus and the prinicples of law. We don't use pardons BEFORE there is even a trial.

And I'm not willing to pardon Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and Gonzalez for their war crimes,

Sorry, Newsweek, you got this one 100% wrong.

They should be prosecuted, not pardoned!

It is incomprehensible that an argument be made that war criminals be protected against prosecution for their crimes on the basis that a full accounting of the crimes can only be given if accountability is denied. It is the duty of civilized people to guard against attrocities, and those that commit torture should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. If this is done, the author will quite possibly be correct in his assertion that it will be difficult to find people willing to do such "unpleasant jobs" again in the future. The point that I think he misses is that such a result is desireable to those who appreciate freedom, and would be a victory over those who do not.

The real problem with our involvement in Guantanamo lies in the ignorance of our president. He has no appreciation of what our liberties are, and that is based in his ignorance of law based in our constitution. A wise president can overcome this by seeking good legal advice. What this president did, instead of asking for the legal advice, was to demand that his legal advisor shape the law to fit his whim. It had the effect of a "Presidential Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America", devoid of support by any provision of any law in our land. Once this was done and acted upon, we descended into the abyss of lawlessness. These acts are condemned by the civilized world which has looked to us in the past for guidance in the matters of liberty and law , by our example in carrying it out. Burgeoning democracies, legitimately formed from the inside, unlike our efforts to force one from the outside on Iraq, have copied most of our constitution in an effort to emulate our success. The saddest loss in all of this is the respect that we have lost in the eyes of the world and the resulting loss of our ability to assist those who seek our advice in such matters as individual liberty and justice for all. We must not delay in getting this back. It means more than the shallow efforts that we have wrongfully made to lynch criminals who should be prosecuted in a court of our laws instead of being tortured and then tried in a military court without legal jurisdiction and convicted on the basis of confessions obtained by such torture. We are in a state of international shame. It comes from the top. We must correct this in November. Severely and convincingly by a massive vote.