Originally Posted by Huntster
Please point out in your response the "documentation" or "homework" I asked for.
What you replied with appears to be hearsay, conjecture, and/or opinion with no supporting evidence whatsoever.
Fine you want evidence you ignore the news so much to have missed I will give it to you
Bush vowing to veto anti torture legislation
Thanks for that November 7th, 2005 British Telegraph News article. Unfortunately, no where in the article does it describe the legislation referred, and there are no details about the bill.
Now, let me refer you to this
December 15, 2005 CNN article:
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- After months of opposition, the White House agreed Thursday to Republican Sen. John McCain's call to ban torture by U.S. personnel.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner, R-Virginia, and McCain, R-Arizona, met with President Bush to discuss the deal, which Warner said he expects to be finalized by the end of the day.
After the meeting with President Bush, McCain said "this is a done deal."
But Warner's Republican counterpart in the House, Armed Services Chairman Duncan Hunter of California, said he will not sign onto the deal and may try to block it.....
.........The White House had threatened a veto unless the legislation contained an exemption for the CIA. The administration argued the bill would otherwise limit presidential ability to protect Americans from a terrorist attack.....
Even this article didn't describe the details of the President's suggested exemption.
Did you know that the exemption could only be legally exercised after judicial review and approval?
The recent laws giving the president the power to decide what other than maiming, rape and death constitutes torture
Thank you for that most interesting Sept 29, 2006 article from the
World Socialist Website.
May I quote?:
The legislation adopted by the House of Representatives Wednesday and the Senate Thursday, legalizing the Bush administration’s policy of torture and indefinite detention without trial, as well as kangaroo-court procedures for Guantánamo detainees, marks a watershed for the United States.
For the first time in American history, Congress and the White House have agreed to set aside the provisions of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and formally adopt methods traditionally identified with police states.
This bill is the outcome of a protracted process of decay of American democracy, which has accompanied the immense growth in social inequality and reached a turning point in the stolen election of 2000. In early December of 2000, on the eve of the US Supreme Court ruling that halted the counting of votes in Florida and awarded the presidency to George W. Bush, who had lost the popular vote nationally to his Democratic opponent Al Gore, David North, the national secretary of the Socialist Equality Party of the US and chairman of the international editorial board of the World Socialist Web Site, in a report on the US election crisis said:
“What the decision of this court will reveal is how far the American ruling class is prepared to go in breaking with traditional bourgeois-democratic and constitutional norms. Is it prepared to sanction ballot fraud and the suppression of votes and install in the White House a candidate who has attained that office through blatantly illegal and anti-democratic methods?
“A substantial section of the bourgeoisie, and perhaps even a majority of the US Supreme Court, is prepared to do just that. There has been a dramatic erosion of support within the ruling elites for the traditional forms of bourgeois democracy in the United States.”
The Supreme Court ruling and the refusal of the Democratic Party to oppose it demonstrated that there remained no significant constituency within the American ruling elite for the defense of democratic rights.......
....The Military Commission Act of 2006 will do far more than set down the procedures to be used to rubber-stamp the incarceration of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay and other US-run detention camps throughout the world. It attacks the rights of all American citizens as well as all legal residents and other immigrants, who will now be subject to the threat of arrest and imprisonment for life, on the order of the president alone, without judicial review.....
Indeed, that is an interesting article. However, let's go to
the law itself, if you don't mind:
‘‘§ 948r. Compulsory self-incrimination prohibited; treatment
of statements obtained by torture and other
statements
‘‘(a) IN GENERAL.—No person shall be required to testify against
himself at a proceeding of a military commission under this chapter.
‘‘(b) EXCLUSION OF STATEMENTS OBTAINED BY TORTURE.—A
statement obtained by use of torture shall not be admissible in
a military commission under this chapter, except against a person
accused of torture as evidence that the statement was made.
‘‘(c) STATEMENTS OBTAINED BEFORE ENACTMENT OF DETAINEE
TREATMENT ACT OF 2005.—A statement obtained before December
30, 2005 (the date of the enactment of the Defense Treatment
Act of 2005) in which the degree of coercion is disputed may be
admitted only if the military judge finds that—
‘‘(1) the totality of the circumstances renders the statement
reliable and possessing sufficient probative value; and
‘‘(2) the interests of justice would best be served by admission
of the statement into evidence.
‘‘(d) STATEMENTS OBTAINED AFTER ENACTMENT OF DETAINEE
TREATMENT ACT OF 2005.—A statement obtained on or after
December 30, 2005 (the date of the enactment of the Defense
Treatment Act of 2005) in which the degree of coercion is disputed
may be admitted only if the military judge finds that—
‘‘(1) the totality of the circumstances renders the statement
reliable and possessing sufficient probative value;
‘‘(2) the interests of justice would best be served by admission
of the statement into evidence; and
‘‘(3) the interrogation methods used to obtain the statement
do not amount to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment
prohibited by section 1003 of the Detainee Treatment Act of
2005.
Oh! Oh! "Cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment" is defined? Gee.
Let's check it out, shall we?:
SEC. 1002. UNIFORM STANDARDS FOR THE INTERROGATION OF PERSONS UNDER THE DETENTION OF THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE.
(a) In General- No person in the custody or under the effective control of the Department of Defense or under detention in a Department of Defense facility shall be subject to any treatment or technique of interrogation not authorized by and listed in the United States Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation.
(b) Applicability- Subsection (a) shall not apply with respect to any person in the custody or under the effective control of the Department of Defense pursuant to a criminal law or immigration law of the United States.
(c) Construction- Nothing in this section shall be construed to affect the rights under the United States Constitution of any person in the custody or under the physical jurisdiction of the United States.
SEC. 1003. PROHIBITION ON CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT OF PERSONS UNDER CUSTODY OR CONTROL OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT.
(a) In General- No individual in the custody or under the physical control of the United States Government, regardless of nationality or physical location, shall be subject to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.
(b) Construction- Nothing in this section shall be construed to impose any geographical limitation on the applicability of the prohibition against cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment under this section.
(c) Limitation on Supersedure- The provisions of this section shall not be superseded, except by a provision of law enacted after the date of the enactment of this Act which specifically repeals, modifies, or supersedes the provisions of this section.
(d) Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment Defined- In this section, the term 'cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment' means the cruel, unusual, and inhumane treatment or punishment prohibited by the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, as defined in the United States Reservations, Declarations and Understandings to the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment done at New York, December 10, 1984.
So, where is the torture you claim is legally occurring or will legally occur?
More of the administration campaigning against blocking their right to torture people
Thank you for your 23 July 2005 article from the "Let's get the Truthout" website. However, since I've already dealt with the issue above regarding later articles you linked, this is meaningless.
Presidential lawyer advocating the presidents right to torture people including children
Thank you for your link to "Information Clearing House; News You Won't Find on CNN."
It is a very entertaining article:
Bush Advisor Says President Has Legal Power to Torture Children
By Philip Watts
01/08/06 "revcom.us" -- -- John Yoo publicly argued there is no law that could prevent the President from ordering the torture of a child of a suspect in custody – including by crushing that child’s testicles.
This came out in response to a question in a December 1st debate in Chicago with Notre Dame professor and international human rights scholar Doug Cassel.
What is particularly chilling and revealing about this is that John Yoo was a key architect post-9/11 Bush Administration legal policy. As a deputy assistant to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, John Yoo authored a number of legal memos arguing for unlimited presidential powers to order torture of captive suspects, and to declare war anytime, any where, and on anyone the President deemed a threat.
It has now come out Yoo also had a hand in providing legal reasoning for the President to conduct unauthorized wiretaps of U.S. citizens. Georgetown Law Professor David Cole wrote, "Few lawyers have had more influence on President Bush’s legal policies in the 'war on terror’ than John Yoo."
This part of the exchange during the debate with Doug Cassel, reveals the logic of Yoo’s theories, adopted by the Administration as bedrock principles, in the real world.
Cassel: If the President deems that he’s got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person’s child, there is no law that can stop him?
Yoo: No treaty.
Cassel: Also no law by Congress. That is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo.
Yoo: I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that.
Yeah. So are National Enquirer articles. In fact, you can peruse them at the grocery checkout stand while waiting to buy a head of cabbage.
you are very unaware and putting your head in the sand if you have not seen the various actions that the administration has done to enable them to torture people.
Very foolish of me. I should be burying my testicles in the sand.
How please show me some reason to think they are not acting on their belief that they have the right to torture people?
Because I read the laws, which you did not (since I've linked them, and cited them, you now have the opportunity). What you read was the most outrageous examples of propaganda I've ever seen.
Sure they say that they are not doing it, but they limit torture to such extreme definitions that is had little meaning, and they often lie like about their secret prisons that they said they didn't have right up until they announced that they where all going to Guantanamo bay.
I think I'll let this post stand on it's own merits, bolstered by the actual law, not some propagandist's wild story, or some idiot's insistence that those wild stories are true.
you would demand that internet forum posters know how to craft a topic sentence, do so, and perhaps flesh out an introductory paragraph to raise a point of interest, rather than merely vomit forth careless prose or engage in pointless, minimalist link-and-run tactics? 
