Friday, December 14, 2007
This could be worth watching
Despite the effects they have on our lives, most people don't pay much attention to court cases. This one bears watching closely, if only to see how deeply the Republicans have corrupted our judicial system.
In a filing made public Friday, lawyers for a Guantanamo detainee have asked a federal court to examine the way he was questioned while in secret CIA custody for three years and decide whether he was tortured.So we don't yet know what was done to him, and probably won't until the Republicans infestation of the White House is eliminated. But we do have this jolly bit of nonsense from someone who does approve of waterboarding.
If the court takes up the request, it would shift from Congress to the courts the ongoing debate over whether so-called enhanced interrogation techniques authorized by President Bush against al Qaida suspects included illegal torture. Among those techniques was waterboarding, which simulates the sensation of drowning...
...The filing was made public on Friday after an intelligence review. Two full pages of the 15-page filing were blacked out as were large sections of six other pages, apparently because they contained descriptions of Khan's treatment, which the Bush administration considers classified.
"We don't have any case law since 9/11 to give us guidance as to what techniques fall above or below the line of what constitutes torture or ill treatment or cruel or unusual or degrading treatment,'' said retired Army Lt. Col. Jeffrey F. Addicott, a law professor and director of the Center for Terrorism Law at St. Mary's University in San Antonio, Texas.Nonsense because there is an overwhelming amount of case law prior to 9/11 as to what constitutes torture, and 9/11 did not change any existing laws.
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