According to McClatchy, the adminisrtration lawyers most responsible for undermining the laws against torture were Cheney's man David Addington, former White House Counsel and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former Justice Department legal advisor John Yoo, former pentagon General Counsel William Haynes, and former Gonzales deputy Timothy Flanigan.
The quintet of lawyers, who called themselves the “War Council,” drafted legal opinions that circumvented the military’s code of justice, the federal court system and America’s international treaties in order to prevent anyone - from soldiers on the ground to the president - from being held accountable for activities that at other times have been considered war crimes.
...A handful of legal opinions opened the way to the abuses documented in McClatchy’s investigation. Among them:
In a Jan. 9, 2002, memorandum for Haynes, co-author Yoo opined that basic Geneva Convention protections known as Common Article Three forbidding humiliating and degrading treatment and torture of prisoners didn’t cover alleged al Qaida or Taliban detainees - the entire incoming population of detainees in Afghanistan and Guantanamo.
In a memorandum to Bush dated Jan. 25, 2002, Gonzales said that rescinding detainees' Geneva protections “substantially reduces the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act.” Doing so, Gonzales wrote, also would create a solid defense against prosecutors or independent counsels who may in the future “decide to pursue unwarranted charges based on Section 2441,” the U.S. War Crimes Act, which prohibits violations of the Geneva Conventions. Gonzales added that by withholding Geneva protections and prisoner-of-war status, Bush could avoid case-by-case reviews of detainees’ status.
On Feb. 7, 2002, Bush issued a memorandum declaring that alleged al Qaida or Taliban members wouldn’t be considered prisoners of war and, further, that they wouldn’t be granted protection under Common Article Three. Most nations accept Article Three, common to all four Geneva Conventions, as customary law setting the minimum standard for conduct in any conflict, whether internal or international.
An Aug. 1, 2002, memorandum that Gonzales requested from the Justice Department defined torture as “injury such as death, organ failure or serious impairment of body functions,” a high bar for ruling interrogation techniques or detainee treatment illegal. U.S. law, according to the memorandum’s analysis, “prohibits only extreme acts.”
A March 14, 2003, memorandum that Yoo prepared at Haynes’ request concluded that even if an interrogation method violated U.S. criminal statutes - such as the one against war crimes - the interrogators involved most likely couldn’t be prosecuted because they were operating within the scope of Bush’s constitutional authority to wage war against al Qaida and other militant groups. “In wartime, it is for the president alone to decide what methods to use to best prevail against the enemy,” Yoo wrote.
My father was both an attorney and a career army officer, a passionate believer in protecting the rights of the accused in order to keep us all safe from abusive treatment: This would break his heart if he were here to see it.
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