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This was the United States talking. The State Department specifically in its Oct 15, 1999 report to UNCAT. These are official declarations, uncaveated, unhedged, as to our nation’s legal relation to torture. Note the prohibition on the use of emergency or exigent situations to justify torture.

Contrast with Mr. Bush’s veto of the anti-torture bill.

And, in my best Margaret Hamilton (wicked witch of the west) voice, “…but that’s not what’s worrying me. It’s HOW to do it. These things must be done DELicate-ly. Or you hurt the spell.” Okay, I admit it, that last word needs a more appropriate substitution. But you get the general idea.

I think that even were we to pin that label on them, they would find a way to wrap it all in the Flag and claim that they were saving American lives… Which they may or may not be doing…coerced testimony being so unreliable.

I really thought highly of the argument made a while back that our international reputation post WWI, WWII, and even Vietnam, was of a country that tried to be “good guys”.

There were surreptitious tape recordings made of nazi Generals incarcerated in the same cell during the Nuremberg trials. In the cell they conversed about alot of things, but one thing came up: how the soldiers preferred to surrender to the Americans rather than to the Soviets. One of the german generals said it was because we were known to be “good guys”. A lot of lives were saved by those surrenders.

Later in the first Gulf War, the same thing happened, mass surrenders based on the reputation we had earned as straight shooters and lenient captors. A lot of American lives were saved by those surrenders.

Now that the word is our that we torture, we may never see those type of surrenders again. Our victories are going to costlier in American lives.

The same ones the torturers would try to save.
So even in utilitarian terms of argument, torture is self-defeating.

Well, maybe we citizens should design a new label for THEM. I wonder if they would like being publicly labeled PRO-TORTURE better? After all, if they’re going to support torture publicly, they should have the guts to be honest about it!

http://intelligence.senate.gov/070925/akeller.pdf

Professor Turley,

I’m not familiar with the McCarthy criticism you mentioned; however, in a previous post regarding dual federalism I did cite your closing remarks in
”From Pillar to Post”: The Prosecution of American Presidents, 37 Am. Crim. L. Rev. 1049 (2000) — at “House Defies Bush: Allows Surveillance Law Expire”

My post here earlier dealt with the question of “whatever happened to the concepts of Specifically Enumerated Powers & Dual Federalism?”

I cited the exchange between Gonzales & the Senate Judiciary Committee and the failure to recall that the Constitution does not confer any rights whatsoever…

I remarked that the wholesale failure over the years to recall the foregoing maxim has led not only to an inability to comprehend the 9th ‘Amendment’ & Hamilton’s Fed 84 reasoning for including same, but a complete disregard for Dual Federalism & INHERENT STATE POLICE POWERS; including the power to enforce Fed Law when the Fed fails to do so.

“the [state] police power, is an exercise of the sovereign right of the government to protect the lives, health, morals, comfort, and general welfare of the people” Manigault v. Springs, 199 U.S. 473 (1905) (See also Sturges v. Crowninshield, 17 U.S. 4 Wheat. 122 122 (1819)

Finally, per the issue of Preemption; aside from the case law reaffirming that state officers have inherent authority to enforce federal law, I mentioned that we should not forget that Article V precludes any & all branches of the Federal Government from making an end-run around the Constitution by effectively amending it. This analytic judgment (in the Kantian sense of the term) was set forth rather clearly in REID v. COVERT, 354 U.S. 1 (1957):

“In effect, such construction would permit amendment of that document in a manner not sanctioned by Article V. The prohibitions of the Constitution were designed to apply to all branches of the National Government and they cannot be nullified by the Executive or by the Executive and the Senate combined.”

In a nutshell, I fail to see why everyone looks to Congress and only Congress to check an Executive hell bent on “exercising power, beyond right, which no body has a right to.” — J. Locke.

Waiting to see this get banned (for some reason) as well…

Very truly yours,

Bob

P.S. The other post dealt with New York State Constitutional Law, Dual Federalism and that eloquent holding you cited from United States v. Lee in ”From Pillar to Post”: The Prosecution of American Presidents, 37 Am. Crim. L. Rev. 1049 (2000)

Whatever…