The US is not party to the International Criminal Court, as we have refused to ratify that treaty. The US not having surrendered that part of our sovereignty (aside from questions over whether that level of sovereignty can be surrendered by mere treaty), there is not international court or organization that can try Americans for war crimes. There are only US courts and US remedies. Don't try to pull the universal jurisdiction card, I reject it outright. Univeral jurisdiction is a political tool which the US has cooperated with when it has suited our purposes, but which we rightly refuse to allow against our citizens, leaders, and other representatives. We have also cooperatated with the ICC when it has suited our purposes because the ICC too is a political tool at times. This doesn't deny the ability of political tools to reach just conclusions.

Before you go and point out about Manuel Noriega. He was tried in the US for crimes committed in the US. He was then extradited to France (after completing his sentence) on condition of retrial (having been convicted in absentia). France agreed to these conditions and he was convicted in France for crimes committed in France and then sent to Panama to face charges for crimes committed in Panama.

The only places that Americans can be tried for crimes are either the place the crimes were committed or in the US. Because the US has not ratified any treaty granting judicial power over Americans to anyone else, that power resides only with the people where the crimes were committed or with the United States. Furthermore, where US service personnel are concerned, additional aggreements usually mean that even the location where crimes allegedly took place cannot try them. You want Bush/Cheny prosecuted, then prove enough to get them prosecuted in the US. That's you're only real recourse.

BRB

getting tin foil to make hatz

Tin foil is good for generating alien contact.

Putting foreign politics aside, it is all a matter of having possession of the accused and if the country that has said possession recognizes and prosecute war crimes or crimes against humanity.

+10

*pisses on Malaysian flag*

Wait... Aponic is a '9/11 truther' and he's calling someone else a fool and ignorant? LOL!

I can think of quite a few pharma companies we could employ those sadistic methods on since they "almost certainly" hold information that "very likely" would save lives. I'm sure much of the 3rd world that cannot afford their drugs but could manufacture them locally with the information would agree.

The US signed the Convention Against Torture. That is an international treaty so any torture allegations are an international concern - even if we have not agreed to give others jurisdiction in such matters. You are trying to say that this is only a matter between the US and the accusers of torture - but that is not the case. We made a commitment to the world at large (UN) to not torture.

Yes, we have an international obligation not to torture. That does not convey the jurisdiction to try Americans for torture or other such crimes. Even the ICC acknowledges that they don't have jurisdiction when a nation's own laws and courts allow for the prosecution of such crimes. The world's pre-eminent court for trying war crimes itself acknowledges that a nation's own courts have jurisdiction where a legal ability to try such charges exists.

When it comes to trials, it is only a matter between the US, the nation(s) where the crimes occurred, the accuser, and the accused. As to the efforts to ensure that the US is not torturing people, that is a matter for the world at large, but not for individual trials. Don't confuse trials for the commitment at large to not torture; upholding our obligations and trials when Americans fail to do so are not the same thing.

I wouldn't even respond to your unprompted ramblings except to clarify that I have done nothing to suggest confusion of trials and a commitment to not torture.

That is what I am arguing. The difference is that you believe poor Arabs had the ability to commit the crimes of 9/11 while I do not. Really, a commercial airliner was able to violate the airspace of the Pentagon? THE PENTAGON? Think about it.

To be quite clear, I am saying that we water-boarded innocent people.

go get a physics book and study the section on Mechanics.

Thank you for displaying your expertise on the subject Dibs. A brilliant mind ladies and gentlemen.

ur welcom smart turd.

Pain, considering the amount of people who were eventually released from Guantanamo and the other USA prisons around the world, it is no stretch to say some random people were pulled and then tortured/kept jailed for several years.

It mostly happened because the USA was paying cash for suspect terrorist delivered to them by natives around the world, or something close to that, instead of doing its own work of investigating and capturing.

to be fair i dont even believe a plane hit the pentagon.

Pain: Could you clarify your earlier point. I do not understand your position now. If you do not believe that a plane hit the Pentagon, who do you believe they used waterboarding techniques on if not random people? And if we could define random people, I would say those not engaged in acts of violence that would take place in the United States. Also, Eric made a great point about the overall number of detainees. Do you believe that all, or even a majority, had a connection with 'terrorism'? Could write a few sentences about what terrorism is in your view?

Dibs: Do you ever feel like reading books? You have the capacity.

well, i do kinda feel like reading Harry Potter again. but i probably have like 50k pages on my Nook that i haven't read yet. probably should've waited until i read what i bought before buying more Nook books. or do you want me to read that other kind of fiction that they call current events?

im not sure what youre asking exactly. its not like everyone who has ever been detained and tortured was done so because the pentagon got hit. i would assume there were lots of different reasons people would have been detained between 2001-2009, not necessarily just to save american lives. i suspect they got information leading to people who have information that they needed and those were the people who were tortured. i doubt that thousands of innocent people were detained and tortured.

terrorism is using fear or violence to try to force your beliefs on people. generally. and no i dont believe you need to be middle eastern to be one.

and before you do it please dont tell me how "oh well a military can be considered terrorists when they try to spread democracy" or something along those lines because i feel like your just baiting me with those questions :P

yay people defending torture, next they will be defending child molesting and what not

GO US!

people support you doing FA work, whats the difference?

:P

Is water-boarding actually torture (ie. severe pain or suffering)/ and illegal?

but is that really from MALAYSIA of all places... next I expect North Korea to follow...lol

Not all current events are fiction. Your statement is a fallacy in itself.

Pfft! You're late to this one, bro!, look no further to LAUSD defense lawyers arguments!

Pain: I wouldn't call military action terrorism as it is not covert. In regard to the Pentagon being hit; the events of 9/11 triggered our change in policy to torture. If you do not believe that the Pentagon was hit by a plane, and instead hit by a missile, then who did it. The focus of our investigations have been on Muslims (to generalize). If you do not believe that these people were responsible for the event that changed our policy then they were tortured for other reasons than national defense.

There were bombings throughout the 90s in England and Northern Ireland by the Irish. Many people were killed. They did not resort to torturing the Irish.

Someone mugs your girlfriend and you beat them. (pre-9/11)
Someone looks like they might mug your girlfriend and you beat them. (post-9/11)

The USA State Department qualifies other countries doing it as torture.

The United States hanged Japanese soldiers for waterboarding American prisoners of war.

"Whether waterboarding should be classified as a method of torture was not widely debated in the United States before it was alleged, in 2004, that members of the CIA had used the technique against certain suspected detained terrorists.[50][51]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterboarding

"Chase J. Nielsen, one of the U.S. airmen who flew in the Doolittle raid following the attack on Pearl Harbor, was subjected to waterboarding by his Japanese captors.[117] At their trial for war crimes following the war, he testified "Well, I was put on my back on the floor with my arms and legs stretched out, one guard holding each limb. The towel was wrapped around my face and put across my face and water poured on. They poured water on this towel until I was almost unconscious from strangulation, then they would let up until I'd get my breath, then they'd start over again... I felt more or less like I was drowning, just gasping between life and death."[38] The United States hanged Japanese soldiers for waterboarding American prisoners of war."

Thanks cyref

Nations are permitted to reevaluate their positions as situations change. Following the attacks on 9/11 and the capture of crucial Al Qaeda operatives lead to first conventional interrogation which only slowly ramped up to greater and greater degrees of interrogation. As an absolute last resort, and used on only a handful of prisoners, the CIA used a form of waterboarding. That any mention of the use of any form of waterboarding should give cause for questioning is a reflection of the increased decency of humanity in many cases, but political hypocracy in others. However, we can also not pretend that the waterboarding conducted by the CIA and the waterboarding conducted by WWII Japanese is the same thing.

CIA waterboarding was not a standard operating procedure.

It was conducted under medical supervision.

The time for each waterboarding was limited (not to say that the number of times a person was subjected to waterboarding was limited).


None of this really argues for the rightness or wrongness of the act per se, but it does argue that a more detailed understanding should exist of exactly what went on and how far it went.

If you condemn equally on the word "waterboarding", then would you call dumping 1 US Cup (~257ml) of water on a prisoner's head to be "waterboarding" and condemn it equally as to filling prisoners' stomachs with water and then beating them until they vomitted up the water?* Condemnation and the depth of condemnation should be based on the exact actions and not what those actions are called (the act, not the word "waterboarding").

*granted, you may not call the first "waterboarding", but then where is the line drawn?

fact that the CIA conducted waterboarding under medical supervision only means that the medic should go to trial too.

Also, it is possible to waterboard a person with very little water. I have seen it done on discovery or some other similar channel a few years ago (was hilarious because the dude being water board was in favour of the use of that torture and he didn`t last long). The whole thing depends triggering unvoluntary reactions and panic from drowning.

one of my friends who was in the military said he was waterboarded as part of his training. he said it sucked pretty bad and felt like he was going to die.

i suppose that is the intention if your goal is to get information out of someone.

what do you use to determine as to whether a report about a current event is true or false? 1 800 psychic? a crystal ball? some kinda crazy logic test that you've developed over the years?

do you waterboard the reporters into submission until they'll tell you whatever it is that they think you want to hear?

Better to be wrong than not to try reading them at all. Your choice is to be ignorant of all current events.

my choice is to base my decisions on what i know, instead of a bunch of BS that someone is trying to shove down my throat to manipulate my emotions.

since i've lived this long with being clueless, maybe your silly current events that you pay attention to and adore don't have any real influence on my life. and as such are completely meaningless and just something to sit back and BS about.

The US does use torture. The US has suspended Habeous Corpus for people accused of terrrorist conspiracies and leaves them in prison for life. The US encourages domestic terrorists by using undercover agents to entrap very poor uneducated angry people with loads of cash to discuss terrorist plots and then arrests them and uses massive PR campaigns to terrify the population and justify their continued violations of international law and increased domestic surveillance. That is pretty Orwellian.

This thread turned into a freak show. Pretty bad when Dibs is the voice of reason in a thread.

probably won't last long... i rode around 3 miles on my Drak to get 200ml of Brandy, well, to get some practice riding. brandy is just the reward.

I dislike almost everything about the Bush administration, but why should we care about what Malaysia thinks?

I also wonder, since all the witnesses listed were not Malaysian and since none of the events happened in Malaysia, what jurisdiction does Malaysia believe they have in this case?

If an international coalition wants to have a trial where Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld are there in person with attorneys to defend themselves, then I'll start caring.

This act by Malaysia seems more like a publicity stunt than anything else, especially since unless they're delusional, they know it won't really have any effect whatsoever.

If you read the whole thread many reasons were given as to why malaysia does and does not have jurisdiction.

Also, Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld would never make an appearance at such trial as you described. Why would they? By not appearing, they prevent any trial from taking place in your scenario.

Yep.

Dibs: It is astonishing that you, who have admittedly never persued knowledge yourself, know that you are right.

New guy: I think the world is round
Dibs: No, we all know it is flat
Other guy: It is flat
Third guy: Yep, my mom told me it was
Other guy: The television told me it was flat too,
New guy: But I have been doing a lot of reading about mathematics and I am ...
Dibs: This guy is an ass. I know it. I just do. Yea, I am the man. I almost read a Harry Potter book one time but I bet I have like 50,000 pages left.
Klown: You are the voice of reason Dibs.

oh noes. da aponic is bullyingz me onz da internetz.
Helpz Me! Helpz Me!

send me some flowers if you have a hard-on for me beotch.

Yes, I made a good point and you do not want to acknowledge it so I am bullying you. Keep telling yourself that.

i ain't telling myself that. i done posted it on the interwebs for the entire world to see and take notice of.

"Full transcripts of the charges, witness statements and other relevant material will now be sent to the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, as well as the United Nations and the Security Council."

https://www.cia.gov/...cs/notesanddefs.html#2220

"International law organization participation: This entry includes information on a country's acceptance of jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and of the International Criminal Court (ICCt); 55 countries have accepted ICJ jurisdiction with reservations and 11 have accepted ICJ jurisdiction without reservations; 114 countries have accepted ICCt jurisdiction. Appendix B: International Organizations and Groups explains the differing mandates of the ICJ and ICCt."

so, why is Malaysia concerned with using it if they're not willing to be judged under it? sounds like they a bunch of hackers to me.

I just skimmed the thread up until this point and I didn't see much other than references to a few international treaties that would offer any reason why Malaysia has a say in this.

And if those treaties give Malaysia a say in this, then I have two other questions (both of which have already been brought up, but from my skimming not seemingly answered)

1) Why hasn't Malaysia gone after every other person considered a war criminal? I don't see any trials for Milosevic or Hussein or Osama bin Laden in the news anywhere.

2) Why haven't all the other countries that have signed these treaties joined in accusing Pres. Bush, et al of war crimes?

Again--this is a political move someone in Malaysia decided to do. Perhaps I missed the reasons why I should think otherwise and care, but again, I just don't see a conviction of war crimes in a country that is virtually irrelevant on the international scale, economically and militarily, to be something that's worth paying attention to.

they'll probably convict me of war crimes also. soon as Iran sees the video of me drawing a charactiture(sp?) of Mohammed on a roll of toilet paper and then using it to wipe my butt after taking a dump. they will feel the need to get offended and send a million people out to kill me, and if i successfully kill them all in self-defense, then they'll declare me a war criminal because of their pathetic incompetence.

you are a big bad meanie Dibs.

meh, quit sending people to kill me twits.

That is not a good point. Hussein and Milosevic were tried elsewhere, and for Osama it was just a matter of time. In most places if he was found he would be jailed and extradited to be tried by the USA.

Regarding the rest of your post, keep in mind that not putting Bush & co on trial is real politics too, just like it is when someone does put them on trial.

Congrats, that is quite a pathetic post. Make a few more of those and you might get another pat on the head from klown.