Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said on âFace the Nationâ Sunday that â like most Republicans and even some Democrats, including some in the presidentâs cabinet â he thinks President Obama was right when he said âwe ought to go forward, not back.â But then he went on to say, as Glenn Greenwald tweeted yesterday, that âI think the interrogations were in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture that we ratified under President Reagan.â Now, once you acknowledge that the CIA, at the direction of senior cabinet officials, violated international humanitarian law that requires the United States to prosecute the perpetrators, the only way to justify not investigating is to say that the executive branch of government is above the law â or, put more pragmatically, that itâs politically too messy to investigate senior leaders in the U.S. government. Republicans didnât hesitate to investigate when it involved Democratic President Bill Clinton, however, or to bring charges against him for lying about a personal matter. And Congress didnât turn its backs on the Iran-Contra scandal during the Reagan administration, which led to 14 senior officials charged with crimes, and 11 convictions. And of course the Watergate affair led to the indictment and conviction of senior Nixon administration officials, and impeachment charges against the president. Congressional investigations of sitting and past administrations are far from unprecedented. So how does McCain explain why we ought to forget the whole torture problem â which led to the deaths of a still-unknown number of detainees in custody, some of whom the CIA still canât account for â even as he acknowledges that it violated international treaties that legally obligate us to prosecute? âI think these interrogations helped al-Qaeda recruit,â McCain said yesterday, adding: âthe damage that it did to Americaâs reputation in the world weâre still on the way to repairing.â Even setting aside the legal requirements, as a practical matter, a public acknowledgment and investigation would seem to be the only way to repair that damages. As McCain put it: âThis is an ideological struggle as well as a physical one.â http://washingtonindependent.com/57121/mccain-admits-bush-administration-violated-international-law
Even the Republican nominee is starting to admit that Bush and Chaney are war criminals.Wonder how long the rest of the Republicans are going to figure it out
Yes those are the 25% who understand the law. McCain could focus all his limited I.Q. on the subject and his opinion about the law would still mean nothing. if you are going to have a discussion about the law. Why not cite the law. Cite the cases or established authorities on the law state and then compare and contrast the facts of the current situation with the case law or statutory requirements.
This is a great illustration of why McCain lost the election. He is apparently too dimwitted to appreciate that this kind of loose talk is irresponsible. I pose this challenge to him and all the other crybabies who are wringing their hands over some terrorists having cigar smoke blown in their faces. Before you throw accusations at better men than you will ever be, now that you feel safe again, answer this. If you were president and you received solid intell that nukes had been planted in major cities and were going to go off imminently and you happened to capture the terrorist who planted them, what would you do? Give him to the FBI for a polite Q& A before hius ACLU lawyer put a halt ot it? Or hand him over to Jack Bauer? There is no middle ground, not in the real world. This question should have been the first issue in the presidential election but wasn't because of McCain's moral preening. Of course, Obama and the media would fantasize that they could convince the terrorist to give up the information using clever questions and witty ripostes, but that is hopelessly naive. At some point you have to make a choice between saving American lives and treating people as civilized who cut off the heads of innocent kidnap victims on the internet.
So you disagree with McCain. See how easy that was? The whining, bitching, crying, etc. wasn't really necessary, was it?
I suppose if you were a worthy attorney, you could check on WestLaw or Lexis, but since you only use Wikipedia (ROTFLMAO) or Google for your "legal research" here you go: http://uspolitics.about.com/b/2004/11/09/judge-bush-violated-geneva-conventions.htm http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/05/29/petraeus-geneva-conventions/ http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source...=g1&oq=bush+violated+gene&fp=9b1c6ebfff7f9103 I sure hope you are old fart, at least that would be a reasonable explanation for your diminished capacity...