![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Something that's been in the back of my mind for the last year...
1. The Bush administration used techniques which fit the legal definition of torture. (And that's just with what's publicly known.)
2. Torture is a violation of federal law and the Geneva Conventions (arguably our single most important international treaty).
3. We are legally (and morally) required to prosecute torture.
4. Such prosecutions, if ordered by the current administration, would cost a fair chunk of political capital and would drive a further wedge between conservatives and progressives.
5. It's therefore not entirely surprising that prosecutions haven't happened and don't seem to be forthcoming. (AG Holder announced that he would prosecute cases where people went above and beyond the express authorization, but ruled out going after the top-level officials who made the illegal authorizations in the first place. And I haven't heard anything about actual charges resulting from the investigations he did say he planned to open.)
6. The threat floated by someone at the UN of bringing up charges in an international court has similarly failed to result in any solid action. Because it's hard to bring a challenge like that against people as powerful as top-level US executives.
7. Allowing such flagrant violations of some of our most important laws and treaty obligations sets a very dangerous precedent for future administrations.
(The part where torture got people who were giving up good information to stop talking, where the techniques used were adapted from ones designed to elicit false confessions, where using them made it all but impossible to prosecute the most dangerous suspects because the evidence was tainted and the defendants' rights violated, where the fact that we were torturing became the terrorist's chief recruiting tool, etc etc... is all beside the point. For the moment.)
What I'm wondering, then, is this:
Is there any legal option by which we, the people, can sue the Bush administration?
They committed crimes in our name. Crimes which made us less safe. Crimes which must not go unpunished.
I remember murder cases where the defendant, having been acquitted in criminal court, faced a civil suit brought about by the victim's family. "Deprivation of the victim's civil rights (by virtue of having been deprived of life)." Is there a similar option for us? Or would the charges have to come from the ones who were tortured?
Over in the UK, it seems the people might be bringing Tony Blair up on war crimes charges.
So what can we do?
1. The Bush administration used techniques which fit the legal definition of torture. (And that's just with what's publicly known.)
2. Torture is a violation of federal law and the Geneva Conventions (arguably our single most important international treaty).
3. We are legally (and morally) required to prosecute torture.
4. Such prosecutions, if ordered by the current administration, would cost a fair chunk of political capital and would drive a further wedge between conservatives and progressives.
5. It's therefore not entirely surprising that prosecutions haven't happened and don't seem to be forthcoming. (AG Holder announced that he would prosecute cases where people went above and beyond the express authorization, but ruled out going after the top-level officials who made the illegal authorizations in the first place. And I haven't heard anything about actual charges resulting from the investigations he did say he planned to open.)
6. The threat floated by someone at the UN of bringing up charges in an international court has similarly failed to result in any solid action. Because it's hard to bring a challenge like that against people as powerful as top-level US executives.
7. Allowing such flagrant violations of some of our most important laws and treaty obligations sets a very dangerous precedent for future administrations.
(The part where torture got people who were giving up good information to stop talking, where the techniques used were adapted from ones designed to elicit false confessions, where using them made it all but impossible to prosecute the most dangerous suspects because the evidence was tainted and the defendants' rights violated, where the fact that we were torturing became the terrorist's chief recruiting tool, etc etc... is all beside the point. For the moment.)
What I'm wondering, then, is this:
Is there any legal option by which we, the people, can sue the Bush administration?
They committed crimes in our name. Crimes which made us less safe. Crimes which must not go unpunished.
I remember murder cases where the defendant, having been acquitted in criminal court, faced a civil suit brought about by the victim's family. "Deprivation of the victim's civil rights (by virtue of having been deprived of life)." Is there a similar option for us? Or would the charges have to come from the ones who were tortured?
Over in the UK, it seems the people might be bringing Tony Blair up on war crimes charges.
So what can we do?
Tags: