Torture Memos Released
Damn these BUSH FOLK A-holes wanted SO BAD to torture, didn’t they now!
…..Critics familiar with the August 2002 memo and another, similar legal opinion given by the Defense Department’s office of general counsel in March 2003 assert that government lawyers were trying to find a legal justification for actions — torture or cruel and inhumane acts — that are clearly illegal under U.S. and international law.
“This is painful, incorrect analysis,” said Scott Norton, chairman of the international law committee of the New York City Bar Association, which has produced an extensive report on Pentagon detentions and interrogations. “A lawyer is permitted to craft all sorts of wily arguments about why a statute doesn’t apply” to a defendant, he said. “But a lawyer cannot advocate committing a criminal act prospectively.”
The August 2002 memo from the Justice Department concluded that laws outlawing torture do not bind Bush because of his constitutional authority to conduct a military campaign. “As Commander in Chief, the President has the constitutional authority to order interrogations of enemy combatants to gain intelligence information concerning the military plans of the enemy,” said the memo, obtained by The Washington Post.
Critics say that this misstates the law, and that it ignores key legal decisions, such as the landmark 1952 Supreme Court ruling in Youngstown Steel and Tube Co v. Sawyer, which said that the president, even in wartime, must abide by established U.S. laws.