[lit-ideas] Re: Waterboarding Bodies Mattered
- From: Phil Enns <phil.enns@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 23 Apr 2009 16:44:10 +0700
Simon Ward wrote:
"There was never a sense of legal justification in the piece Eric
originally quoted."
The conditions of imminent threat plus specific knowledge were in the
original piece and quoted again by myself. These conditions are not
sufficient legal justification but it is part of that justification.
However, what I am referring to in the bit Simon quotes is not the
piece Eric quotes but a different article, the link for which I
provided. This article is specifically about legal justifications and
the concerns one Bush administration official had about those
justifications. Also, the article describes an attempt by other Bush
officials to destroy any evidence of this legal objection.
Simon:
"The question was whether it worked. But if it works, then, as Phil,
notes, why not make it generally available."
The argument of the article I linked to does not address the question
of efficacy but rather the constitutionality of the legal
justifications for torture. In short, the author argues that the
administration's claims regarding the justification for torture
extended to the possibility of torturing U.S. citizens, a fact that
U.S. courts would find unconstitutional.
Simon:
"In short, if the notion that something works is the only factor, then
the issue becomes one of when it should not be used - in other words
what is the dividing line."
The author of the article I quoted argued that U.S. courts would
reject the torture of U.S. citizens, and that the Bush
administration's legal justification of torture did not adequately
exclude this possibility.
Sincerely,
Phil Enns
Yogyakarta, Indonesia
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