GOP Detainee Bill: Revisions Create Loopholes For Rape+Sexual Assault-NYT

[kpete]

NYT Editorial
Turning Back the Clock on Rape
Published: September 23, 2006

In recent decades, women’s advocates and human rights activists have made huge progress on the issues of rape and sexual assault — in the United States and globally. Both crimes are now more powerfully defined in state and federal laws. In international law, where rape and sexual assault have long been classified as torture and war crimes, the world has begun to accept the importance of enforcement. In 1998, a tribunal convicted a paramilitary chief for watching one of his men rape a woman in Serbia. A year ago, the world rose up in outrage when United Nations peacekeepers raped women in Congo.

You’d think this was a settled issue. But it’s been opened up again in the bill on jailing, interrogating and trying terror suspects that President Bush is trying to ram through Congress in a pre-election rush. Both the White House and Senate versions contain provisions on rape and sexual assault that turn back the clock alarmingly. They are among the many flaws that must be fixed before Congress can responsibly pass this legislation.

Rape, sexual assault and sexual abuse are mentioned twice in the bill — once as crimes that could be prosecuted before military tribunals if committed by an “illegal enemy combatant,” and once as “grave breaches” of the Geneva Conventions that could be prosecuted as war crimes if committed by an American against a detainee. But in each case, the wording creates new and disturbing loopholes.

In the bill, rape is narrowly defined as forced or coerced genital or anal penetration. It utterly leaves out other acts, as well as the notion that sex without consent is also rape, as defined by numerous state laws and federal law. That is the more likely case in a prison, where a helpless inmate would be unlikely to resist the sexual overtures of a guard or interrogator.

more at:

[whistle]

1. So republicans view people fucking when they are in love as a crime

....but rape and sexual abuse in torture situations is perfectly okay. That clears that up very nicely. :wtf:

[Hubert Flottz]

7. It's the "MORAL" way to go!(Family Values and Shit)

It's what their plastic Jesus would have wanted them to do.

Focusing on the Iraqi Families!

[magellan]

2. BushCo and the interrogators are safe

They've covered their asses.

[Tanuki]

3. Apparently, forced oral sex

is OK with them?

[Solly Mack]

4. There's no coming back from this bill...the very fact that America

is even considering the "detainee compromise" is a mark against America that no amount of rationalization and denial will erase.

And if passed?

Supporters will never have absolution. There will never come a day when people of good character will look back and say, "it was a time of madness in America"...for there is no great madness...We already know this is wrong. No one gets a pass on this.

No one gets to have an excuse for there are no excuses for supporting the "detainee compromise"

You don't get to give away your integrity for a vote one day and claim pardon the next.

America tortures...and now America wants legal cover for it's torture.

How can anyone call themselves decent and support this?

This isn't merely another vote...this vote strips America - forever - of any right to call herself "a beacon of hope"

The lights from our shores are a warning now.




Link to article

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/23/opinion/23sat1.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fEditorials

[sam sarrha]

5. the UN has denounced USA's use of rape in prisons as institutional torture

referring to homosexual rape, in civilian prisons, by other inmates, if you go to donate blood they ask you in the AID's questionnaire if you have been in jail longer than 72 hours.

[OneBlueSky]

6. link? . . . n/t

.

[Solly Mack]

8. Link

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/23/opinion/23sat1.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fEditorials

[OneBlueSky]

10. thanx . . . I work with a battered women's shelter, and I'm sure . . .

that those running the agency will be interested in seeing this . . .

[elehhhhna]

9. KICK & REC

[Coexist]

11. knr

those bastards.