Usisng Law To Justify Torture-Lawyers In Fact, GUILTY Of War Crimes

[kpete]

Using Law to Justify Torture
Wednesday 23 July 2008
by: Daphne Eviatar, The Washington Independent


The Bush administration has tried to justify torture with legal opinions.
Constitutional scholars say advice of counsel is probably not a strong defense


"I think the evidence is quite strong that the torture program began almost immediately after 9-11," said Ratner of the CCR. "So the memos don't help them there."

In fact, if lawyers wrote the memos approving torture techniques at the request of officials who had already used them, the lawyers themselves could be guilty of conspiring to commit war crimes. "If the lawyer's opinion is seriously wrong," said Horton, "then the lawyer risks being tied into the criminal conduct."

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That's certainly how it was viewed in the Nuremberg era. As the U.S. Supreme Court wrote in 1944: "There have been, and are now, certain foreign nations with governments ... which convict individuals with testimony obtained by police organizations possessed of an unrestrained power to seize persons suspected of crimes against the state, hold them in secret custody, and wring from them confessions by physical or mental torture. So long as the Constitution remains the basic law of our Republic, America will not have that kind of government."

Today, Mukasey would add one caveat: unless the government's lawyers say otherwise.

more at:
http://www.truthout.org/article/using-law-justify-torture