My Thoughts and Perspective as a SERE Graduate, Part I | 20 comments (20 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: Thoughts and Perspective as a SERE Graduate (4.00 / 5)

European Tribune - My Thoughts and Perspective as a SERE Graduate, Part I

Namely, that by twisting SERE techniques of interrogation into lawful orders, a lower person in the chain of command has no choice but to follow them because one can only challenge unlawful orders without legal jeapordy; the insidiousness of the OLC made those things lawful.

Lawful under US law but unlawful under international law and the treaties that the US has signed and ratified?

In other words, it would have to take a courageous person to be willing to refuse and then to take the case all the way to the Supreme Court?

The brainless should not be in banking. — Willem Buitler

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Thu May 7th, 2009 at 06:00:37 AM EST

Re: Thoughts and Perspective as a SERE Graduate (4.00 / 5)

Yes, it would have taken a courageous person, with plenty of legal and historical knowledge. (Of which you would have thought there would be plenty in the military) who would have had to have stood up against the whole republican media culture which you know would be calling them traitor.

You have to ask where was the situations Hugh Thompson Jr. and where were the senior officers who would stand up for what was morally right?

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Thu May 7th, 2009 at 06:37:56 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Thoughts and Perspective as a SERE Graduate (4.00 / 5)

Or someone on the inside with an incredible sense of right and wrong within social pressures of groupthink.

Particularly like the brave young Specialist Darby who leaked a CD of photos to the press and to the world because he new as a low level enlisted he could never fight the institutionalized system.

"Schiller sprach zu Goethe, Steck in dem Arsch die Flöte! Goethe sagte zu Schiller, Mein Arsch ist kein Triller!"

by Jeffersonian Democrat (rzg6f@virginia.edu) on Thu May 7th, 2009 at 07:38:19 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Thoughts and Perspective as a SERE Graduate (4.00 / 4)

Or someone on the inside with an incredible sense of right and wrong within social pressures of groupthink.

And military discipline is expressly designed to repress this impulse.

"It Can't Be Just About Us"
--Frank Schnittger, ETian Extraordinaire

by papicek (papi_cek_at_hotmail_dot_com) on Thu May 7th, 2009 at 10:26:08 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Thoughts and Perspective as a SERE Graduate (none / 1)

Has the USA ever allowed its Courts to be over-ruled by an international Court enforcing international Law? Empires don't do this, and a President who allowed an International Court to over-rule SCOTUS would be branded a traitor, probably impeached, and certainly hounded out of office. The US does not defer to dem yurpians....

notes from no w here

by Frank Schnittger (mail Frankschnittger at hot male dotty communists) on Thu May 7th, 2009 at 05:09:50 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Thoughts and Perspective as a SERE Graduate (none / 1)

What I mean is that the legislative/administrative/executive actions making torture lawful in the sense of making a CIA operative refusing to carry it out liable for insubordination would have to be deemed unconstitutional but only the SCOTUS can do that, and you can only get to the SCOTUS after exhausting all the ladder of appeals (unlike in Spain where an unconstitutionality complaint can be lodged as soon as the law is published in the official journal).

The brainless should not be in banking. — Willem Buitler

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Thu May 7th, 2009 at 06:09:11 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Thoughts and Perspective as a SERE Graduate (4.00 / 2)

Yea but in other countries, even Supreme Court judgements can be appealed to an International Court - and have been many times. I am not aware of SCOTUS ever having been over-ruled by an international court. I am not even aware if it such an appeal has ever been allowed to proceed. Effectively the USA is above international law even where (as in the Geneva Conventions) it has signed up to the International Law in question.

The question of whether waterboarding is torture, and whether those who justified and practised it are guilty of a war crime is ultimately for an International Court to decide - not SCOTUS or US radio talk show hosts.

notes from no w here

by Frank Schnittger (mail Frankschnittger at hot male dotty communists) on Thu May 7th, 2009 at 06:25:02 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Thoughts and Perspective as a SERE Graduate (4.00 / 2)

But I wasn't going that far - I was only going up to the point where the SCOTUS has to rule on whether the US Preznit has the constitutional authority to overrule the Geneva Conventions.

The brainless should not be in banking. — Willem Buitler

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Fri May 8th, 2009 at 04:30:06 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Thoughts and Perspective as a SERE Graduate (none / 1)

When a Sovereign State signs an international Treaty, it agrees to be bound by it and by the judicial processes provided for in that Treaty. Thus it is not for SCOTUS to be the final arbiter on whether the USA or its servants commited torture.

The immediate problem may be in finding a victim and a prosecutor in a position to take such a case in the first place.

notes from no w here

by Frank Schnittger (mail Frankschnittger at hot male dotty communists) on Fri May 8th, 2009 at 08:11:25 AM EST
[ Parent ]

My Thoughts and Perspective as a SERE Graduate, Part I | 20 comments (20 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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