Amnesty: Prosecute Bush If He Authorized Waterboarding

They should be prosecuted for sedition!

I think he should be prosecuted for not doing enough. They had to waterboard KSM 180 times! Waste of water! Electricity would have found us Osama’le with just a few session, and then we could have turned up the voltage.

oomis im with you 100%

You guys can support whatever you’d like. Torture is illegal no matter who you do it to. There are two questions here: 1. Is waterboarding torture? 2. Were there mitigating circumstances? Amnesty’s position on the first is clearly that it is (and they’re not American, so I’m not sure where the idea of trying them for sedition comes from, nor can I imagine that anyone here thinks it’s illegal to say pretty much whatever you want about the president so long as you don’t threaten him physical harm). As for the second, usually that would be a matter for the courts.

Amnesty would hypocrites if they didn’t think Bush should be prosecuted here, since they would think anyone else should be.

“Dr. Hall” has what sort of doctorate?

Amnesty International is not a Jewish organization and is not concerned about halacha.

Amnesty would also disagree with you premise that torture was or is ever necessary to save lives. If Bush wants to say that he broke the law in order to do so though, he’s welcome to do that. Amnesty though is perfectly within reason in thinking the place that argument should take place is in a courthouse.

I’m not all that comfortable paskening halacha in the Coffee Room, especially where it’s not at all relevant to the conversation, but I’d say that yes a person who kills or tortures a rodef is patur in certain situations. That person is not however somehow exempt from going to Beis Din simply because they say that’s what they did.

So what Bush did was moral, right? This is a purely legal issue of an immoral law?

Bush, like any person who claims that he violated the law because it was immoral is more than welcome to argue that at trial. Neither you nor I have any idea if that’s accurate because we don’t know the facts. Generally, the burden to prove a defense of necessity is on the defendant, who to this point hasn’t really bothered to even suggest he needs that defense (Bush is still insisting he was relying on his lawyers in believing waterboarding was not illegal).

True, he did get that opinion the Justice Department ( at the time).

But why is it different from killing? Does the commander-in-chief Obama need to prove necessity ever time he blows off the head of a taliban chief? Is the burden of proof on obama? Should we prosecute him and let him prove it? Killing is also illegal. We kill to protect our country.

Killing a terroist is better then torturing him?

True. You are correct, legally speaking. But it’s on record that Bush received authorization from the DOJ, so how can he prosecuted?

Again, relying on your attorney in good faith can be a defense (it usually isn’t), but at least in theory, that should be argued in court. Laws against torture would never be enforced if a government was able to claim it was relying on its own interpretation of the law and therefore can’t be brought to trial.

Bush is a really good man, who REALLY wants the best for this country (unlike someone else who shall remain nameless). The media completely demonized him, making him out to be a horrible person…

…because the opinion was repudiated later by the DOJ. So by approving waterboarding (ironically, unlike SecDef Rumsfeld, who refused to let the DOD do it in Gitmo)…so ultimately, it boils down to morality – where I think he was completely correct, but legally – indeed. And do we really disagree with the convention on torture? In theory, but the question is about letting the genie out of the bottle. So it boils down to if water boarding is torture.

I think it is, just doesn’t leave permanent damage. Oh well! Moshe, you are indeed correct.

A couple of points:

From CNN: Bush further declares that the new techniques proved effective, yielding information on al Qaeda’s structure and operations, and leading to the capture of Ramzi bin al Shibh, the logistical planner of the 9/11 attacks who was captured on the first anniversary of the attacks. And if there were any lingering doubts or conflict about the use of waterboarding, Bush discloses that he received reassurance from an unlikely source: terror suspect Abu Zubaydah.

Waterboarding CLEARLY is torture. Whether it is a criminal matter is not clear to me. And I’m not sure a President can be prosecuted for actions taken while in office; the Constitution seems to provide impeachment as the remedy.

I’m also not sure what purpose such a prosecution would serve in this case.

I’m also not convinced that torture provides consistently useful information. Police detectives know that they can get criminals to confess under interrogation to all kinds of things that they did not do! That may be one reason why self-incriminating evidence is not permitted in a Jewish court.

Charlie – the CIA program did a great deal of correlation – remember, over a 100 people were in “the program” (only 3 got waterboard, two thirds were cooperative immediately). SO they asked question they already knew the answers too, and correlated with the others.

I think ultimately they got a lot of actionable intelligence and saved thousands of lives. But the legal question remains.

Wolf VS Mods…pass the popcorn…,

Wolf is right. The Rambam uses the word “ALLAH” all the time (in the original). It just means God – aka Hashem. So, may Allah be with you all.

All?hu Akbar

I will b”n look into whether the Arabic term discussed above qualifies as a shem H-shem and should therefore be capitilized. (clearly G-d, L-rd, etc. meet that criteria)

If anyone has a mekor, please post it here.

Until then, in the interest of erring on the side of caution, I’d appreciate it if a mod would edit my prior post and capitilize the word in question.

Talking about Hashem, there is a big store where I live that has a bunch of Muslims/Arabs working there. All the time, over the PA system, you here: Hashem please come to the front/back etc. Kind of funny…

“Allah” is apparently the equivalent of “God” (both spelled out since this is discussing the halacha), and should be treated with equal respect. This applies to both its written and spoken usage.

I had the opportunity over Shabbos to discuss this with a Rov who is a talmid chochom and who I’ve asked shailos to in the past.

I realize that not mentioning the Rov’s name means that this is basically an unattributed statement, but: a) I didn’t ask his permission to repeat what he said publicly in his name b) It’s too close to home and would include personally identifiable info.