[Intelforum] Presidential Pardons for U.S. Intelligence Officers

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From: "Anthony D'Amato" <a-damato at northwestern.edu>
To: intelforum at lists101.his.com
Subject: Presidential Pardons for U.S. Intelligence Officers
Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2008 23:17:23 -0600

Tim Shipman in Washington writes for the London Telegraph:

Many fear that Barack Obama, who has pledged to close the Guantanamo Bay
detention camp and put an end to the policy of extraordinary rendition,
could launch a legal witch hunt against those who oversaw the policies
after he is sworn in on Jan 20.

   Most vulnerable are US intelligence officers who took part in intensive
interrogations against terrorist suspects, using techniques including
water boarding, which many believe crossed the line into torture.

   A former CIA officer familiar with the backstage lobbying for pardons,
said: "These are the people President Bush asked to fight the war on
terror for him. He gave them the green light to fight tough. The view
of many in the intelligence community is that he should not leave them
vulnerable to legal censure when he leaves."

===========================

I hope that members of Intelforum are not among the "many" who support
pardons for these intelligence officers. Those people who aided and abetted
torture did so of their own free will; no one held a gun to their head. The
law of the US prohibits torture. This law is not confined to territory where
the torture takes place; it applies directly to the torturers and people who
are complicit with them wherever the torture occurs.

The laws of war represent a huge cultural advancement over the disregard for
innocent life of past centuries. Those laws should not be undermined.

This is not to say that I think waterboarding (the Japanese "water cure" of
World War II) constitutes torture per se. That's why we have cases; to look
into particular facts with a presumption against the prosecutor's version of
the facts.

Anthony D'Amato
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