D. Scarlatti
11-23-2004, 06:00 AM
This is kind of old news I guess, but I came across this informative page while doing a bit of research for a school assignment. The Bybee Memo was written for President Bush in August, 2002, by Jay S. Bybee, who is now seated on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, to legally define the upper thresholds of physical pain and mental anguish the U.S. could inflict on detainees in the "war on terror" without violating two international treaties outlawing torture and "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" to which the U.S. is a signatory.
The link has a good analysis of the memo itself, a .pdf file of which is available from the Washington Post. Anyway it's all pretty self explanatory.
There's also a link to Attorney General nominee Alberto Gonzalez's January 25, 2002, memo to Bush discounting the State Department's concerns with Bush's attempt to exclude "Taliban" detainees in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay from prisoner of war status under the Third Geneva Convention, to which the U.S. is also a "high contracting party."
OLC's August 1, 2002 Torture Memo ("the Bybee Memo") (http://www.discourse.net/archives/2004/06/olcs_aug_1_2002_torture_memo_the_bybee_memo.html)
I'm arguing that the Abu Ghraib abuses are defensible from a "taking orders" perspective, since the policies in place, however misunderstood, misconstrued, and poorly implemented, are directly traceable to the administration's policy positions enunciated by its officials, particularly those in the Office of Legal Counsel like Gonzalez and Bybee.
The link has a good analysis of the memo itself, a .pdf file of which is available from the Washington Post. Anyway it's all pretty self explanatory.
There's also a link to Attorney General nominee Alberto Gonzalez's January 25, 2002, memo to Bush discounting the State Department's concerns with Bush's attempt to exclude "Taliban" detainees in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay from prisoner of war status under the Third Geneva Convention, to which the U.S. is also a "high contracting party."
OLC's August 1, 2002 Torture Memo ("the Bybee Memo") (http://www.discourse.net/archives/2004/06/olcs_aug_1_2002_torture_memo_the_bybee_memo.html)
I'm arguing that the Abu Ghraib abuses are defensible from a "taking orders" perspective, since the policies in place, however misunderstood, misconstrued, and poorly implemented, are directly traceable to the administration's policy positions enunciated by its officials, particularly those in the Office of Legal Counsel like Gonzalez and Bybee.