February 8, 2010
For OpEdNews: Mary Shaw – Writer
On February 6th, Sarah Palin gave the keynote address at a tea party convention in Nashville.
As expected, I disagreed with just about everything Palin said. However, there was one part of her speech in particular that really got my blood boiling: She propagated the lie that the would-be Christmas airline bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, stopped talking after he was read his Miranda rights. The right wing likes to use that talking point to further their belief that terrorism suspects deserve no rights.
The Washington Post described that portion of her speech as follows:
“Serving up fiery rhetoric with a broad smile, she attacked the administration’s policies on the economy and on national security, assailing in particular the decision to read Miranda rights to the man accused of attempting to bomb a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day.
‘Treating this like a mere law enforcement matter places our country at great risk because that’s not how radical Islamic extremists are looking at this,’ Palin said to thunderous applause. ‘They know we’re at war, and to win that war we need a commander in chief, not a professor of law standing at the lectern.’”
It is alarming to hear this nonsense being repeated and then devoured so enthusiastically by Palin’s audience, primarily because it simply is not true.
In fact, law enforcement officials have gained a great deal of intelligence from Abdulmutallab, proving that a rights-based approach can actually be much more effective than the previous administration’s preferred pro-torture/anti-rights methodology.
After all, experts agree that torture does not work. It does not produce reliable intelligence, because the victim is likely to say whatever he thinks his torturer wants to hear, in order to make the pain stop. Palin’s former running mate John McCain made that very point when he told the story of how, when asked under torture in Vietnam to provide his captors with the names of the members of his flight squadron, he instead rattled off the names of the Green Bay Packers’ offensive line, “knowing that providing them false information was sufficient to suspend the abuse.”
And, because torture is illegal, and because information obtained under torture is not reliable, it is not admissible in court, opening up another can of worms: If the only proof you have against a defendant was obtained under torture, you have no basis for conviction. But what if the defendant is deemed too dangerous to release?
As Georgetown Law Professor David Cole wrote in a 2005 article for the Los Angeles Times:
“[B]y electing early on to violate the universal prohibition on torture and cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment, the [Bush] administration has not only inflicted unconscionable harm on detainees from Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo, and done incalculable damage to the U.S. image abroad, it has painted itself into a corner. It is becoming increasingly unacceptable to hold so-called enemy combatants indefinitely without trial. But we have shielded the vast majority of them from being tried for the wrongs they may well have committed.”
But all these facts are apparently not enough to stop Palin and her rabid fans from calling for more of the same. So, for this reason and many more, if Palin does decide to run for the presidency in 2012 as her fans are hoping, Democrats and others must work very, very hard to keep her from winning. Regardless of President Obama’s shortcomings and unkept promises, we cannot afford another neocon in the White House any time soon. There’s still far too much healing to be done.
Posted by jonolan on February 9, 2010 at 1:17 pm
So, let me see. Palin is lying because a far, far leftist blog (TAP) says that she is? Hmmmm….Sorry, I can’t buy that. Things like the writers and editors of TAP would say or do anything to overthrow America and replace it with some disgusting Leftist neo-state.
Now I’m not a huge fan of Palin’s, but I sort of agree with her on the matter of the Islamic terrorists were fighting a war against. They’re not civilian criminals and shouldn’t be treated as such in any way shape or form. They, as combatants who refuse to wear uniforms or badges and purposefully target purely civilian targets, should be handled by military tribunals – preferably field courts authorized to operate under the mandates of a combat zone.
Keep civilian laws, with all of their weaknesses and fragility out of it completely. Frankly, not only would civilian laws critically hamper our war effort, those laws would be irrevocably damaged by the necessities of that war – like Obama’s & Holder’s plan for a “kangaroo court” for KSM.
Posted by Sidney Carton on February 9, 2010 at 1:59 pm
If we’re fighting a war against Islamic Terrorists, then the Constitution states that they are covered under the Geneva Convention. This is because treaties ratified by Congress have the force of law, and the Geneva Convention was so ratified. Hence it is to determine the way we treat prisoners of war.
If terrorists are not prisoners of war, they are criminals. If you don’t care for either option Jonolan, then either get Congress to repeal the Geneva Convention (Alberto Gonzalez thought it was “quaint” anyway) or get the “enemy combatant” option enshrined into law. Those are your options.
Posted by jonolan on February 9, 2010 at 5:04 pm
OK, Sidney. I’m perfectly willing to apply any applicable codicil in the Geneva Convention to the terrorists. That is, in fact, why I included mention of they’re being “combatants who refuse to wear uniforms or badges and purposefully target purely civilian targets,” and said that they should be turned over to military tribunals.
You see they’re not “protected” by the Geneva Convention, explicitly not qualifying as POWs for the reasons I mentioned but can be charged with high crimes and subject to summary judgment under that same Convention for those same reasons.
Also, when claiming that “treaties ratified by Congress have the force of law” one should always be wise enough to determine what reservations, understandings and declarations (RUDs) have been applied to it by Congress at the time of its ratification. It’ll be a saddening exercise for you though especially when you find out how many RUDs there are and how many treaties are considered “non self-executing,” meaning that they have no force of law into and of themselves but only if and as applied by US laws.
Posted by Sidney Carton on February 10, 2010 at 2:27 am
Fair enough Jonolan, we put loopholes in our treaties, no big surprise there, we put loopholes in everything else too.
In the case of the underwear bomber we got the cooperation of his family, which got his cooperation all while treating him like a Mirandized criminal. So effectively the system works either way.
Posted by jonolan on February 10, 2010 at 9:52 am
Normal police-based interrogation did, in fact, work with the underwear bomber. Would Intel / Military methods have worked better or quicker? Probably, since he originally was talkative until offered an attorney and the right to remain silent. Did it matter in this case? No. It turns out that there were no time constraints to the information he had.
We can’t always depend upon that though. KSM laughed at normal interrogation methods, as did many of the more seasoned and committed jihadis. They would certainly laugh at our legal system and any civilian trial that they were given.
Posted by Sidney Carton on February 10, 2010 at 1:35 pm
Let them laugh. They can laugh all they want in an 8×8 cell until they’re old and decrepit, or until we wheel them into the chamber to get the last unpleasant little prick from the needle.
As to time constraints, one can never know for sure.