"The Habeas Corpus secures every man here, alien or citizen, against everything which is not law, whatever shape it may assume."<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>
--Thomas Jefferson to A. H. Rowan, 1798.
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/index.htm
http://www.socialistworker.org/2006-2/603/603_16_Torture.shtml
White House and senators agree on “compromise” for...
Making torture legal
By Nicole Colson | September 29, 2006 | Page 16
THE BUSH White House and a group Senate Republicans both declared victory last week after reaching a deal on legislation regarding the treatment of detainees in the U.S. “war on terror.”
But instead of a “compromise” to protect detainees’ rights--as Republican Sens. John McCain, Lindsey Graham and John Warner claimed they wanted--the new proposal will do more to legalize the torture of prisoners and prevent them from ever receiving a fair trial.
The “compromise” bill, which is expected to win congressional approval, gives the Bush administration a lot of what it demanded.
Faced with a U.S. Supreme Court decision challenging its detainee system at Guantánamo Bay, the White House had been pushing Congress to rewrite portions of the 1996 War Crimes Act to strip prisoners of protection under the Geneva Conventions, which outlaws “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment.”
Bush repeatedly claimed that complying with the Geneva Conventions was a “threat to the nation”--supposedly putting the U.S. at risk of another terrorist attack if the CIA had to suspend its interrogation of detainees. The CIA is known to use so-called “alternative interrogation procedures” like waterboarding (mock drowning) and extreme psychological abuse, considered illegal under international law.
Under the new deal, while language about the Geneva Conventions is left in the law, Bush himself will get to issue an executive order defining the “meaning and application” of the Geneva Conventions, and specifying which interrogation techniques would be prohibited.
In other words, the Bush administration will still be allowed to rewrite the law to suit its own definition of what constitutes an “outrage on personal dignity”--clearing the way for the continuation of the CIA’s interrogation program.
Even as the compromise was being brokered, new revelations showed the scope of U.S. detentions since the beginning of the “war on terror.”
According to a report in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, since September 11, the U.S. has created a global network of prisons in which an estimated 14,000 detainees--the majority of them in Iraq--remain incarcerated without charge. Tens of thousands more--more than 18,000 in Iraq just since June 2004--have been detained for weeks, months or even years by the U.S. before finally being released.
“Many say they were caught up in U.S. military sweeps, often interrogated around the clock, then released months or years later without apology, compensation or any word on why they were taken,” according to the Post-Intelligencer. “Seventy to 90 percent of the Iraq detentions in 2003 were ‘mistakes,’ U.S. officers once told the international Red Cross.”
According to the report, the number of detainees in U.S. custody has actually increased since the publication of photos in 2004 showing U.S. guards at Abu Ghraib prison abusing detainees.
When U.S. forces gave control of Abu Ghraib prison to Iraqi forces earlier this year, it was empty--but that’s only because 3,000 prisoners held at the facility were moved to Camp Cropper, where the U.S. is still in charge.
In all, there have been approximately 800 military investigations into the abuse of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan. As of May, just 89 service members had been convicted of crimes relating to detainee abuse at courts-martial.
As the Post-Intelligencer commented, “In only 14 of 34 cases has anyone been punished for the confirmed or suspected killings of detainees, the New York-based Human Rights First reports. The stiffest sentence in a torture-related death has been five months in jail.”
The horrible reality of the U.S. torture system is clear from the case of Maher Arar.
On September 26, 2002, Arar, a Canadian citizen born in Syria, was on his way home to British Columbia following a vacation in Tunisia when he was detained while changing planes at Kennedy International Airport in New York City. He had apparently been wrongly identified by Canadian authorities as an “Islamic extremist” with suspected links to al-Qaeda.
Arar was interrogated for 13 days before being hooded, shackled and transported--“rendered,” to use the CIA’s term--overseas, first to Jordan and then Syria. There, Arar was beaten--often, he says, with shredded electrical cables until he was disoriented--and held in a dank underground cell about the size of a coffin.
After more than 10 months of this torture and abuse, Arar was finally released after intervention by the Canadian government. No charges were ever filed against him.
Last week, a Canadian commission exonerated Arar, saying that there was no evidence he ever had any connection to terrorists or posed a security threat. Canadian officials criticized the U.S. government for acting in a “less than forthcoming manner.”
Based on the report, that’s a vast understatement. On October 4, 2002, before Arar had been taken out of the U.S., Canadian counterterrorism officials sent a fax to the FBI saying that they “had yet to complete either a detailed investigation of Mr. Arar or a link analysis on him,” and that “while he has had contact with many individuals of interest to this project we are unable to indicate links to al-Qaeda.”
The next day, a Royal Canadian Mounted Police official spoke by phone with an unidentified F.B.I. official. “During this conversation, the FBI official said that the Americans feared they did not have sufficient information to support charges against Mr. Arar,” said the report.
The Canadian officer agreed, saying that there was also “insufficient evidence to charge Mr. Arar in Canada.” Canadian officials told the U.S. that Arar would be kept under surveillance once back in Canada.
Instead of allowing him to return home, however, the U.S. seems to have struck a deal with Syria--known for its use of torture--to take Arar for “questioning,” without informing Canadian officials. “The American authorities appear to have intentionally kept Canadian officials in the dark about their plans to remove Mr. Arar to Syria,” according to the report.
For several weeks after he was rendered, Canadian officials couldn’t locate Arar, because Syrian officials at first denied he was in the country--in order, according to the report, to hide the fact that he was being tortured.
"I have waited a long time to have my name cleared,” Arar said in a statement last week. “I was tortured and lost a year of my life. I will never be the same. The United States must take responsibility for what it did to me and must stop destroying more innocent lives with its unlawful actions."
But if the Bush administration and Congress get their way, people like Maher Arar will face even more obstacles in trying to prove their innocence.
The new “compromise” legislation will allow statements obtained through coercion and hearsay evidence against detainees, while limiting their right to appeals. In addition, the bill will retroactively exempt Bush administration officials, CIA agents and other military personnel from prosecution under the War Crimes Act for many of the acts of mental and physical abuse that detainees say they were subjected to while in U.S. custody.
Plus, detainees being held by the U.S. in other countries would be legally stripped of their right to habeas corpus. That would essentially condemn detainees to indefinite confinement, with no right to challenge their detention in U.S. courts.
As Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, told Inter Press Service, wiping out habeus corpus “is the equivalent of the authorization of executive detention--one of the hallmarks of a police state.”
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On C-SPAN 2 today was general discussion in the U.S. Senate on Bill 3930 about Detainee Treatments and Trials.
* Defines 'enemy combatants' and sets parameters for holding and detaining
prisoners.
* Sets military commssinsn as the court system for trying terrorism suspects.
The right of 'habeus corpus' was originally known in the Magna Carta of 1215.
Link= Magna Carta of 1215: English Translation
http://www.bl.uk/treasures/magnacarta/translation.html
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http://www.lectlaw.com/def/h001.htm
Baclground on 'habeas corpus'-----
Lat. "you have the body" Prisoners often seek release by filing a petition for a writ of habeas corpus. A writ of habeas corpus is a judicial mandate to a prison official ordering that an inmate be brought to the court so it can be determined whether or not that person is imprisoned lawfully and whether or not he should be released from custody. A habeas corpus petition is a petition filed with a court by a person who objects to his own or another's detention or imprisonment. The petition must show that the court ordering the detention or imprisonment made a legal or factual error. Habeas corpus petitions are usually filed by persons serving prison sentences. In family law, a parent who has been denied custody of his child by a trial court may file a habeas corpus petition. Also, a party may file a habeas corpus petition if a judge declares her in contempt of court and jails or threatens to jail her.
In Brown v. Vasquez, 952 F.2d 1164, 1166 (9th Cir. 1991), cert. denied, 112 S.Ct. 1778 (1992), the court observed that the Supreme Court has "recognized the fact that`[t]he writ of habeas corpus is the fundamental instrument for safeguarding individual freedom against arbitrary and lawless state action.' Harris v. Nelson, 394 U.S. 286, 290-91 (1969). " Therefore, the writ must be "administered with the initiative and flexibility essential to insure that miscarriages of justice within its reach are surfaced and corrected." Harris, 394 U.S. at 291.
The writ of habeas corpus serves as an important check on the manner in which state courts pay respect to federal constitutional rights. The writ is "the fundamental instrument for safeguarding individual freedom against arbitrary and lawless state action." Harris v. Nelson, 394 U.S. 286, 290-91 (1969). Because the habeas process delays the finality of a criminal case, however, the Supreme Court in recent years has attempted to police the writ to ensure that the costs of the process do not exceed its manifest benefits. In McCleskey the Court raised barriers against successive and abusive petitions. The Court raised these barriers based on significant concerns about delay, cost, prejudice to the prosecution, frustration of the sovereign power of the States, and the "heavy burden" federal collateral litigation places on "scarce federal judicial resources," a burden that "threatens the capacity of the system to resolve primary disputes." McCleskey, 499 U.S. at 467.
The Court observed that"[t]he writ of habeas corpus is one of the centerpieces of our liberties. `But the writ has potentialities for evil as well as for good. Abuse of the writ may undermine the orderly administration of justice and therefore weaken the forces of authority that are essential for civilization.' " McCleskey, 499 U.S. at 496 (quoting Brown v. Allen, 344 U.S. 443, 512 (1952) (opinion of Frankfurter, J.))
The predominant inquiry on habeas is a legal one: whether the "petitioner's custody simpliciter" is valid as measured by the Constitution. Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S. 722, 730 (1991). The purpose of the great writ is not to relitigate state trials.
Dismissal of habeas petition under the "total exhaustion" rule of Rose v. Lundy, 455 U.S. 509, 520 (1982) (each claim raised by petitioner must be exhausted before district court may reach the merits of any claim in habeas petition).
Jury exposure to facts not in evidence deprives a defendant of the rights to confrontation, cross-examination and assistance of counsel embodied in the Sixth Amendment. Dickson v. Sullivan, 849 F.2d 403, 406 (9th Cir. 1988); see also Jeffries v. Blodgett, 5 F.3d 1180, 1191 (9th Cir. 1993) (introduction of extraneous prior bad acts evidence during deliberations constitutes error of constitutional proportions), cert. denied, 114 S.Ct. 1294 (1994). However, a petitioner is entitled to habeas relief only if it can be established that the constitutional error had "substantial and injurious effect or influence in determining the jury's verdict." Brecht v. Abrahamson, 113 S. Ct. 1710, 1722 & n.9 (1993). Whether the constitutional error was harmless is not a factual determination entitled to the statutory presumption of correctness under 28 U.S.C. S 2254(d). Dickson, 849 F.2d at 405; Marino v. Vasquez, 812 F.2d 499, 504 (9th Cir. 1987).
In a habeas corpus proceeding, a federal court generally "will not review a question of federal law decided by a state court if the decision of that court rests on a state law ground that is independent of the federal question and adequate to support the judgment." Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S. 722, 111 S. Ct. 2546, 2553-54 (1991). This doctrine applies to bar federal habeas review when the state court has declined to address the petitioner's federal claims because he failed to meet state procedural requirements. Id. at 2254; see also Sochor v. Florida, 504 U.S. 527, 119 L. Ed. 2d 326, 337 (1992). Thus, the independent state grounds doctrine bars the federal courts from reconsidering the issue in the context of habeas corpus review as long as the state court explicitly invokes a state procedural bar rule as a separate basis for its decision. Harris v. Reed, 489 U.S. 255, 264 n.10 (1988).
Habeas petitioners are not entitled to habeas relief based on trial error unless they can establish that it resulted in actual prejudice. O'Neal v. McAninch, 115 S. Ct. 992, 994-95 (1995). It is the responsibility of the court, once it concludes there was error, to determine whether the error affected the judgment. If the court is left in grave doubt, the conviction cannot stand. Id.
On a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, the standard of review for a claim of prosecutorial misconduct, like the standard of review for a claim of judicial misconduct, is " 'the narrow one of due process, and not the broad exercise of supervisory power.' " Darden v. Wainwright, 477 U.S. 168, 181 (1986) (quoting Donnelly v. DeChristoforo, 416 U.S. 637, 642 (1974)). "The relevant question is whether the prosecutor['s] comments 'so infected the trial with unfairness as to make the resulting conviction a denial of due process.' " Id. (quoting Donnelly, 416 U.S. at 643).
A federal court has no supervisory authority over criminal proceedings in state courts. The only standards we can impose on the states are those dictated by the Constitution. Daye, 712 F.2d at 1571. Objectionable as some actions might be, when considered in the context of the trial as a whole they are not "of sufficient gravity to warrant the conclusion that fundamental fairness has been denied." Id. at 1572. See Gayle v. Scully, 779 F.2d at 807 (trial judge's caustic, sarcastic comments and offensive conduct, although perhaps inconsistent with institutional standards of federal courts, did not violate due process); Daye, 712 F.2d at 1572 (trial judge's skeptical attitude toward defendant's testimony, and his reinforcement of identification evidence by government witnesses, "approached but did not cross the line that permits [a ruling] that the Constitution has been violated").
The fact that a jury instruction is inadequate by Federal Court direct appeal standards does not mean a petitioner who relies on such an inadequacy will be entitled to habeas relief from a state court conviction. Estelle v. McGuire, 502 U.S. 62, 71-72 (1991). In habeas proceedings challenging state court convictions, relief is available only for constitutional violations.
Whether a constitutional violation has occurred will depend upon the evidence in the case and the overall instructions given to the jury. See Cupp v. Naughten, 414 U.S. at 147 (constitutionality determined not by focusing on ailing instruction "in artificial isolation" but by considering effect of instruction "in the context of the overall charge."). See also Henderson v. Kibbe, 431 U.S. 145, 155 (1977) (recognizing that "[a]n omission, or an incomplete instruction, is less likely to be prejudicial than a misstatement of the law" and, therefore, a habeas petitioner whose claim of error involves the failure to give a particular instruction bears an "especially heavy" burden).
Shackling, except in extreme forms, is susceptible to harmless error analysis. Castillo v. Stainer, 997 F.2d at 669. In a habeas case dealing with a state court sentence, the question is whether the shackling "had substantial and injurious effect or influence in determining the jury's verdict." Id. (quoting Brecht v. Abrahamson, 113 S. Ct. 1710, 1714 (1993)). If we are in "grave doubt" whether the error affected the verdict, the error is not harmless. O'Neal v. McAninch, 115 S. Ct. 992, 994 (1995).
The risk of doubt, however, is on the state. Id. at 996 (rejecting language in Brecht v. Abrahamson which places on defendant burden of showing prejudice). See Castillo v. Stainer, 983 F.2d at 149 (finding shackling at trial harmless error because defendant only wore waist chain that could not be seen by jury).
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http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2006/01/26/usdom14266.htm
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: U.S.: Congress Should Reject Detainee Bill
Denies Right of Habeas Corpus, Defines Enemy Combatant Too Broadly
(Washington, D.C., September 26, 2006) – The U.S. Congress should vote down the draft military commissions and detainee treatment bill, Human Rights Watch said today. In denying the fundamental right of habeas corpus to detainees held abroad, defining “unlawful enemy combatants” in a dangerously broad manner, and limiting protections against detainee mistreatment, the bill would undermine the rule of law and America’s ability to protect its own citizens from unjust treatment at the hands of other governments.
In its immediate practical impact, the most damaging of the bill’s provisions is clearly its “court-stripping” provision, which would bar detainees in U.S. custody anywhere around the world from challenging the legality of their detention or their treatment via habeas corpus actions, even if they have been subjected to torture. Innocent people could be locked up forever, without ever having the facts of their case reviewed by an independent court.
If held to be constitutional, the court-stripping provision would result in more than 200 pending cases being ejected from the courts, including the case that resulted in the Supreme Court’s landmark detainee ruling in June.
“It’s no secret that the Bush administration deeply resents the court rulings that have recognized basic legal protections that shield detainees from abuse,” said Kenneth Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch. “Congress should reject the administration’s blatant attempt to eviscerate the courts’ role in the U.S. system of checks and balances.”
The right to habeas corpus is one of the oldest and most fundamental of human rights protections. By stripping the courts of habeas jurisdiction over detainees, the U.S. would be signaling to the rest of the world that it is not bound by the rule of law in its treatment of them.
The bill has other dangerous provisions as well. The latest version of the legislation includes an extremely dangerous expansion in the bill’s definition of “unlawful enemy combatant” – a phrase used by the administration to justify holding a combatant outside of the usual protections given to combatants by the Geneva Conventions. It now explicitly deems persons who have “purposefully and materially supported” hostilities against the United States to be combatants, an unprecedented redefinition of “combatant” that could potentially cover a range of innocent people. Financing and support for terrorist activities are already criminal offenses in the civilian justice system. This definition would pervert any reasonable concept of what a combatant is.
“This provision expands the concept of combatant way beyond anything that is traditionally accepted, and it could come back to haunt Americans,” Roth said. “This definition would make every civilian cafeteria worker at a U.S. military base, and every worker in an American uniform factory, someone whom enemy forces could shoot to kill.”
Moreover, the provision also gives carte blanche to the Pentagon to call anyone an “unlawful enemy combatant.” All it requires is that the person be deemed an unlawful combatant by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal (the administrative bodies used at Guantánamo) or “another competent tribunal” established under presidential or military authority.
Another damaging amendment is the bill’s provisions on procedures and rules of evidence for military commissions. Courts-martial proceedings are no longer the starting point for such rules and procedures; instead, the Secretary of Defense is to be delegated the power to create new rules and procedures if he or she considers the use of their courts-martial equivalents to be impracticable.
The legislation rejects the Bush administration’s attempt to explicitly rewrite the humane treatment requirements of the Geneva Conventions and to decriminalize all interrogation practices short of torture. On “Face the Nation,” last Sunday, Senator John McCain made clear that practices such as waterboarding, extreme sleep deprivation and induced hypothermia will continue to be war crimes if the legislation is passed.
The bill does, however, narrow the scope of the War Crimes Act; it bars the Geneva Conventions from being invoked in any suit against the U.S. government, gives the president power to interpret “the meaning and application” of the Geneva Conventions, and prohibits the courts from relying on foreign or international law sources in deciding cases involving certain violations of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.
The bill’s changes to the War Crimes Act are particularly worrying. While the most abusive of the CIA’s techniques should be prohibited, the administration may try to interpret the draft legislation as allowing other humiliating and degrading practices universally banned by Common Article 3.
Amendments to the draft legislation are due on Wednesday, and it will probably come to the floor for a vote sometime this week.
“The bill effectively rewrites key pieces of the Geneva Conventions and takes away the most fundamental right of detainees to be heard,” said Roth. “It should be rejected as a whole.”
The bill’s court-stripping provisions have drawn critical congressional scrutiny. At Senate hearings on Monday, former diplomats and others underscored the damaging implications of such rules for the treatment of U.S. soldiers who are captured abroad. If the U.S. supports stripping captives of all legal protections, they emphasized, so might other countries.
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Related Material
U.S.: Senate Leaders Reject Explicit Redefinition of Geneva Conventions
Press Release, September 22, 2006
U.S.: Congress Must Reject Ploy for Discredited Tribunals
Press Release, September 7, 2006
U.S.: Bush Justifies CIA Detainee Abuse
Press Release, September 6, 2006
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From: http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/01/26/usdom14266.htm
Human Rights Watch 350 Fifth Avenue, 34th Floor New York, NY 10118-3299 USA
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http://www.periodico26.cu/english/opinion/torture092706.htm
Bush: Legalizing Torture
While the images of prisoners subjected to various forms of humiliation by U.S. soldiers at Abu Graib prison in Iraq, and of detainees being abused at U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Naval Base are still fresh, the U.S. Congress and its President George W. Bush have agreed to give the green light to the arrest and questioning of alleged terrorists.
To many people, the plan presented by Bush is an attempt to legalize torture, while trying to limit the scope of the Fourth Geneva Convention Related to the Treatment of Prisoners of War.
In the opinion of many experts, Washington is also trying to avoid the international community's criticism of constant human rights abuses at its secret jails scattered throughout the world. The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon have been used as a pretext to begin its alleged fight against terrorism and launch long-desired wars.
UN rapporteurs said that the draft bill on Bush's interrogation methods violates the provisions of the Geneva Convention on human rights. They added that his proposal would legalize the continuation of abuses committed at different detention centers such as Guantanamo, a naval enclave in eastern Cuba, illegally occupied by the United States.
In a report to the Human Rights Committee in Geneva, UN rapporteurs asserted that Bush's plan is a "flagrant violation of U.S. obligations regarding human rights and requirements of Article 3 of the Geneva Convention."
The draft legislation by the White House, which will now be voted on by both the House and Senate, replaces the absolute prohibition of torture with a vague and flexible definition allowing abuses depending on the circumstances. It also attempts to prevent U.S. soldiers from being charged with war crimes and taken to court.
With his plan, the U.S. president also seeks to legalize his wiretapping program, recently rejected by a federal court. The illegal action of the eavesdropping operation has shocked U. S. public opinion.
Civil rights organizations challenged the wiretapping, ordered by Washington without a judicial request, taking the case to court earlier this year.
Bush doesn't seem to care that his actions make everyone continue to question the moral basis of the so-called war on terror, as his former secretary of state, Colin Powell, said recently.
Nor is the United States taking into account the opinion of a growing number of Americans that the world is less secure after President George W. Bush launched his crusade against terror and that the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq has increased the terrorist threat throughout the world.
Taken from Radio Havana Cuba
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Full text of General Powell letter to Senator McCain and
Geneva Convention Article 3
September 15, 2006
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,11069-2359536,00.html
Here is the letter written by General Colin Powell, the former US Secretary of State, to Senator John McCain, the senior Republican, challenging the Bush Administration's treatment of terror suspects:
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
General Colin L. Powell, USA (Retired)
909 North Washington Street, Suite 700
Alexandria, Virginia, 22314
September 13, 2006
Dear Senator McCain:
I just returned to town and learned about the debate taking place in Congress to redefine Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention. I do not support such a step and believe it would be inconsistent with the McCain amendment on torture which I supported last year.
I have read the powerful and eloquent letter sent to you by one (of) my distinguished predecessors as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Jack Vessey. I fully endorse in tone and tint his powerful argument. The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism. To redefine Common Article 3 would add to those doubts. Furthermore, it would put our own troops at risk.
I am as familiar with The Armed Forces Officer as is Jack Vessey. It was written after all the horrors World War II and General George C. Marshall, then Secretary of Defense, used it to tell the world and to remind our soldiers of our moral obligations with respect to those in our custody.
Sincerely,
Colin L. Powell
Related Link: Letter released by McCain's office=
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2006/09/14/GR2006091400728.html
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Geneva Convention Article 3 Relative to Prisoners of War
http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/91.htm
Article 3
In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the following provisions:
1. Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria.
To this end the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons:
(a) Violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;
(b) Taking of hostages;
(c) Outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment;
(d) The passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.
2. The wounded and sick shall be collected and cared for.
An impartial humanitarian body, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, may offer its services to the Parties to the conflict.
The Parties to the conflict should further endeavour to bring into force, by means of special agreements, all or part of the other provisions of the present Convention.
The application of the preceding provisions shall not affect the legal status of the Parties to the conflict.
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MCCAIN RELEASES LETTER FROM GEN. HUGH SHELTON ON GENEVA CONVENTIONS
http://mccain.senate.gov/index.cfm?fuseaction=NewsCenter.ViewPressRelease&Content_id=2290
For Immediate Release
Wednesday, Sep 20, 2006
Washington, DC – U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) today released the attached letter from Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Hugh Shelton, on the dangers of redefining Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.
Gen. Shelton is the 5th Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs who has expressed concern regarding a proposed change in Common Article 3, joining former Secretary of State General Colin Powell, General John Vessey, General John Shalikashvili, and Admiral William Crowe Jr. Former Secretary of State George Shultz voiced his concern in a statement yesterday, as well.
“Such an action would send a terrible signal to other Nations that the United States is attempting to water down its obligations under Geneva,” said Gen. Shelton. “At a time when we are deeply engaged in a war of ideas, as well as a war on the battlefield, this would be an egregious mistake. I firmly believe that not only is such a move unnecessary, it potentially subjects our men and women in uniform to unnecessary danger.”
In addition to the five distinguished Joint Chairmen, over 40 other retired military leaders and former officials of the Department of Defense have sent a letter to Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner and Ranking Member Carl Levin stating that a redefinition of Common Article 3 violates the core principles of the Geneva Conventions and poses a grave threat to American service-members, now and in future wars.
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http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Humane-Rights-Agenda/
http://humane-rights-agenda.blogspot.com/
http://www.0101aztlan.net/index.html
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