Who Needs The Geneva Convention?
Posted April 3rd, 2006 by quarsan
not New Labour according to John Reid:
"The legal constraints upon us have to be set against an enemy that adheres to no constraints whatsoever, but an enemy so swift to insist that we do in every particular, and that makes life very difficult for the forces of democracy."
In particular, Mr Reid said the spread of weapons of mass destruction posed new questions about when it was right to mount a pre-emptive strike against another country to prevent an attack.
"We know that terrorist groups continue to try to acquire such weapons and that they have described their willingness to use them," he said.
"Hopefully, we would learn of any such threat before any atrocities had been committed. I believe we would have strong legal grounds to take action to protect ourselves against attack. I also suspect that others would disagree."
I can't really see why John
I can't really see why John Reid would need to change the Geneva Conventions seeing as both Britain and America have chosen to ignore them anyway. Suddenly, with the stroke of a pen, waterboarding is no longer torture, and Guantanamo merely "an anomaly". All the same it would be interesting to see what changes John Reid would like to make to the Geneva Conventions, and see how the new practices would compare with Uzbekistan perhaps. Maybe they can get Islam Karimov to help draft it.
Let's just set aside for the
Let's just set aside for the moment the fact that torture is immoral, illegal, and throws away the moral high ground. Intelligence gathered under torture is going to be BAD intelligence. The experiences of the Tipton Three show that nicely. Under torture, most people are going to say, "OK, whatever. If you say I was at the meeting then I was at the meeting". Even when simple checks could show otherwise.
I suppose if they change the
I suppose if they change the convention they can make the travesties that are currently happening appear to have a leagal justification. Pre-emptive strikes against enemies with mass-destruction weapons just seems, to me, to be trying to get the green light on an attack on Iran. The closer we get to the end of this governments reign (i pray to God this is the case) the more desperate they seem to push through US led policies in the face of public opinion.
Link to Uncle Sam's Army
Link to Uncle Sam's Army picture
I bogged on this bizarre
I bogged on this bizarre statement here, the language and ideology is becoming more and more neo-conservative as each day passes.