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TechnoratiAnatomy of Bush's Torture 'Paradigm'
The prose of the recently leaked report of the International Committee of the Red Cross on torture seems colorless. It is at the same time obscene - almost pornographic.
The 41-page ICRC report depicts scenes of prisoners forced to remain naked for long periods, sometimes in the presence of women, often with their hands shackled over their heads in "stress positions" as they are left to soil themselves.
The report's images of sadism also include prisoners slammed against walls, locked in tiny boxes, and strapped to a bench and subjected to the drowning sensation of waterboarding.
How could it be that we Americans tolerate the kind of leaders who would subject others to systematic torture - yes, that's what the official report of the international body charged with monitoring the Geneva agreements on the treatment of prisoners concludes - torture.
Over the past week I have been asked to explain how this could have happened; who authorized the torture in our name? The Red Cross report lacks the earmarks of rogues or "rotten apples" at the bottom of some barrel.
This is what I have been telling those who ask:
Rather than Harry Truman's famous motto on his Oval Office desk, "The Buck Stops Here," this was a case of "The Buck Starts Here." President George W. Bush set the tone and created the framework, with strong support from Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
The first hints of what was in store came from the President himself in the White House bunker late on Sept. 11, 2001, at a meeting with his closest national security advisers after his TV address to the nation about the terrorist attacks that morning.
The vengeful bunker mentality prevailing at that meeting comes through clearly in the report of one of the participants, Richard Clarke in his book, Against All Enemies. Describing the President as confident, determined, forceful, Clarke provides the following account of what President Bush said:
"We are at war.... Nothing else matters. ... Any barriers in your way, they're gone."
When, later in the discussion, Secretary Rumsfeld noted that international law allowed the use of force only to prevent future attacks and not for retribution, Bush nearly bit his head off.
"No," the President yelled in the narrow conference room, "I don't care what the international lawyers say, we are going to kick some ass."
‘Taking the Gloves Off'
In the weeks that followed, the air in Washington hung heavy with demons of retribution. Afghanistan was invaded in October 2001, and during a prisoner uprising on Nov. 25, a CIA officer was killed there.
A young American citizen, John Walker Lindh, was discovered among the prisoners in the area. There was not the slightest evidence that Lindh had anything to do with the killing.
But documents show that U.S. Joint Special Operations troops were told that the office of the Defense Secretary's counsel (William J. Haynes II, was Pentagon general counsel at the time) had authorized an Army intelligence officer "to take the gloves off and ask whatever he wanted" of Lindh.
Despite urgent intervention by Justice Department ethics attorney Jesselyn Radack, Lindh was not properly read his rights. Instead, the FBI agent on the scene ad-libbed in an offhand way, "You have the right to an attorney. But there are no attorneys here in Afghanistan."
Lindh had been seriously wounded in the leg. Despite that, U.S. troops put a hood over him, stripped him naked, duct-taped him to a stretcher for days in an unheated and unlit shipping container, and threatened him with death.
Parts of his humiliating ordeal were captured on film (a practice that became tragically familiar with the photos of Abu Ghraib).
In her book, Canary in the Coalmine: Blowing the Whistle in the Case of John Walker Lindh, attorney Radack comments that official documents pertaining to this case provide "the earliest known evidence that the Bush Administration was willing to push the envelope on how far it could go to extract information from suspected terrorists."
(Because she protested, Radack was fired as Justice Department legal ethics advisor, put under criminal investigation, and even added to the "no-fly" list.)
End-Run Around Geneva
But the Bush administration was just getting started.
On Jan. 18, 2002, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales advised the President that the Justice Department had issued a formal legal opinion concluding that the Geneva Convention III on the Treatment of Prisoners of War (GPW) does not apply with respect to al Qaeda.
Gonzales added that he understood that Bush had "decided that GPW does not apply and, accordingly, that al Qaeda and Taliban detainees are not prisoners of war under the GPW."
On Jan. 19, 2002, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld told combat commanders that the President had "determined that al-Qaeda and Taliban individuals under the control of the Department of Defense are not entitled to prisoner of war status for purposes of the Geneva Conventions of 1949."
Secretary of State Colin Powell asked the President to reconsider his decision and to conclude, instead, that the GPW does apply to both al Qaeda and the Taliban. But Powell's protest was couched in bureaucratic politeness, rather than in anger and outrage. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Cowardice in the Time of Torture."]
The next step took the form of the fateful memorandum of Jan. 25, 2002, signed by Alberto Gonzales but drafted by counsel to the Vice President David Addington. That memo outlined for the President "the ramifications of your decision and the Secretary's [Powell's] request for reconsideration."
It described a "new paradigm" that, the writers claimed "renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners, and renders quaint some of its provisions."
Gonzales and Addington urged the President to disregard Powell's misgivings and move ahead. But they cloaked their argument in lawyerly language that obscured what was to come.
The lawyers argued that it was "appropriate" and "consistent with military necessity" to waive Geneva regarding the treatment of al Qaeda and Taliban detainees, but they inserted assurances that the prisoners would be treated "humanely" and "in a manner consistent with the principles of GPW."
Powell Rebuffed
Brushing aside Powell's objections, President Bush adopted the Gonzales/Addington language and signed a memorandum to that effect on Feb. 7, 2002. The memo went to Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Powell, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, Attorney General John Ashcroft, Chief of Staff to the President Andrew Card, Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet, Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs Condoleezza Rice, and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Richard Myers.
The memo amounted to an executive order, although it was not labeled as such. In it, the President alludes fulsomely to Justice Department opinions and recommendations, as well as "facts" supplied by the Defense Department.
Bush then takes clear responsibility for the decision to spurn Geneva: "I determine that common Article 3 of Geneva does not apply to either al Qaeda or Taliban detainees. ... I determine that Taliban detainees ... do not qualify as prisoners of war under Article 4 of Geneva ... and that al Qaeda detainees also do not qualify as prisoners of war."
The Feb. 7, 2002, memo bears the Orwellian title "Humane Treatment of al Qaeda and Taliban Detainees." In it, Bush lifts verbatim the language from the Gonzales/Addington memo of Jan. 25, 2002, and makes it his own.
Bush claimed, for example, "the war against terrorism ushers in a new paradigm [that] requires new thinking in the law of war."
Bush then tries to square a circle, directing (twice in the two-page memo) that "detainees be treated humanely and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in a manner consistent with the principles of GPW."
Smell Smoke?
The smoking-gun memorandum of Feb. 7, 2002, was released to the media, together with other documents, by Gonzales on June 22, 2004, but it did not receive the attention it deserved until recently.
On Dec. 11, 2008, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan, and Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, ranking members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, released, without dissent, the summary of their committee's report on the abuse of detainees.
The report's first subhead was: Presidential Order Opens Door to Considering Aggressive Techniques, and the first words of the first sentence of the first paragraph were, "On Feb. 7, 2002, President Bush signed a memorandum stating..."
Referring to the "President's order," the first paragraph adds that "the decision to replace well-established military doctrine, i.e., legal compliance with the Geneva Conventions, with a policy subject to interpretation, impacted the treatment of detainees."
"Conclusion Number One" of the Senate Armed Services Committee report states: "Following the President's determination [of Feb. 7, 2002], techniques such as waterboarding, nudity, and stress positions ... were authorized for use in interrogations of detainees in U.S. custody."
Once Bush had opened the door with his Feb. 2, 2002, memo, other actions followed to implement the President's "new paradigm."
White House lawyers worked with Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo of the Office of Legal Counsel to develop constitutional theories about expansive presidential powers that effectively let Bush operate beyond the law.
The OLC traditionally is the office that tells presidents the limits of their constitutional authorities. However, in this case, Yoo collaborated with Gonzales, Addington and other White House lawyers in hammering out arguments that the administration could use to implement harsh interrogations of al Qaeda suspects.
On Aug. 1, 2002, Yoo and his OLC superior, Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee, issued an opinion that so narrowly defined "torture" that it cleared the way for a variety of "enhanced interrogation techniques," including waterboarding, which creates a near-drowning experience.
Top-Down Torture
As the legal framework for Bush's torture policies took shape, senior officers and lower-level participants in the interrogations understood that the basis for the newly permitted harsh tactics stemmed from a presidential decision.
In a report on Abu Ghraib prisoner abuses, former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger indicated that Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top commander in Iraq, instituted a "dozen interrogation methods beyond" the Army's standard practice under the Geneva Convention.
Sanchez said he based his decision on "the President's memorandum," which he said allowed for "additional, tougher measures" against detainees, according to the Schlesinger report.
An FBI e-mail of May 22, 2004, from a senior FBI agent in Iraq stated that President Bush had signed an Executive Order approving the use of military dogs, sleep deprivation and other tactics to intimidate Iraqi detainees.
The FBI official sought guidance in confronting an unwelcome dilemma. He asked if FBI personnel in Iraq were required to report the U.S. military's harsh interrogation of detainees when such treatment violated Bureau standards but fit within the guidelines of a presidential Executive Order.
In sum, abundant evidence indicates that the torture techniques applied in the jail cells and interrogation chambers - the "alternative set of procedures" about which Bush boasted publicly on Sept. 6, 2006 - resulted directly from Bush's Feb. 7, 2002, memo and implementing actions by his administration.
Interrogators also were egged on by comments from Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld regarding the "tough" treatments they favored.
One fig leaf left covering the otherwise exposed role of Bush and his top aides remains the clever inclusion of the word "humane" in the memo that made possible what the International Committee of the Red Cross condemned as "inhuman" treatment of terror suspects in U.S. custody.
There's also the-Justice-Department-told-me-it-was-legal excuse, though the evidence is now clear that the Bush administration essentially stage-managed the Yoo-Bybee opinions.
For instance, when the Yoo-Bybee opinions were withdrawn by Bybee's OLC successor, Assistant Attorney General Jack Goldsmith, Addington and other administration officials successfully pressured Goldsmith to resign and then welcomed a new OLC chief, Steven Bradbury, who reinstated the key opinions in May 2005.
And - as the evidence built of illegal torture in 2006 - the Bush administration pushed the "Military Commissions Act" through the Republican-controlled Congress with phrasing that granted a degree of retroactive immunity.
The law states that "no person may invoke the Geneva Conventions or any protocols thereto in any habeas corpus or other civil action or proceeding to which the United States, or a current or former officer, employee, member of the Armed Forces, or other agent of the United States is a party as a source of rights in any court of the United States or its States or territories."
That provision was interpreted as a broad amnesty for U.S. officials, including President Bush and other senior executives who may have authorized torture, murder or other violations of human rights.
The law also granted Bush the authority "to interpret the meaning and the application of the Geneva Conventions." [For details, see Consortiumnews.com's "Shame on Us All."]
However, there remain legal questions about whether the law's language would prevent prosecutions under pre-existing anti-torture laws.
The sudden appearance of the damning report by the International Committee of the Red Cross, initially given to the CIA's acting general counsel on Feb. 14, 2007, greatly complicates any rotten-apples-at-the-bottom-of-the-barrel-type disingenuousness.
In a departure from the usual diplomatic parlance, the ICRC minces not a word in referring to those who authorized torture. In the report itself, the Red Cross calls on current U.S. authorities "to punish the perpetrators, where appropriate, to prevent such abuses from happening again."
What do you suppose is holding Attorney General Eric Holder back from appointing an independent prosecutor to investigate, with a view toward rubbing out, once and for all, this shameful stain on our collective conscience?
12 Comments so far
Show AllThe fact that the Department of Justice ignores thousands of complaints a year filed by Americans who are being tortured by organized gang stalking vigilante community watch programs accros this country , should tell you all you need to know about who and why torture is allowed to occur.
Americans have been torturing Americans since the KKK developed gang stalking in the early 90s. It is sick , and virtully impossible to prove whats happening to you beacuse the people involved are a cross section of your community. From lawyers, docters, police, firefighters, ministers, judges, nurses, EMS first responders.
Get the point, it will be your word against theirs , and unless you are rich and can afford proper private investigaters, lawyers and personal security, you are as good as dead.They wont stop till you are, and they are nation wide, like
Hitlers secret police, you can not move to escape their torturous death grip.
This is what America has become, a nation of stazi self rightous torture freaks.
All of it organized for the purpose of cotroll of the masses.As their numbers grow, it becomes more normal to join such evil groups.And they have been growing in numbers unchecked since the 90s.
The FBI and CIA know it.They approve of it quietly, and may even run it.
FROM THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
"in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
BornFreeMen
Community watch gang stalking torture victim 2.5 years and running.
Gassho. Many noble sentiments about justice, penalties and the Bush regime. However, there is a naivete about the posts which suggest the writers are unaware of the actions of America for years carried out around the world by American via the CIA and the "regime change", atrocities, murders and torture in the name of American security. Have a look at "Legacy of Ashes"by Tim Weiner for a start. This naive view of America as a nation which has recently lost its innocence is nauseating and terrifying to non Americans.
Two words, not mentioned in this article. Dasht Leile. Look it up. It is an atrocity that seems to have been forgotten, that appears to have been at the very least, known by the President, based on a paragraph in his 2003 State of the Union address when he said, and I quote...
" All told, more than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries.
And many others have met a different fate. Let's put it this way: They are no longer a problem to the United States and our friends and allies."
Turns out, 3000 people were executed in the Afghan desert at Dasht Leile after the John Walker Lindh capture, when they had no place to house the prisoners of that battlefield. They took the prisoners, many Taliban conscripts who had no choice but to fight, or be executed, in unventilated containers, with no food or water for three days...then when they reached their destination, the Northern Militia fighters opened fire on the containers, killing many inside, who had already been dying of thirst, and suffocation. Then, they proceeded to dig trenches into which the containers were placed, with many prisoners still alive and screaming for mercy, many terribly wounded...and buried them alive. US Special Forces were in a supervisory role in this atrocity, as they stood and watched the butchery and never raised a hand to stop any of it.
This is the handiwork of George W. Bush's war of vengeance. This is a war crime for which he should be held responsible. His words, describing the capture of 3000 "suspected terrorists" and then they're being "no longer a problem" is, to me, a clear statement of what was done at Dasht Leile, and god only knows what other hell holes these Nazi's murdered people in.
Jamie Doran made a documentary on this atrocity, named "Afghan Massacre: The Convoy of Death"...and if you can find it, it is hair raising. Mr. Doran went with other objectives in mind, and found out about this massacre and followed the leads to his end conclusion...that US forces were involved, directly, in the cold blooded, savage massacre of at least 3000 prisoners of war, taken on the battlefield with John Walker Lindh.
http://revcom.us/a/1241/iraqtorture.htm
http://www.twf.org/News/Y2003/0205-AfghanMassacre.html
http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/03/09/23_doran.html
http://library.duke.edu/lilly/film-video/filmographies/afghanistan.html
Damn it, Ray, will you quit using the namby-pamby bullshit msm phrases like "drowning sensation" w/r/t waterboarding?!?!?!?
IT IS DROWNING. The fact that the waterboarded person doesn't die is irrelevant.
I'll go back and read the rest now, but phrases like this undermine your credibility.
It is not a sensation. Neither is it a simulation. It is the real thing.
WATERBOARDING IS MOST ACCURATELY DESCRIBED AS "THE DROWNING TORTURE>"
Yes, I'm shouting. You need to hear.
Ray McGovern: "What do you suppose is holding Attorney General Eric Holder back from appointing an independent prosecutor to investigate, with a view toward rubbing out, once and for all, this shameful stain on our collective conscience?"
Such an investigation opens up the whole can of worms, Ray. You know that. Obama's not gonna' touch it.
1. Obviously, these people have done wrong, but they were under the direction of the Bush Administration to write up in legalese the justifications for torture. Thus this investigation leads to the top folks and their encouragement and authorizations to torture "legally;" to the Pentagon folks making sure all was carried out; to the Congress with particular members fully aware and involved in what was going on by not objecting; to the C.I.A. and even to the American Psychological Association and the American Medical Association whose own licensed psychologists and medical doctors were supervisor/onlookers in the torture chambers at GITMO/ [Too bad we don't have a Constitutional clause to dissolve the government as in Parliamentary systems, and start over.]
2. With such investigations approved and with the accompanying publicity, the reasons or non-reasons for attacking Iraq and Afghanistan rear their ugly heads again too, which takes us to ...
3. 9-11 and the lack of proper investigation BECAUSE it was an INSIDE JOB, with Israeli involvement/partnership ... because it was necessary to destroy various Twin Tower financially-related corporate offices and their records of money laundering, strange financial dealings and all kinds of things having to do with the necessity for the INSIDE JOB because so much crooked wheeling and dealing had been going on for years and the chickens were coming home to roost; also it was necessary to include in the cover-up, the investigation files of the C.I.A., the F.B.I., the IRS, and the Office of Naval Intelligence, all of which revealed names and places of assassinations and murders, crooked financial matters and other uncomfortable matters. [Thus Building 7 with all its investigative agency files and the pin-pointed Pentagon area which contained the Naval Intelligence investigative files and housed the Investigative Personnel were destroyed!], so that takes us to the money boys too ... with their full cooperation to cover-up the financial chicancery and fix it under cover of burning buildings and the fear and mourning of a nation's people, so nobody will ever know nuttin' .. which then leads us to the resulting economic crisis that is bringing us down.
Obama or Holder are not going to touch these red-hot bricks in the wall of silence and subterfuge. Obama is still pushing 9-11 as the brainchild of an extant Osama Bin Ladin with his box-cutting cohorts. And Obama dismisses serious questions and results of evidence-gathering about 9-11 as "conspiracy theories."
He likely did not know what he was walking into, but he will never tell Israel off and that what its military is doing to the Palestinians is morally depraved, especially when we are killing Afghan and Pakistani civilians by the score with our unmanned drones, which is a moral depravity.
This President will never have the guts or the heart to open the whole can of worms because they will be crawling all over him and his predecessors and through all the Chambers of Power.
It is likely that with Obama's arduous campaigning for two years and then being elected president and having to learn the ropes, his own knowledge of the whole rat's nest enchilada is still spotty. I doubt if he is going to make it his business to read up on all kinds of evidenciary reports outside of what are the official government files. Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel likely will make sure of that too. With Emanuel's clearing and approval of an alleged ten letters selected from 40,000 e-mails and letters a day to be given to the President for his perusal, the President, as quite a few other presidents, will be informed about whatever by their own hand-picked staff. And if staff members have their own private agendas, the President will be making decisions based on limited realities. Maybe Michelle Obama may hit the Net and find out for him what's really been going on, including way back when. One can hope.
In Barack Obama's book, DREAMS OF MY FATHER, he notes that his wife Michelle says that he never really gets fired up about anything. In other words, he's cool and cerebral. Despite the well-written, frequently lyrical, language of the book and a very revealing struggle he goes through about being bi-racial, and his being Black in America, and although his story and the stories of his Kenyan family and American family roots and personalities are compelling, sometimes tragic, I was not particularly moved when I read it. It struck me that Obama is an observer, parses with his mind, but his heart seems not to be fully connected to that mind, except in the very small, intimate circle of wife and children.
No, I don't think this man will be passionate about right and wrong, despite the very effective rhetoric that has made us think so.
more below ... [>>The speech ...]
(continued)
The speech to the Chech people on April 5, 2009:
"Words must mean something ... . There is violence and injustice in our world that must be confronted. We must confront it by standing together as free nations, as free people. I know that a call to arms can stir the souls of men and women more than a call to lay them down. But that is why the voices for peace and progress must be raised together ... ."
Yes, "Words MUST mean something..." But following the words, it is the actions formulated and stirred by BOTH the cool and controlled thinking process AND the passionate heart with its compassionate morality that insists on "liberty and justice for all," and not for just a select few. Absent that heart-mind connection, words such as "We must confront ..." ring hollow when all decency demands that what must be confronted, is not only not confronted, but is not even acknowledged. That is called Hypocrisy.
Cases in point: the horrible sufferings and deaths of Afghan, Pakistani, and Palestinian children and their mothers and fathers, the brides and grooms and their families, the innocent tribal people's gathered in their villages, and the friends and relatives of all of them.
The U.S. and Zionist Israel ... a heartless partnership from hell.
"Words must mean something ... . There is violence and injustice in our world that must be confronted. ... "
Okay, when ya' gonna' start, mein Prez?
Enough reasons, Ray McGovern, why Eric Holder or this administration will not deal with "our collective stain"?
peace/cm
George Wanker Bush was, from a very early age, a punk. The attitude of the punk has always overwhelmingly defined what he truly is. The cowardly, snarling, lazy little kid with two cap pistols strapped around his waist, carrying a bucket of feces with which he defaces the homes of ordinary people in the dark of night while guffawing silently to himself is what George Waker Bush was then, is now, and will always be right up to the day he dies and the planet is mercifully rid of his scourge once and for all. A punk who seeks Glory will give you Iraq and Afghanistan and who knows what else. Torture? Bingo! Ooooooooo-rah!
We are a nation in disgrace, further we ourselves are not safe from our government. That Barack Obama has not made, as his very first priority, the cleansing of this nations deepest shame through the application of justice for these horrid crimes is a crime in and of itself.
Knowingly failing to report a crime is a crime. Where are these apologists for the inaction of our President? Where is the outrage from all decent Americans?
When I saw the first photo of John Walker Lindh, I knew what had been done - I knew he had been tortured - I've seen that look before. And I knew this country was finished. Once you start down that road - openly advocating torture as US policy (because the US has always tortured prisoners, despite its denials) - there is no going back. This is the abyss - the same one the Nazis stepped into, with just as much pride and arrogance, and from which there is never any return. That was 'Doomsday' as far as I was concerned. And the American people are ultimately responsible, because they knew what had been done in Southeast Asia (although it was repeatedly denied) and in Central and Latin America - and they refused to face the atrocities committed there in our name. Ordinary Americans wanted it all swept under the rug. That was Reagan's 'morning in America' - the horrific long ordeal of the 'Vietnam War' was to be forgotten and white-washed. But war crimes - crimes against humanity - have a habit of biting you if you don't deal with them. There are consequences - and we will all pay the Piper for this one.
This was the 'bridge too far' that doomed us all. No one can be 'above the law' - or we have no laws. And now we see what a lawless world really looks like - now we know why human societies have always created laws to hold evil at bay - to curb the worst among us from corrupting the whole. Laws are the scalpel with which humans remove the cancers growing within our societies - without those laws, the cancer metastasizes and devours the whole until there is no 'good' left to salvage. Perhaps the Spanish, who most recently suffered under decades of fascism, are more aware of the threat than others - they are showing the way out of the abyss. But I doubt if Americans will take heed - the cancer has been spreading for far too long.
As always, thank you Mr. McGovern.
My hope is that other nations will collectively put political and economic pressure on the US to conform to international law. Yes, sanctions. Bush and Co., now with the complicity of the Obama administration, has and is acting the role of the rogue nation.
My prayer is not for vengeance, but for accountability. I do not seek to humiliate the perpetrators. I do, however, demand the system hold them accountable, just as we held the Japanese and Germans accountable following World War II. To me, this is the ultimate question before us all, even more elemental than that of war and peace. Justice is the founding principle upon which all else stands. If there is no justice - there is no future. If Obama does not actively pursue this course he is simply a coward and an enabler, and yes, possibly an accomplice.
"just as we held the Japanese and Germans accountable following World War II"
Dream on. Those were kangaroo courts, at best. Nobody stood trial if the US could find a 'useful' reason to hire them instead. It was a scam - and no 'Allies' were tried for THEIR war crimes. (LeMay admitted as much.)
Armybrat: I'm not dreaming - gave that up when Reagan got elected.
But, back to the point. I understand your points about Nuremberg - and agree. But we did hold some accountable - did we not? And yes, I also agree that the Allies committed gross violations - Dresden and Tokyo firebombings, not to mention Hiroshima and Nagasaki immediately come to mind (see McNamara admission in "The Fog of War")But my point is this: a legal precedent was established at Nuremberg - and all those involved were not stooges or idiots, many were well-meaning, dedicated and humane people attempting to make the world a safer, more sane place. I also know that we have routinely engaged in criminal activity since the end of WWII - Howard Zinn points out that every American president since that time could be tried under the Nuremberg principles.
So do you abandon the principle because it is not perfect, or do you use it to create what little justice may be gained in an imperfect world?