If It's Not Torture, Then It's OK To Use It On Cheney

US Opposition to the International Criminal Court<br />
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The United States government has consistently opposed an international court that could hold US military and political leaders to a uniform global standard of justice. The Clinton administration participated actively in negotiations towards the International Criminal Court treaty, seeking Security Council screening of cases. If adopted, this would have enabled the US to veto any dockets it opposed. When other countries refused to agree to such an unequal standard of justice, the US campaigned to weaken and undermine the court. The Bush administration, coming into office in 2001 as the Court neared implementation, adopted an extremely active opposition. Washington began to negotiate bilateral agreements with other countries, insuring immunity of US nationals from prosecution by the Court. As leverage, Washington threatened termination of economic aid, withdrawal of military assistance, and other painful measures. These exclusionary steps clearly endanger the fledgling Court and may seriously weaken its credibility and effectiveness. <br />
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<a href="http://www.globalpolicy.org/intljustice/icc/usindex.htm">http://www.globalpolicy.org/intljustice/icc/usindex.htm</a><br />
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International Court of Justice<br />
Only states may be parties in contentious cases before the International Court of Justice. This does not preclude private interests from being the subject of proceedings if one state brings the case against another. Jurisdiction of the court is limited only to cases where both parties have submitted their dispute to the court. Should either party fail "to perform the obligations incumbent upon it under a judgment rendered by the Court", the Security Council may be called upon to "make recommendations or decide upon measures" if the security council deems such actions necessary.<br />
In practice, the Court's powers have been limited by the unwillingness of the losing party to abide by the Court's ruling, and by the Security Council's unwillingness to enforce consequences.<br />
However, in theory, "so far as the parties to the case are concerned, a judgment of the Court is binding, final and without appeal," and "by signing the Charter, a State Member of the United Nations undertakes to comply with any decision of the International Court of Justice in a case to which it is a party".<br />
For example, in Nicaragua v. United States the United States of America had previously accepted the Court's compulsory jurisdiction upon its creation in 1946 but withdrew its acceptance following the Court's judgment in 1984 that called on the United States to "cease and to refrain" from the "unlawful use of force" against the government of Nicaragua. In a split decision, the majority of the Court ruled the United States was "in breach of its obligation under customary international law not to use force against another state" and ordered the US pay reparations (see note 2), although it never did.<br />
Examples of cases include:<br />
• A complaint by the United States in 1980 that Iran was detaining American diplomats in Tehran in violation of international law. <br />
• A dispute between Tunisia and Libya over the delimitation of the continental shelf between them. <br />
• A dispute over the course of the maritime boundary dividing the U.S. and Canada in the Gulf of Maine area. <br />
• A complaint by the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia against the member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation regarding their actions in the Kosovo War. This was denied on 15 December 2004 due to lack of jurisdiction, because the FRY was not a party to the ICJ statute at the time it made the application. <br />
The last example can be used as evidence of the Court's failure to take on politically controversial cases; as the Court has no means to enforce its rulings, its survival is dependent on its political legitimacy. That would be endangered if it constantly came with rulings which states have no interest of taking into consideration. This is one of the Court's major shortcomings: its rulings must be considered in a political context.<br />
Not all countries accept the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice, ICJ. For example, the United States "accepts compulsory ICJ jurisdiction with reservations" whereas Brazil "has not accepted compulsory ICJ jurisdiction."<br />
For a complete list of countries and their stance with the ICJ, see the official list on the Court's website.<br />
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Court_of_Justice">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Court_of_Justice</a><br />
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<p>---<br>Perception is two thirds of what we perceive reality to be.<br />
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Difficult decisions are a privilege of rank.<br />

Comparing lists<br />
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Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Justice Department database has served as the key source of statistics on the status of terrorism investigations in the United States and has been cited frequently in official speeches and testimony to Congress. But since releasing a limited version in late 2001 with fewer than 100 names on it, the department has declined to provide further details.<br />
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The list obtained by the Post includes 361 cases defined as terrorism investigations by the department's criminal division from Sept. 11, 2001, through late September 2004. Thirty-one entries could not be evaluated because they were sealed and blacked out. (The list does not include about 40 cases filed since then that account for Bush's total of about 400). The Post sought to update and correct data whenever possible, including noting convictions or sentences handed down within the past nine months.<br />
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The list of domestic prosecutions does not include terrorism suspects held at the Guantánamo Bay military prison or at secret locations around the globe. Nor does it include many of the approximately 50 people the Justice Department has acknowledged detaining as "material witnesses," or three men who were held in a South Carolina brig.<br />
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The Post identified 180 cases in which no connection to al-Qaida or another terrorist group could be found in court records, official statements, the 9/11 commission's report or news accounts. Even some of the other cases featured early allegations of terrorist connections that were dropped.<br />
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Of 142 individuals on the list linked to terror groups, 39 were convicted of crimes related to terrorism or national security. More than a dozen defendants were acquitted or had their charges dismissed, including three Moroccan men in Detroit whose convictions were tossed out in September after the Justice Department admitted prosecutorial misconduct.<br />
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The median sentence was 11 months, and nearly three dozen other defendants were given probation or deported. The most common convictions were on charges of fraud, making false statements, passport violations and conspiracy.<br />
Two life sentences have been handed down: to Richard Reid, the British drifter who was foiled by passengers in his attempt to blow up an aircraft over the Atlantic Ocean; and Masoud Khan, a Maryland man convicted of traveling to Pakistan and seeking to fight with the Taliban against U.S. forces.<br />
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Two others convicted of terrorism-related crimes face life sentences: Abdel Sattar, an Egyptian-born postal worker convicted of conspiring to kill and kidnap in a foreign country; and Ali Timimi, a Northern Virginia spiritual leader convicted of encouraging others to attend terrorist camps. (Timimi was indicted in late September and was not on the list obtained by The Post.)<br />
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Only 14 of those convicted of crimes related to terrorism or national security have clear links to bin Laden's network, most notably Moussaoui and Reid. Others include Faris, an admitted al-Qaida member who sought to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge, and six Yemeni men from Lackawanna, N.Y., who were convicted of providing material support for terrorists by attending an al-Qaida training camp before Sept. 11, 2001.<br />
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In addition, Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh, most closely associated with Afghanistan's deposed government, trained at an al-Qaida camp.<br />
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The patterns discovered by the Post are similar to findings in studies of Justice Department terrorism cases by New York University and Syracuse University, each of which examined different sets of data.<br />
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More than one-third of the cases on the list arose from a post-Sept. 11 FBI dragnet, which resulted in the arrests of hundreds of Muslim immigrants for minor violations unrelated to the hijackings or terrorism.<br />
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"What we're seeing over time is the equivalent of mission creep: Cases that would not be terrorism cases before Sept. 11 are swept onto the terrorism docket," said Juliette Kayyem, a former Clinton administration Justice official who heads the national-security program at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. "The problem is that it's not good to cook the numbers. ... We have no accurate assessment of whether the war on terrorism is actually working."<br />
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U.S. terror convictions overstated, data show <br />
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Seatlle Times<br />
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Sunday, June 12, 2005, 12:00 A.M. Pacific <br />
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