your whole intent is to tarnish Bush, Cheney,

No one needs to tarnish Bush & Cheney. They did that all by themselves...

Really? And you come to that conclusion, how? Through the mighty use of your declarative process, which merely wills such assertions into existence?

If these methods are so inhumane and so horrible why is the deciding factor of what is relevant who is in office?

Could you rephrase? That interrogative is incoherent as stated.

You lose all credibility when you are attacking one administration for continuing policies or methods done by other administrations, yet have absolutely no interest in discussing what the previous administrations did.

Really? So we must prosecute all murders before we can prosecute any? This is lunacy and an assertion that very, very few people outside of the right wing echo chamber would agree with.

But you won't, because your whole intent is to tarnish Bush, Cheney, and by default the Republican Party.

Well, that is your framing, not mine. This trick of yours is the entire basis you are using to dismiss these issues. You are the one who is saying "this is irrelevant because all you're trying to do is discredit Bush and the Republicans". Mighty fine cognitive blind spot you have there.

So this "torture" debate is all fluff, because you don't even believe that its torture unless George W Bush is the President at the time.

Pray tell, when has any of the previous presidents declared that we're not obeying the Geneva conventions? Please document the cases where habeas corpus has been suspended by previous administrations. Please let us know the incidences where non citizens and citizens alike have been denied consul and held without charges for years. Please point out where, as a matter of stated policy, internationally recognized methods of torture have been used on prisoners under our control.

I'm not denying such things existed previously. But the extent, and the matter of actual publicly stated policy of this administration wrt to these issues has not been present before. If you believe it has, then get off your frickin' high horse and write your own f'ing paper and show us rather than spouting off a bunch of horse droppings that you think has any chance of forming an actual argument.

Geebus.

You lose all credibility when you are attacking one administration for continuing policies or methods done by other administrations, yet have absolutely no interest in discussing what the previous administrations did. Publish a paper, do some research, or have an open debate about US interrogation methods over the last 25 years, 100 years, etc.

But you won't, because your whole intent is to tarnish Bush, Cheney, and by default the Republican Party. So this "torture" debate is all fluff, because you don't even believe that its torture unless George W Bush is the President at the time.

Mens rea is about your intent to commit the act, and your opinion about whether the act is legal is usually irrelevant. Just ask Wesley Snipes.

I have no idea whether President Bush or Vice President Cheney is guilty of war crimes. I suspect that intent might have something to do with the case, i.e. if either had legal advice that they believed to be correct that what they were authorizing was not torture I don't see how they can reasonably be convicted.

That's rarely a good defense in U.S. Courts. But you're right in one respect--I doubt that Bush and Cheney were sitting around cackling evilly. I've no doubt they thought they were doing the right thing. But they were wrong.

The other day I heard an interview with the president of the Physicians for Human Rights and there was one question that the interviewer failed to ask that I dearly wished had been asked: did any of the cases where people claimed to have been tortured prove to be false?

Fact 1) "harsh interrogation techniques" is not the same thing as torture.
Fact 2) The Dems refused to clarify what constitutes torture so the term is still vague.
Fact 3) Torturing prisoners is not necessarily a War crime.

1 is true but irrelevant as *some* of the "harsh interrogation techniques" did in fact turn out to be torture.
2 is ridiculous since torture is well defined by international law.
3 is just flat out wrong.

Your "facts" are found wanting.

Education in this country really needs to improve....

There are conditions that have to be met before something is considered a war crime. The left want to think anything they don’t like is a war crime. It is not.

The left want to think that the world is some fairytale. It is not. The left are the one ‘s that prevented our Intel agency from talking to each other or dealing with shady characters before 911 then scream that the Intel agency didn’t break the laws that the Dems put in place.

I'm reminded of the old adages my mother used to scold me with when I'd make similar excuses. Sadly, I'm pretty sure you don't seem to have the moral compass necessary to understand them.

Hal, people here are saying that Bush and Cheney are guilty of war crimes by directly authorizing the use of torture that would constitute War Crimes. They did not. That point is a fact.

Well break it down:
Fact 1) Bush did authorize "harsh interrogation techniques"
Fact 2) Many of those techniques are torture
Fact 3) Torturing prisoners is a War Crime

Conclusion: Bush authorized activities that constitute War Crimes.

Now you might argue that he didn't know they were war crimes, but that doesn't really matter. If ignorance of the law doesn't get you out of a speeding ticket, it certainly doesn't excuse you committing atrocities.

Um, no. You are categorically and objectively wrong.

but the point stands that they did not authorize mutilations, electrocutions, and other torture methods that have long been identified as War Crimes and used in the gulags as referenced above.

Um, no. Please actually read the link I provided before you mistate the facts above. And, to stave off future tedious conversation, you don't get to define what is and what is not torture. Water boarding, which they have already admitted to using and was authorized at the highest levels in this government, is an internationally recognized form of torture, one that the United States actually prosecuted as war crimes after WW II.

is all a power play from Democrat supporters.

Yes, we're all about power plays here on the liberal side. Power all the time.

I feel sorry for you.

How you feel is, quite frankly, immaterial.

It's no different than the ridiculous claims that the reason Clinton ok'd the release of Osama bin Laudin was because he was tied with him other than the fact that it's a ridiculous claim about the "other" party.

Could you please clarify that? It seems completely incomprehensible.