Category: long story short

Guantanamo interrogators use tea and ‘mental chess’ -Reuters, 6/14/04. (article) “Building rapport can mean sharing a Big Mac meal from the base McDonald’s…”

Contractor Immunity a Divisive Issue Washington Post, 6/13/04. (Article) In an early test of its imminent sovereignty, Iraq’s new government has been resisting a U.S. demand that thousands of foreign contractors here be granted immunity from Iraqi law…. Extraterritoriality The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001. (Entry) …. privilege of immunity from local law enforcement enjoyed…

Guantanamo Cell Tapes Turned Over to U.S. Officials, Reuters 6/13/04 “The tapes were turned over to the military’s Southern Command in Miami, which has jurisdiction over Guantanamo.” OK, then. The Southern Command in Miami has jurisdiction over Guantanamo. And United States’ law has jurisdication over the Southern Command. Yet United States’ law does not have…

For the first time in 39 days on Friday I wasn’t the bottleneck in the editorial and production flow of my book. Today I had a day off on a weekend for the first time in months. I almost wasn’t sure it was real: the feeling of being able to do nothing, lie in the…

Aide Says President Set Guidelines for Interrogations, Not Specific Techniques, Washington Post, June 9, 2004 McClellan called the memo a historic or scholarly review of laws and conventions concerning torture. “The memo was not prepared to provide advice on specific methods or techniques,” he said. “It was analytical.” OK. Let’s analyze. These are excerpts from…

“The March 6 document about torture provides tightly constructed definitions of torture. For example, if an interrogator ‘knows that severe pain will result from his actions, if causing such harm is not his objective, he lacks the requisite specific intent even though the defendant did not act in good faith,’ the report said. ‘Instead, a…