On Tue, January 27, 2009 11:03 pm, David Cake wrote: > At 3:29 PM -0800 27/1/09, Roger Howard wrote: >>All along we're gonna be up against the following: >> >>1. Defendants had it on good legal advice that what they were doing was >>within the law; of course, between two lawyers and a judge you could have >>4 opinions about what's legal, but this will be a fundamental defense. >>2. Barring that defense, there's always the claims of extraordinary >> powers >>by the Executive, particularly during a time of war. >> >>Anyway, as usual I think we're on the same side, and quibbling about the >>details. I have no idea what the process should be or will be, but I hope >>there is a process involving extensive documentation about what occurred >>and who authorized it, and if criminal wrongdoing is shown (which I would >>expect unless it's a complete whitewash, which is possible) then I would >>expect nothing less than trials. If the investigations are complete then >>bring on the indictments. > > The latter, at least, should make no difference to the UN. > War crimes are international law - just because your commander in > chief orders you to commit something that you know to be a violation > of international law doesn't get you off the hook, 'I was just > following orders' is no excuse. I should have thought that principle > was pretty well established by Nuremberg.
I didn't say that I think those are valid defenses for war crimes, only that those will surely be arguments made (and have been, for years now, without filling in the details). _______________________________________________ OSX-Nutters mailing list | [email protected] http://lists.tit-wank.com/mailman/listinfo/osx-nutters List hosted at http://cat5.org/
