Yet when 17 of our tortured Gulf War POWs and 37 of their family members said "enough" and joined together to bring a historic civil action to hold their Iraqi torturers liable, they were shocked—having won their case in federal court—to find the Department of Justice seeking to erase their judgment and "absolve" their torturers.
It appears that the DoJ is fighting to remove the case won by these US soldiers held by Iraq as PoWs because the same judgement could reflect back on themselves and open the US for lawsuits from Iraqis.
John Norton Moore
Walter L. Brown Professor of Law
Director, Center for National Security Law
Director, Center for Oceans Law and Policy
LL.M., University of Illinois College of Law, 1965
LL.B., Duke University School of Law, 1962
A.B., Drew University, 1959
John Norton Moore, who joined the faculty in 1966, is an authority in the fields of international law, national security law, and the law of the sea. He also teaches advanced topics in national security law and contemporary legal thought. Moore taught the first course in the country on national security law and conceived and co-authored the first casebook on the subject. From 1991-93, during the Gulf War and its aftermath, Moore was the principal legal adviser to the Ambassador of Kuwait to the United States and to the Kuwait delegation to the United Nations Iraq-Kuwait Boundary Demarcation Commission.
From 1985 to 1991, he was chair of the board of directors of the U.S. Institute of Peace, one of six presidential appointments he has held. From 1973 to 1976, he was chair of the National Security Council Interagency Task Force on the Law of the Sea and ambassador and deputy special representative of the president to the Law of the Sea conference. Previously he served as the counselor on international law to the Department of State. With the deputy attorney general of the United States, he was co-chair in March 1990 of the United States-USSR talks in Moscow and Leningrad on the Rule of Law. As a consultant to the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, he was honored by the director for his work on the ABM Treaty Interpretation Project. He has been a frequent witness before congressional committees on maritime policy, legal aspects of foreign policy, national security, war and treaty powers, and democracy and human rights. He has been a fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars at the Smithsonian Institution.
Moore is a member of advisory and editorial boards for nine journals and numerous professional organizations, and he has published many articles on oceans policy, national security and international law.
He wouldn't know the first thing about this war. I don't see the words 'calling' or 'mission' anywhere in his biograpah.
The problem is, if we allow this precedent, it's the camel's nose under the tent for some international court being able to prosecute American military personnel at will.
The old-fashioned way would have been to simply say "What Iraqi torturers? Never saw them!" and quietly place them in unmarked graves, same as Al Qaeda have been doing to any of ours they captured (when they didnt have film for the camcorder). For that matter, the same as Saddam did to tens of thousands of his own people.
Frankly, we should let the Iraqi scum go. The long-term precedent is too important. Besides, if we get even modestly lucky, they'll be seen by an American patrol in Baghdad carrying a deadly weapon like a penknife or a grapefruit or something and get blown away with extreme prejudice.
Not necessarily Eid. Remember this isn't an "international court" (which you are so opposed to and is another argument entirely). This is a US court. American soldiers are already able to be tried in national courts whenever that nation feels like doing it. It's up to the US government to recognize those courts or not as they see fit. You can be sure (for example) that given the opportunity Saddam's courts sure as hell wouldn't see that decision as valid and the only thing enforcing it is the invasion that allowed the US to confiscate well in excess of the settlement from Saddam's accounts.
What worries me is the number of people, especially those that were former supporters of the war for "humanitarian reasons" that are now in favor of actions because "Saddam or Al Qaeda would have done it". Has America really sunk so low that Saddam or Al Qaeda doing something makes things ok for America to do it? I certalnly hope not and I think anyone using those justifications needs a smart wakeup call.
I think the US is doing it's men in uniform a significant disservice to be fighting against them and on the side of Saddam in court. There really is no long term precedent, unless you somehow value hypocrisy towards other belligerent nations over hypocrisy towards your own troops.
I still don't like this simply because of the fuel it adds to the International Criminal Court controversy right now.
And I also don't see this as necessarily an abrogation of our duty to protect the interests of US soldiers. Both protecting them from possible extradition to face the judgements of a foreign court AND punishing war criminals are legitimate causes in the course of fulfilling that duty.
And right now I'm neither sufficiently an expert in international law nor sufficiently versed in the controversy surrounding the UN court system to accurately weigh the two sets of risks in the balance. But I'm inclined to err very heavily on the side of avoiding the risk of extradition precedents simply based on a severity-of-consequences argument.
Furthermore, the people who DO have the expertise are in the DoJ and have made their own decisions quite clear. I suppose what I'm saying is that, given the issues I've outlined already, I'm not inclined to second-guess them.
Eid, please correct me if I am wrong, but are you saying that American soldiers should not be held accountable for war crimes because of the fact that terrorists and Saddam commited war crimes as well? The underlying context of your post leads me to believe that you are saying it is a good thing that the DoJ is repealing these cases in order to prevent a presedence (sp?) being set allowing war crimes commited by the Americans to be brought before an international court for punishment.
Now granted the idea of an international court to press thier own laws upon countries does make me nervous, however allowing war crimes commited by the "good guys" (which that in itself is subjective) to go unpunished scares me even more.
He's more concerned with trumped up cases being brought against US soldiers in a rigged or influenced court - which is a valid argument.
Seeing we're devolving into an ICC argument, the problem it faces is catch-22:
i) An ICC is needed because courts in some countries are corrupt and there's no other jurisdiction to try those criminals in.
ii) An ICC is dangerous because it may become corrupt and overrule country's courts that are not corrupt.
Just some ramblings now:
This case however has nothing to do with an ICC. Bizarrely enough, it was presented before a US court against Iraq/Saddam for actions that took place in Iraq. Personally I fail to see how the court ever decided it had jurisdiction in the matter, but they did and awarded the soldiers a whole bunch of money in the civil suit. I don't see the specter of an ICC being involved here - it's more the interesting case of if a US court has jurisdiction over events in Iraq then why isn't the converse true?
Does this essentially mean that an Iraqi can bring a suit against the USA in an Iraqi court for demolishing their Fallujah house without proper legal reason? That's gotta be an interesting question to chew on that would make some trial lawyers salivate...
This isn't about war crimes. It is about the American idea that money = justice. Ddrak hit is just right though. I am astounded that any US court would consider even hearing the case, primarily for jusidiction reasons, but also for the lack of reason for the case.
Of course I am a huge tort reform proponent so I am a bit slanted in that I feel cash awards NEVER equate to justice. No matter how horrible these POWs were treated (and I am not so certain they were treated all that badly by comparison), justice is served by the perpetrators being dead or imprisoned. No justice is served by awarding them huge sums of money taken from the coffers of the nation freed and struggling to recover from the mess this war has made of it.
Americans have become entitlement whores in the worst sort of way and I am a little sickened that some of my comrades in arms would even think of doing something like this.
Well, I suppose the reason the court believed it had jurisdiction was because for a while there, Iraq was under direct US military control.
That wasn't true for very long, since Bush was adamant about handing sovreignty to the Intirim Government as quickly as possible. And in hindsight, wisely so.
Still, this would inevitably provide ammunition to critics of the United States who will accuse us of hypocrisy for prosecuting Iraqi war criminals ourselves but not allowing our own "war criminals" to be tried in foreign countries. I don't care to give the ICC proponents any more leverage or free propaganda.
While I don't care spit for what the UN thinks of us for the most part, I don't trust the Republicans OR the Democrats in Congress to show backbone on this issue.
And that's the risk I'm having to weigh in the balance: in which way will our government ultimately betray the troops LESS. Especially since we cannot count on these treaties being vetoed after 2008.
Actually, the reason that the court believed it had juridstiction is that the US government froze the assets of Iran. Which may or may not be a good reason to rule like they did.
