US Statement to the Committee Against Torture - Yeah Right!

[althecat]

US Statement to the Committee Against Torture
Barry F. Lowenkron, Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor
Opening Statement at the U.S. Hearing at the UN Committee Against Torture
Geneva, Switzerland
May 5, 2006
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0605/S00171.htm

...snip...

On the topic of this hearing, my government's position is clear: U.S. criminal law and treaty obligations prohibit torture, and the United States will not engage in or condone it anywhere. As the President said in 2004:

". . . Torture is wrong no matter where it occurs, and the United States will continue to lead the fight to eliminate it everywhere"

My country is committed to upholding our national and international obligations to eradicate torture and to prevent cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. We also are committed to transparency about our policies and actions, and we hope other countries will be equally forthcoming. This is not just a legal obligation -- we are fulfilling a higher moral obligation, which our nation has embraced since its earliest days. Indeed, the United States is proud that it was among the leaders in the international community who established the Convention against Torture.

...snip...

Ahem... something confuses me a little. I thought the president said the Geneva Convention was quaint.

Aha... this is more like it... some equivocation....

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0605/S00172.htm
Opening Remarks at the UN Committee Against Torture
John B. Bellinger, III, Legal Adviser
Opening Remarks at the U.S. Meeting With the UN Committee Against Torture
Geneva, Switzerland
May 5, 2006


We know that you will have many questions about actions the U.S. Government has taken in response to the terrorist attacks upon our country on September 11. We welcome this dialogue and we are committed to addressing your questions as fully as possible. As we attempt to answer your questions, I would like to ask the Committee to bear in mind a few considerations.

First, some of the matters that are addressed by your questions are the subject of ongoing litigation, and I hope you will understand that our ability to comment in detail on such matters is necessarily constrained.

Second, like other governments, we are not in a position to comment publicly on alleged intelligence activities.

Third, our Second Periodic report and the written answers to your questions contain extensive information about U.S. detainee operations in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in Afghanistan and Iraq. It is the view of the United States that these detention operations are governed by the law of armed conflict, which is the lex specialis applicable to those operations.

As a general matter, countries negotiating the Convention were principally focused on dealing with rights to be afforded to people through the operation of ordinary domestic legal processes and were not attempting to craft rules that would govern armed conflict.

At the conclusion of the negotiation of the Convention, the United States made clear "that the convention . . . was never intended to apply to armed conflicts. . . ." The United States emphasized that having the Convention apply to armed conflicts "would result in an overlap of the different treaties which would undermine the objective of eradicating torture."1 No country objected to this understanding.

In any case, regardless of the legal analysis, torture is clearly and categorically prohibited under both human rights treaties and the law of armed conflict. The obligation to prevent cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment is in Article 16 of the Convention and in similar provisions in the law of armed conflict.

While the United States maintains its view that the law of armed conflict is the lex specialis governing the detainee operations that we will discuss, we are pleased to provide extensive information about these operations in a sincere spirit of cooperation with the Committee.

In closing I would like to make two final comments.

First, while I am acutely aware of the innumerable allegations that have appeared in the press and in other fora about various U.S. actions, I would ask you not to believe every allegation that you have heard. Allegations about U.S. military or intelligence activities have become so hyperbolic as to be absurd. Critics will now accept virtually any speculation and rumor and circulate them as fact. The U.S. Government has attempted to address as many of these allegations as quickly and as fully as possible. And yet, as much as we would like to deny the numerous inaccurate charges made against our government, because many of the accusations relate to alleged intelligence activities, we have found that we cannot comment upon them except in a general way.

Second, even as we recognize matters of concern to the Committee, we ask that the Committee keep a sense of proportion and perspective. While it is important to deal with problems in a straightforward manner, it does a disservice to the quality of our dialogue, to the treaty monitoring process, to the United States, and, ultimately, to the cause of combating torture around the world to focus exclusively on the allegations and relatively few actual cases of abuse and wrongdoing that have occurred in the context of the U.S. armed conflict with al Qaeda. I do not mean to belittle or shift attention away from these cases in any way. We welcome your questions. But we suggest that this Committee should not lose sight of the fact that these incidents are not systemic. We also suggest that the Committee devote adequate time in these discussions to examining the treatment or conditions that apply domestically with respect to a country of more than 290 million people. The United States is committed to rule of law and has a well-functioning legal system to ensure criminal and civil accountability.

So in summary:

The US is fundamentally against the use of torture unless it occurs during armed conflict and then the quaint Geneva convention applies and torture can be ok. That said all the bad things you hear about US use of torture aren't true anyway.

Move along nothing to see here.

[althecat]

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