Navy JAG Resigns Over Torture Issue

[flashl]

"It was with sadness that I signed my name this grey morning to a letter resigning my commission in the U.S. Navy," wrote Gig Harbor, Wash., resident and attorney-at-law Andrew Williams in a letter to The Peninsula Gateway last week. "There was a time when I served with pride ... Sadly, no more."

Williams' sadness stems from the recent CIA videotape scandal in which tapes showing secret interrogations of two Al Qaeda operatives were destroyed.

The tapes may have contained evidence that the U.S. government used a type of torture known as waterboarding to obtain information from suspected terrorists.

Torture, including water-boarding, is prohibited under the treaties of the Geneva Convention.

It was in the much-publicized interview two weeks ago between Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) and Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann, who is the chief legal adviser at the Pentagon's Office of Military Commissions, that led Williams to resign.

In the interview, Graham asked Hartmann how the uniformed legal community should respond if the Iranian government used waterboarding to torture a U.S. solider into disclosing when the next U.S. military operation would occur.

Hartmann responded: "I am not prepared to answer that question."

For Williams, a former naval Lieutenant Commander and member of the Judge Advocate General's Corps (JAG), this answer went against "every training I had as an attorney" and as a member of the military.

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[babylonsister]

1. Recommend for an honorable JAG! Puts Hartmann in a far worse light, too. nt

[Solly Mack]

2. K&R

America is a war crime nation

Sleep on that

[Disturbed]

3. The Pres. of the US has said many times that:

"We do not Torture." Was he lying? Did he not know that the CIA did Torture Detainees?

[Solly Mack]

4. Of course he was lying

[gratuitous]

5. Here's my standard

Any officer who doesn't resign is presumed complicit in the military's war crimes or crimes against humanity.

[nightrider767]

6. A real Officer and a Gentleman

You make us proud.

[Senator]

7. Failure To Impeach Rips Out Another Piece Of America's Heart

Impeachment would give Commander Williams, and other heroes, reason to stay -- some hope that our once-great nation could reassert its core values.

DC Dem complicity with this war criminal regime continues to eat through our society like an acid.

===

[flashl]

8. America owes a GREAT debt to its JAG officers

America owes a GREAT debt to its JAG officers. While there's been tiresome debates about laws and legalities under the current soprano administration, the JAG Corp took their arguments directly to the SCOTUS and saved what little remains of our ‘rule of law’.

NY Times
July 11, 2006

Military Lawyers Prepare to Speak on Guantánamo

By NEIL A. LEWIS

WASHINGTON, July 10 — Four years ago, the military’s most senior uniformed lawyers found their objections brushed aside when the Bush administration formulated plans for military commissions at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. This week, their concerns will get a public hearing as Congress takes up the question of whether to resurrect the tribunals struck down by the Supreme Court.

“We’re at a crossroads now,” said John D. Hutson, a retired rear admiral who was the top uniformed lawyer in the Navy until 2000 and who has been part of a cadre of retired senior military lawyers who have filed briefs challenging the administration’s legal approach. “We can finally get on the right side of the law and have a system that will pass Supreme Court and international scrutiny.”

Admiral Hutson, one of several current and former senior military lawyers who will testify this week before one of the three Congressional committees looking into the matter, plans to urge Congress to avoid trying to get around last month’s Supreme Court ruling.

Beginning shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the military lawyers warned that the administration’s plan for military commissions put the United States on the wrong side of the law and of international standards. Most important, they warned, the arrangements could endanger members of the American military who might someday be captured by an enemy and treated like the detainees at Guantánamo.

[Peace 2008]

9. excellent!

[DesertRat]

10. k&r

[Yuugal]

11. Thank you sir K&R nt