Scott Horton of Harper’s Magazine highlights a sobering analysis by a well-respected former war crimes tribunal judge and he discusses the ominous implications:

The most remarkable part of the report is certainly the forward written by Patricia Wald, one of the nation’s most respected retired federal appellate judges. Judge Wald has a credential that few of her colleagues share: she left the court of appeals to serve as a war crimes tribunal judge for Yugoslavia and she also served as a member of the Commission President Bush constituted to look at the false allegations of WMDs in Iraq. Judge Wald compared the current allegations surfacing about detainee abuse authorized by President Bush with the cases she examined coming out of the war in Yugoslavia—that resulted in the indictment and conviction of a number of political leaders in the Balkans. Here’s what she has to say:

There are bound to be casualties when any nation veers from its domestic and international obligations to uphold human rights and international humanitarian law. Those casualties are etched on the minds and bodies of many of the 62 former detainees interviewed for this report, many of whom suffered infinite variations on physical and mental abuse, including intimidation, stress positions, enforced nudity, sexual humiliation, and interference with religious practices.

Indeed, I was struck by the similarity between the abuse they suffered and the abuse we found inflicted upon Bosnian Muslim prisoners in Serbian camps when I sat as a judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, a U.N. court fully supported by the United States. The officials and guards in charge of those prison camps and the civilian leaders who sanctioned their establishment were prosecuted—often by former U.S. government and military lawyers serving with the tribunal—for war crimes, crimes against humanity and, in extreme cases, genocide.

There should be no confusion about what is being said here. One of America’s most prominent judges–and one of our few judicial experts on war crimes–is saying that the factual basis exists to charge officials of the Bush Administration. The test is fairly simple: is the United States now prepared to apply to itself the same legal standards that the United States applied to political leaders in the former Yugoslavia? It is in the end a simple question of justice. And a question of whether the United States is prepared itself to live by the standards it imposes on others.

Beginning tomorrow evening, HBO will be showing the 2008 Academy Award-winning documentary Taxi to the Dark Side. “a compelling and illuminating expose of the US-sponsored policy of torture which emerged after 9/11,” as described by the advocacy group Reject Torture. Here’s the program description from the HBO website:

Not long ago, the United States was viewed around much of the world as the good guys. But the appallingly inhumane tactics used by military prison guards changed all that. This is the story of how America lost its dignity in its zeal to win the War on Terror. This 2007 Oscar®-winning documentary takes a disturbing, in-depth look at the highly questionable interrogation practices used by the U.S. military on prisoners in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay in the years following 9/11. Beginning with the story of an innocent Afghan taxi driver who was killed while being held in a Bagram prison in 2002, the film tells the grim, cautionary saga of how the U.S. government–desperate to draw information from a top Al Qaeda leader–approved the use of cruel and unusual interrogation techniques that were later imported to U.S. prisons abroad.

Here’s the trailer.

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I encourage every American citizen to watch this documentary to better understand what our government does in our name. The first airing on HBO is Monday at 8pm our time. Here’s the complete schedule of its airing.

“It’s extraordinary to me that the United States can find $700 billion to save Wall Street and the entire G8 can’t find $25 billion dollars to saved 25,000 children who die every day from preventable diseases.”

— Bono, rock star and anti-poverty activist, as quoted on The American Prospect blog)

I’m heading to see the I.O.U.S.A. live in-theater event this evening at Tinseltown Theater.

As gasoline, food and health care costs continue to rise, Americans are looking for solutions to the ever-growing financial challenges being faced today and in the future. I.O.U.S.A.: Live with Warren Buffett, Pete Peterson & Dave Walker addresses these challenges while offering solutions in a one-night-only, exclusive in-theatre event on Thursday, August 21st. Theatres across America will become community town halls as five of the nation’s most notable financial leaders and policy experts engage in a 45-minute LIVE panel discussion following the viewing of the acclaimed documentary “I.O.U.S.A.”

If you missed it previously on this blog, here’s the trailer for the documentary.

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A sobering, eye-opening documentary coming soon…

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Each year, the Fourth of July is a good time to reflect on the original Independence Day — the day the Declaration of Independence was approved — and what it represented. Not only is it beneficial for Americans to reflect upon the freedoms, values and principles declared on that day, it is also beneficial for our government and those elected, appointed and charged with leading it to remember and take heed of what it said.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

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I came across this video by the non-partisan Reject Torture campaign after reading this story regarding the U.S. being accused of holding terror suspects on prison ships. If we sacrifice our values in supposed defense of those values, what have we gained? And, if we are a Christian nation, as many proclaim us to be, what defense can a Christian make of such policies and practices?

From the Reject Torture campaign:

• reaffirming America’s commitment to existing federal laws and international treaties that ban torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment under all circumstances.
• renouncing all legal interpretations and executive orders that redefine torture and permit such acts as sensory and sleep deprivation, stress positions, sexual humiliation, and mock executions.
• enforcing full transparency of information about how America treats any and all detainees held by our personnel and those in our employ anywhere in the world.
• rejecting and abolishing the practice of rendering detainees abroad.
• establishing a single standard of interrogation procedures to apply to all persons held in U.S. custody or by those under U.S. control, whether C.I.A., military, or civilian.
• treating our detainees as we would have others treat detained Americans.

I have now joined the initiative this election year to press the presidential candidates to adopt a “no torture, no exceptions” policy if they should be elected president.