Brian Terrell — Two Interrogations, Gina Haspel and Adolf Eichmann

Double standard of justice?

Counterpunch
Two Interrogations, Gina Haspel and Adolf Eichmann

Brian Terrell, co-coordinator for Voices for Creative Nonviolence

Ted Galen Carpenter — The Real Problem with Gina Haspel's CIA Nomination

The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche expressed the cautionaryadmonition: “Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster.” Too often, we have ignored that warning. Gina Haspel’s defenders assert that her behavior conformed to procedures that senior CIA officials (and presumably the Bush White House) had approved. The international community rejected the “just following orders” defense that defendants invoked at the Nuremberg trials. Haspel’s defense is no more valid or persuasive. We should not accept a female version of the Marquis de Sade to lead the CIA. A refusal to do so would be a modest, but important, first step in reclaiming America’s soul.

The foundation of liberalism is the rule of law regarding human rights and constitutional liberties. I would say that the real problem with respect to liberalism is failure to observe the rule of law, along with failure to hold those violating the law to account.

Liberalism is idealistic, whereas politics and economics are realistic. This leads to paradoxes of liberalism that affect liberal democracy.

Good article. Worth reading the whole thing.

The National Interest
The Real Problem with Gina Haspel's CIA Nomination

Ted Galen Carpenter | senior fellow in defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute and a contributing editor at the National Interest

Also

A Chilean reports on women torturers under Pinochet.

Counterpunch
It’s Time the United States Accounts for Its History of Torture

Ariel Dorfman

Article originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times

Jon Schwartz — Washington Breaks Out The “Just Following Orders” Nazi Defense For Cia Director-Designate Gina Haspel

DURING THE NUREMBERG TRIALS after World War II, several Nazis, including top German generals Alfred Jodl and Wilhelm Keitel, claimed they were not guilty of the tribunal’s charges because they had been acting at the directive of their superiors.
Ever since, this justification has been popularly known as the “Nuremberg defense,” in which the accused states they were “only following orders.”

The Nuremberg judges rejected the Nuremberg defense, and both Jodl and Keitel were hanged. The United Nations International Law Commission later codified the underlying principle from Nuremberg as “the fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.”

This is likely the most famous declaration in the history of international law and is as settled as anything possibly can be.

However, many members of the Washington, D.C. elite are now stating that it, in fact, is a legitimate defense for American officials who violate international law to claim they were just following orders....

American exceptionalism, you see. "If we do it, it's legal. If others do it, it's illegal." A variant was Nixon's, "If the president does it, it's legal."

The Intercept
Washington Breaks Out The “Just Following Orders” Nazi Defense For Cia Director-Designate Gina Haspel

Jon Schwartz

also

“Everyone at the CIA in the post-Sept. 11 era was simply doing what they were asked to do in the aftermath of a crisis.” —General Michael Hayden, former NSA and CIA Director

“The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.” — The United Nations International Law Commission

Intel Today

Hanns-Joachim Gottlob Scharff — “Without Torture”

L

Todd E. Pierce — The U.S. Hypocrisy of ‘Human Rights’

Failing to prosecute war crimes is in itself a war crime under international law, and, to use the words of the “Office of Global Criminal Justice,” the opposite of its mission to “expose the truth,” and “judge those responsible.” But taking matters a step further, the U.S. government has designed a legal procedure to deny protection and assistance to victims. This is exactly what leaders of countries that are in line for U.S.-sponsored regime change are routinely accused of doing by the Office of Global Criminal Justice.… 

That was what German military and Gestapo officers said of the prisons they worked in when they went on trial for war crimes at Nuremberg. Most common as their legal defense against war crime charges was that the defendants were only following “superior orders,” in German, “Befehl ist Befehl” (“orders are orders”) — a tactic now known as the Nuremberg defense. In other words, the earlier generation of war criminals effectively claimed their actions were “within their scope of employment.” That defense didn’t work at Nuremberg for Germans, but it works now for U.S. officials in U.S. courts.

The closing the Office of Global Criminal Justice just makes official what has been U.S. policy since 9/11. If it is true that hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue, then the U.S. government has showered tribute upon vice with the hypocrisy of the Office of Global Criminal Justice. If it closes, it means we won’t even pay tribute anymore to virtue, preferring to fully embrace vice in a display of our “authenticity.” And that may be the one example where the “Office of Global Criminal Justice” fulfills its mission to “expose the truth.”

Takes people with no honor and no shame. In other words, low life. And fish rot from the head.

Consortium News
The U.S. Hypocrisy of ‘Human Rights’
(Ret.) Maj. Todd E. Pierce, former Army judge advocate general defense attorney at Guantanamo Bay detention center, Cuba

This article originally appeared at The American Conservative at http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/tillerson-mulls-closing-of-war-crimes-office/

See also

PBS’ Anti-Russia Propaganda Series

Rick Sterling