Redstate

further. If anything good came of their preening stupidity, it will be the damage they did to themselves. I still want to see Frist and the leadership do what they claim and threaten before I give them one cheer.

I mean "degrading, humiliating tratment". Being locked up in a cell can be deemed degrading, being strip searched can be humiliating. My favorite is coercive, which begins the minute you capture somebody. But the grandstanders and the moral maniquins don't wish to be restricted. It follows that they don't want to be held accountable either.

"a man's admiration for absolute government is proportinate to the contempt he feels for those around him". Tocqueville

I can understand the desire of some to clarify Article Three to define what is or is not acceptable treatment of prisoners. However, this was written with the specific intent of being vague so that governments could not find loopholes around which specific items were or were not included in the Article.

My biggest problem is regarding withholding evidence from the trials of these terrorists. Would we accept similar treatment if our troops were captured by an enemy? I would certainly hope not. And, before everyone jumps on me by pointing out that the terrorists don't put our soldiers up for trials, I agree completely. However, the war against terror will most likely not be the last war this nation fights. What if we go to war with Iran, and in the process of fighting through the streets of Hamadan, Bandar-e Abbas, or Tehran one of our soldiers gets captured? Would we be find with our guys (and gals) getting the same treatment we are proposing for the terrorists?

Here's Bush giving a major slapdown to David Gregory over this one at the press conference the other day.

Frist has distinguished himself a gentleman and a scholar, but as a Majority Leader he's been a big wuss. Not what we need now for Prez.

So yes, it's two... not three cheers for Frist, and let's all hope he can save us from McCain's head-in-the-sand gang.

The worst result of our 'torture' at Gitmo is obesity and high cholesterol. Who knew the jihadists would be such junk food junkies?

I agree that Frist has too often been a useless empty suit, but is taking a good stand this time.

While it would have been preferable to pass some sensible legislation on the issues at hand, passing none is really not such a bad outcome.

So we can't put KSM and his ilk on trial for their crimes without Congress establishing procedures in compliance with the Supreme Court decision. OK, so meanwhile we continue to detain them as combatants for the duration of the war, which can't be characterized as "over" any time in the near future. Maybe execution would be more appropriate, but I'm fine with letting them rot in Gitmo.

And while the Supreme Court has the power to stupidly rule that Article 3's "civil war" provisions apply to captured Al Qaeda etc., that doesn't create any law that American interogators can be charged with violating. So while we may have to put up with ACLU nuisance suits seeking injunctive relief against heavy metal music in a terrorist's cell, our interogators can continue business as usual without worrying about being prosecuted under some vague law, that doesn't tell them what's allowed or not.

I am confused. Are we _for_ filibusters or against them?

I wonder how McCain (Media-AZ) likes being the chief when the Indians won't play?
Frist is perhaps getting a little payback for Mav's solo performances. I do hope he enjoys it, I am.

I say Bill Frist in the same tone I reserve for Derek Jeter, Rick Ankiel, Jeff Gordon, Rosie O' Donnell, Dixie Chicks and other people that have just rubbed me the wrong way. I wrote an open letter to the guy in my blog. With that being said, the least he can do, before he goes ahead and gets on with it, is to do something good.

"I'm just beginning...The pen's in my hand...Ending unplanned"

To witness the hysteria and cowardice emanating from the American right, is to be deeply depressed for a once great country. For 40 years successive US presidents and their administrations rightly condemned the Soviet Union for torturing its people using the exact same methods President Bush now wishes to make lawful. Read Solzhenitsyn's description of his time in Russia's gulags and the 'techniques' used on dissidents- stress positions, cold rooms, waterboarding and threats to family members including children- and I defy you to still manitain your support for a president detirmined to disgrace the America of Eisenhower and Reagan.

than I do please explain why a simple indemnification provision would not protect an American soldier, employee, officer or agent from liability; the only meaningful protection in this issue.

I find the whole issue of how an enemy would treat our soldiers to be a spurious argument; nobody that we'd ever likely be fighting is going to honor the GC; their failure to do so gives us a little room for plaintive propaganda but really does nothing for our soldiers, employees, or agents. Likewise, there is little or nothing we could do were an enemy to use its interpretation of the GC to place a captured soldier or agent on trial; they're going to interpret it however they want, and we aren't going to be able to appeal it to the USSC. No reasonable reading of the GC offers any protection to a CIA agent anyway, only humanitarian feelings, unlikely, or propaganda opportunities would keep an agent from being tortured and summarily shot in any circumstance.

So it would seem the only thing that really matters is preventing someone from using the US legal system to try to prove civil liability on the part of a soldier or employee with the concomitant opportunity to use the trial for propaganda and embarrassment of the US.

Does not the US indemnify its employees and agents when they act in the scope of their duties? Does not or cannot the US maintain its sovereign immunity from suit?

It would seem that any employee or agent of the US, including its military, acting in accordance with P&P and orders would be indemnified on a respondeat superior rationale. The US then would be the object of any suit, not the employee or agent, and the US could simply refuse to waive its soveriegn immunity.

The only potential ground for any litigation in this case would then be a determination, judicial or administrative, as to whether or not the officer or employee was in fact acting within the scope of his/her duties.

I know most state and local governments use such a system to avoid civil liability for their employees so long as they acted within the scope - and to transfer liability to the employee rather than the government when they didn't.

I know I've disciplined or dismissed many employees for misconduct and happily turned the final administrative determination or arbitrator's decision over to the plaintiffs' attorney with my best wishes.

If the Fed has such a scheme in place, are employees and agents buying liability insurance because they don't trust the Fed to deal with them fairly on the indemnification issue? Are they doing it to make a political point? It is a very easy thing for a bureaucrat who disagrees with a policy to say that policy is illegal and go out and noisily buy liability insurance and tell a plaintive tale to a sympathetic reporter. I'd bet that the Ds or some interest group even has a fund somewhere that they could tap to help the poor 'crat buy that insurance.
In Vino Veritas

Note to Qlangley:

Maybe you're not keeping up yourself, you forgot Lynn 'I voted for torture' Westmoreland. A republican I believe. Here's the deal, I'll continue to keep up if you start thinking. Could you manage that?

Also Moe: I'm sure Bush, given the time, would get to your list and I guess if he did you'd keep right on voting for him.

You're a scarey twosome.